CHENEY'S SPEECH TODAY FILLED WITH INACCURACIES, MISSTATEMENTS, EXAGGERATIONS

Dick Cheney in his speech today claims that "releasing the interrogation memos was flatly contrary to national security interest . . . " Does Cheney mean information in Bybee's opinion of August 1, 2002? Such as, "The waterboard . . . inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever [and] . . . does not inflict 'severe pain or suffering.'" And Cheney thinks this gives terrorists "a lengthy insert for their training manual." What bull!

Here's another Cheney doozie: "Across the world, governments that have helped us capture terrorists will feel that sensitive joint operations will be compromised." I suppose Cheney is referring to countries like Poland and Romania that hosted the "black sites" where Cheney's henchmen worked their dark science? Governments like these should worry that the World Court will take action against them for assisting Cheney and the Bush regime in the pursuit of torture.

Cheney again: "And at the CIA, operatives are left to wonder if they can depend on the White House or Congress to back them up when the going gets tough? Why should any agency employee take on a difficult assignment when, even though they act lawfully and in good faith, years down the road the press and Congress will treat everything they do with suspicion, outright hostility, and second-guessing?"

Cheney claims that CIA "operatives" "act lawfully." Cheney of course means that administration lawyers like Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Cheney's own David Addington came up with bogus "legal memoranda" bestowing an imprimatur on the most outrageous, cruel and medieval interrogation methods. The question, however, should be whether anyone in the CIA could possibly think that the legal blessings survive the laugh test. We all know that Cheney put continuous pressure on the CIA to demonstrate a non-existent link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Given that pressure, anyone in the CIA who thought that waterboarding was permitted, or that stuffing a prisoner in a small box for hours on end was allowed, or that sleep deprivation for up to seven days was not cruel and inhuman - anyone who thought that such practices were legal needs to undergo reevaluation of his common sense.

TAMANAHA ON BALKINIZATION: WHAT IF TALIBAN WATERBOARDED U.S. SOLDIERS?

I just read a post by Brian Tamanaha on Balkinization in which he theorizes about the scenario where members of the Taliban capture U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and subject them to waterboarding. The Bush administration especially Dick Cheney claim that waterboarding is not torture, so there is no violation of any Geneva Convention provisions. Furthermore, Tamanaha "quotes" the Taliban as saying that eminent legal scholars (one thinks of former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, John Yoo, David Addington, Jay Scott Bybee and Steven Bradbury) have opined that waterboarding is not torture, therefore the Taliban are not committing war crimes.

WATERBOARD ALL THOSE SAYING IT IS NOT TORTURE

Let's have a full and open investigation of how George Bush and Dick Cheney instituted a policy of torture on captives believed to be Qaeda supporters.

Recall that the Inquisition lasted about 400 years in Europe from about 1300 to 1700 when the leaders of the French Enlightenment exposed it and its shameful practices of torture to daylight.

Some of the very same methods used by churchmen in the Inquisition to extract confessions of devil worship and witchcraft show up in what we know about Bush and Cheney's policy of "harsh interrogation methods." Trial by water is a good example. Water has long been used to separate the good from the evil. Suspected thieves and robbers were thrown into the water in 13th Centrury England; if their hair stayed dry, they were exonerated. Officials poured water down the throats of suspects. Most confessed within a few seconds. Of course, even after receiving church absolution, these unfortunates were then taken and burned at the stake in the city center.

Of course water was not the only method. Churchmen used hot coals and the wrack to test the innocence of suspected heretics. Surely God would protect them if pure and innocent. Most were found to be allied with Satan.

Those who claim waterboarding is not torture should watch the video of Christopher Hitchens being recently waterboarded. Hitchens volunteered. He lasted about 20 seconds before he could not take any more. Better yet, defenders of waterboarding - Hannity, Thiessen, Cheney, Rice, Addington, Tenet, et al. - we should waterboard all of them and not stop unless they make a full and complete confession. First let's accuse them of (take your pick): supporting Al Qaeda, practicing witchcraft, planning to detonate a dirty bomb in NYC, being in consort with Satan, practicing socialism, or whatever. Let's see how much water they can stand before they confess.

LET'S WATERBOARD DEFENDERS OF TORTURE LIKE MUKASEY, CHENEY, ADDINGTON, SCHEUER

It is because of torturer-defenders like Michael Scheuer that I want a full accounting of what some CIA employees did in their pursuit of "truth" when it comes to Guantanamo and Qaeda captives.

Scheuer writes an op-ed in today's The Washington Post in which he implies that Obama is substituting his own personal beliefs about torture for realism practice by the CIA torturers.

For starters, let's subject Scheuer and all the other CIA operatives and defenders like Michael Mukasey, Dick Cheney, David Addington, Condoleeza Rice, John Yoo et al. to the test by water. I personally suspect that they are all implicated in conspiring with Qaeda. Look, (according to the rationale implied by Scheuer) if they are truly innocent or they have no actionable information, they will NOT confess no matter how long the waterboarding. But if they are guilty, truly guilty, they will surely blurt out their guilt. How long do you think Scheuer will maintain his innocence?

The U.S. held trials after for WWII for Japanese officials, officers and plain soldiers. The U.S.hanged some of them for war crimes especially for waterboarding American soldiers. Now Scheuer claims that Americans should adopt the same cruel and brutal practices for self-defense. How small, inhumane and sadistic.

HOLD TORTURE CONSPIRATORS ACCOUNTABLE

David Broder writing in today's The Washington Post gives us more of the vacuous arguments of the Washinton establishment against holding those who conspired to devise a policy of torture responsible. Broder writes:

"The memos on torture represented a deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision, made in the proper places -- the White House, the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department -- by the proper officials.

"One administration later, a different group of individuals occupying the same offices has -- thankfully -- made the opposite decision. Do they now go back and investigate or indict their predecessors?

"That way, inevitably, lies endless political warfare. It would set the precedent for turning all future policy disagreements into political or criminal vendettas. That way lies untold bitterness -- and injustice."

How can anyone connected with Bush, even Broder, argue that the torture policy was "deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision, made in the proper places -- the White House, the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department -- by the proper officials"?

This is so ludicrous. The illegal inhumane policy was devised behind the closed doors of Dick Cheney in consultation with his henchman David Addington, and then dictated to the White House and the CIA.

Let's put these criminals on trial and let the American people hear all the sordid happenings and schemes.

Let's release all the memos and see the true picture of the Bush/Cheney criminal enterprise. As for Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury et al, let's find out how they fit their "legal" arguments around the policy.

Shame on Broder for supporting concealment of the truth about CIA torture.

HOLD EVERYONE ACCOUNTABLE WHO FACILITATED OR ENGAGED IN WATERBOARDING

I disagree with Barack Obama and the others that CIA personnel who carried out the waterboarding and other forms of torture should not face prosecution. I thought that that the rectitude of prosecution of war crimes committed by subordinates was validated and settled at the 1945 Nuremberg trials. Subordinates cannot rely on the defense of "just following orders." Those who engage or commit crimes against humanity need to be held accountable.

If a CIA employee holds down Zubayda or some other suspected Qaeda member while others pour the water, our society must hold this person to account. What could be his/her defense? That he did not know what he was doing was wrong? Hardly.

Even in circumstances where some legal administration hack like David Addington or Steven Bradbury writes a legal memo claiming waterboarding and other harsh methods are legal and permissible, does the defense of the guy who actually pours the water, "I thought it was legal," pass the laugh test? There are certain actions that each person acting with a rational mind must acknowledge offends another's humanity and inherent dignity, notwithstanding some covering legal memo.

TORTURE OF ABU ZABAIDA OBTAINED NO USEFUL INFORMATION YET CHENEY/BUSH CONTINUE TO INSIST WATERBOARDING WORKED

Dick Cheney likes to say that locking up Al Qaeda suspects in Guantanamo without any rights to trial or to legal counsel, as well as waterboarding and other methods of torture on these detainees, made the U.S. safer. Witness no attacks sine 9/11.

Cheney's assertions of course come with no evidence or support. Cheney claims that he has seen intelligence reports saying that "harsh interrogation methods" work and have resulted in information which has foiled serious attacks in their incipient phase. But Cheney says the reports are classified, so we will just have to accept his word for it.

Today, however, Joby Warrick and Peter Finn write in The Washington Post that contrary to the assertions of George W. Bush and Cheney, the waterboarding and other torture applied to Abu Zabaida yielded no useful information, but wasted millions of dollars of investigation time by the CIA and FBI on unsubstantiated phony leads.

Write Finn and Warrick:

"When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.

"The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.

"In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said."

So much for Bush & Cheney's baseless claims that waterboarding and other torture succeeded in foiling terrorist plots aimed at the U.S. Yet these guys, especially Cheney, continue to make the unfounded claims that because of their direction for tougher interrogation (aka torture), the United States was made safer from terrorist attacks.

Write Warrick and Finn:

"Despite the poor results, Bush White House officials and CIA leaders continued to insist that the harsh measures applied against Abu Zubaida and others produced useful intelligence that disrupted terrorist plots and saved American lives.

"Two weeks ago, Bush's vice president, Richard B. Cheney, renewed that assertion in an interview with CNN, saying that "the enhanced interrogation program" stopped "a great many" terrorist attacks on the level of Sept. 11.

""I've seen a report that was written, based upon the intelligence that we collected then, that itemizes the specific attacks that were stopped by virtue of what we learned through those programs," Cheney asserted, adding that the report is "still classified," and, "I can't give you the details of it without violating classification."

"Since 2006, Senate intelligence committee members have pressed the CIA, in classified briefings, to provide examples of specific leads that were obtained from Abu Zubaida through the use of waterboarding and other methods, according to officials familiar with the requests."

Note Cheney's statement appearing to vouch for the bad intelligence that "itemizes the specific attacks that were stopped by virtue of what we learned through those programs . . ." He says, "I've seen a report that was written . . . that itemizes . . ." So Cheney has seen a report. Does he believe the contents of the report? Does he say that the contents were true? Someone wrote a report that Cheney now uses to imply that "specific attacks" were stopped. Who wrote the report? Was it someone on Cheney's staff, such as David Addington?

Cheney's statement is crafty insofar as Cheney says he has seen a report but cannot make it public because it is classified. But that does not mean that the content of the report was true, or that the information was solid, or that the author wrote the report for any other than biased political argumentation.

BUSH, CHENEY WANT CONGRESS TO GO ALONG THAT U.S. IS STILL "AT WAR"

Eric Lichtblau has an important article in today's The New York Times on the machinations of the Bush administration aimed at codifying that the U.S. remains "at war" with Al Qaeda.

Reports Lichtblau:

"Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush’s advisers assert that many Americans may have forgotten that. So they want Congress to say so and “acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.”

"The language, part of a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, goes beyond political symbolism. Echoing a measure that Congress passed just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, it carries significant legal and public policy implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to claim the imprimatur of Congress to use the tools of war, including detention, interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy, legal and political analysts say."

This proposal smacks of Cheney and his diabolical assistant David Addington. By having congress go along and reaffirm that the U.S. is "at war," Cheney and Addington hope to put up an extra buffer between themselves and those who feel they must be held accountable for the introduction of "harsh interrogation methods," read "torture."

Writes Lichtblau:

"Mr. Mukasey laid out the administration’s thinking in a July 21 speech to a conservative Washington policy institute in response to yet another rebuke on presidential powers by the Supreme Court: its ruling that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay , were entitled to habeas corpus rights to contest their detentions in court.

"The administration wants Congress to set out a narrow framework for those prisoner appeals. But the administration’s six-point proposal goes further. It includes not only the broad proclamation of a continued “armed conflict with Al Qaeda,” but also the desire for Congress to “reaffirm that for the duration of the conflict the United States may detain as enemy combatants those who have engaged in hostilities or purposefully supported Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations.” "

Congress must not go along with this. The Bush regime of using waterboarding, harsh methods of interrogation, sleep deprivation, long hours of forced standing, psychological punishments - these must not be allowed to become institutionalized because the U.S. is "at war." Cheney, Addington, Rice, Chertoff, Libby and Bush must all face trial as war criminals after their term of office comes to an end. Only another five months!

NY TIMES OP-ED CLAIMS ISRAEL WILL ALMOST SURELY ATTACK IRAN

Just when I thought things were improving between the Bush regime and Iran, out comes an op-ed today in The New York Times by Benny Morris, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University. Morris says that Israel will almost certainly attack Iran in the next four to seven months.
Writes Morris:

"Israel will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months — and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country’s nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war — either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb."

Everything about Morris's assertions is open to disbelief and doubt. Apart from the near certainty of an Israeli attack which is not that certain, consider some of Morris's other wild claims:

• Teheran is almost every day making threats to wipe Israel off the map - ". . . Israel — the country threatened almost daily with destruction by Iran’s leaders."
• Most Israelis fear that their country's life is at stake - "Nonetheless, Israel, believing that its very existence is at stake — and this is a feeling shared by most Israelis across the political spectrum — . . ."
• Every intelligence agency around the world believes that Iran is intent on making nuclear weapons - "Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared toward making weapons, not to the peaceful applications of nuclear power."
• There is no diplomatic solution but only one option available - the military one - "Which leaves the world with only one option if it wishes to halt Iran’s march toward nuclear weaponry: the military option, meaning an aerial assault by either the United States or Israel."
• The current leaders of Iran are not rational - "Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war."

Everyone of these reckless statements by Morris is based on conjecture and fear-mongering. Even if Ahmadinejad did say that Iran should wipe Israel off the map (something, he did not at all say, but only that he predicted the Israeli government would topple), are words enough to start a war, much less a nuclear conflagration? Would your kid be justified in beating up another kid for calling his mother a bad name? Since when does a country attack another for mere words?

Second. Morris should show which public opinion polls show most Israelis fearing their very survival because of Iran. Where are the poll numbers? What are the poll questions?

Third. Not every intelligence agency believes that Iran is intent on developing nuclear weapons. Consider the National Intelligence Estimate released last December that said that Iran had given up such plans back in 2002. Furthermore, Morris, if he is so sure, should have listed the agencies that believe Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Four. Morris minimizes a diplomatic solution. How like Bush and Cheney he sounds. We have seen how effective the military option is in Iraq and Afghanistan. And how about the Israel fiasco in Lebanon against Hezbollah and in Gaza against Hamas?

And finally, Morris demeans and belittle Iran's leaders by saying that they are not as rational as the leaders in Washington or Moscow. The Iranians seem very rational to me. Having seen what the U.S. did to Iraq over the last five years, would it be irrational for the Iranians not to want a nuclear weapon as protection from the militaristic Americans and their Israeli allies?

Benny Morris sounds like another neo-con war monger, a brother militarist to John Bolton and David Addington. The false assumptions and bad judgments in his article will not stand.

DAVID ADDINGTON & JOHN YOO TESTIFY (?) AT CONGRESSIONAL HEARING, SAY NOTHING

Did anyone see the House hearing with David Addington and John Yoo the other dayon C-SPAN?

Addington is Cheney's right hand man. He is not a nice guy. No wonder that many believe that he is responsible for the implementation of waterboarding and other methods of torture at Guantanamo and other despicable things in those dark CIA prisons. You could see his dripping contempt for members of Congress and his supreme displeasure at having to testify.

John Yoo came off as a nicer guy, but he was no more helpful than Addington. Yoo refused to answer most questions on the 2002 Memo that he helped craft justifying techniques short of causing organ failure or death, claiming that the Department of Justice, his former employer, had told him not to testify.

When you consider that these are the guys who are running the country, you can more easily understand how the "home of the free and the land of the brave" has become tarnished with works of torturers and war mongers.

NYT ARTICLE TODAY ON U.S. WAR GAMES "SPINS" TO JUSTIFY BUSH'S RECKLESS THREATS AGAINST IRAN

In an effort to justify almost starting a war with Iran over those pesky little Iranian motor boats approaching the mighty ships of the U.S. Navy in the Straits of Hormuz, a mere shooting distance of Iran, Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps officer, explains in a story today by Thom Shanker in The New York Times how he personally warned the Pentagon in 2002 that small boats coming in numbers could inflict horrendous casualties on the U.S. Navy war ships.

Writes Shanker:

"There is a reason American military officers express grim concern over the tactics used by Iranian sailors last weekend: a classified, $250 million war game in which small, agile speedboats swarmed a naval convoy to inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships.

"In the days since the encounter with five Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz, American officers have acknowledged that they have been studying anew the lessons from a startling simulation conducted in August 2002. In that war game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships — an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels — when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats."

Why do I feel that a spin is involved? The evidence coming out now about the video and audio showing Iranian speedboats "threatening" the U.S. Navy seems upon closer examination to indicate that there was no real threat and there was no Iranian provocation. The audio seems to have been patched onto the video and then released by the Pentagon to further demonize Iran at the inception of the Bush visit to Arab Sunni states in the Middle East. As if to say, "We told you so, Iran is a serious threat to the region, and this inchoate attack shows that Iran is a menace, even without nuclear weapons, and so we must take action."

And who is this Gen. Van Riper? And why is he coming out now to disclose his experience with war games back in 2002. Van Riper sounds like somebody's mouthpiece, and that someone I suspect could be Dick Cheney or Cheney's assistant, David Addington. Could Van Riper be in fact Cheney's spokesman in a case where Cheney or Addington do not want to be identified themselves in the laying of the bogus foundation that the U.S. was not the instigator of the confrontation but the injured party. All in an attempt to justify George W. Bush's recklessly calling the encounter a "serious provocation" and warning that the next one would result in serious military retaliation. Otherwise Bush could not conceal that he appears to the world to be the war monger once again, this time in his and Cheney's attempt to bomb Iran.