SENATE REPUBLICANS WITHDRAW FROM INVESTIGATION OF CIA TORTURE POLICY

Republican Senators have chosen to withdraw from an investigation of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence looking into CIA torture practices. Their wholesale withdrawal reveals the disdain of these Republicans for the rule of law and equal justice for all. It wasn't just George W. Bush who politicized every governmental decision. The rest of the Republicans seem adept at doing exactly the same.

Peter Finn writes for The Washington Post:

"Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said Friday that they will no longer participate in an investigation into the Bush administration's interrogation policies, arguing that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s decision to reexamine allegations of detainee abuse by the CIA would hobble any inquiry."

The rationale for the Committee's Republican Senators is weak. They object to AG Eric Holder's appointment of a special prosecutor to conduct a DOJ investigation. They claim the DOJ investigation will make their fact-finding impossible.

But I suspect the real reason is that the Republicans don't want any serious investigation. They can interpret witness testimony at their Senate hearings to say anything they want. But a DOJ investigation is a different matter, not able to be so easily bent to fit around their preconceived beliefs.

CHENEY FEARING PROSECUTION CRITICIZES CIA TORTURE INVESTIGATION

Dick Cheney came out with a statement today insulting Pres. Barack Obama and saying that Obama was not able to manage the country's security concerns.

Mike Allen of Politico reports on Cheney's statement:

"Former Vice President Dick Cheney said in a statement Tuesday that the Obama administration's decision to name a prosecutor to look into Bush-era interrogations of suspected terrorists should foster "doubts about this administration’s ability to be responsible for our nation’s security.”

""The people involved deserve our gratitude," Cheney said. "They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions.""

In other words the CIA agents who actually carried out Cheney's mandate to torture should be heroes, not torturers, and certainly not prosecuted. They may too quicklty reveal that it was the Prince of Darkness himself, Dick Cheney, who gave the orders to use those techniques dating at least as far back as the Inquisition and probably from long before that.

One of the interesting but baseless assertions made by Cheney was that two CIA memos released yesterday prove that his methods of torture did work. But Amanda Terkel reports for ThinkProgress that the memos show no such proof. Writes Amanda Terkel:

"Cheney has since put out a carefully worded statement saying that “individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda.” However, the fact remains that there is still no public evidence that those techniques actually saved lives."

STOP CIA'S PRACTICE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE

Tom Dispatch prints an analysis written by Alfred McCoy of torture techniques long used over the years by the CIA, centering on psychological methods. Why doesn't Obama repudiate these methods and initiate an investigation of these CIA policies? And why did Obama appoint Leon Panetta as head of the agency when he must have known that Panetta would try to quash any hearing or investigation of CIA dark practices?

U.S. UNDER BUSH/CHENEY ORDERED CRUEL, HARSH METHODS BEYOND WATERBOARDING

Last night on PBS, Bill Moyers Journal featured excerpts from Torturing Democracy, a film from producer Sherry Jones, that takes a close look at various forms of torture and cruel punishment meted out by the U.S. military and by the CIA.

We saw depictions of prisoners being shackled to the ceiling or to the floor, being blasted by non-stop high decibel music, being deprived of sleep for days, being held in complete darkness for months at a time, being stuffed into small containers and/or cages. And all of this inhumane treatment was over and above being subject to the trial by water, where water is poured into one's mouth and nose, causing the fear and sensation of drowning.

When I was watching the program, it was hard to reconcile that these methods of torture were American methods of interrogating prisoners, many of whom were ordinary sheepherders and farmers, picked up in Afghanistan and sold to the Americans. Yet it was Bush himself who signed off on these cruel and harsh methods, and it was Dick Cheney who followed up and made sure that the military and the CIA were enforcing them.

CHENEY MISREPRESENTS CRITICS OF HIS POLICIES ON TORTURE

Dick Cheney in his speech the other day (May 21, 2009) at the American Enterprise Institute came out with many distortions, obfuscations and misrepresentations. Here's one:

"Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them."

First of all, Cheney identifies "American values" as "moral values." Now I support "moral values," but we critics of the Bush/Cheney torture procedures object on the basis, not merely of moral values, but primarily because of legal and constitutional values. The constitution provides that everyone be free with basic human liberties and that no one should be subject to procedures that deny due process. It is these constitutional values that condemn Cheney and his "enhanced interrogation methods" under the law. Maybe Cheney is right to say moral values do not prevent CIA thugs from waterboarding or otherwise torturing terrorist suspects, but certainly constitutional values do.

The fact is, these constitutional values based on the individual rights of all are most important when the country is under attack or when it thinks it is the target of terrorists. If not, imagine the chaos that would result if "terrorists" were seen everywhere? That's what happened in the 500 year life of the Inquisition. Pious folk saw the work of the devil everywhere. Every town had its witches, its heretics, its ungodly. And most of these unfortunates were subject to the same practices as Dick Cheney defends - trial by water, trial by fire, trial on the rack, and other cruel and reprehensible tests.

Furthermore, if waterboarding such people were legal in the case of suspected terrorists, why not ratchet up to the hot branding iron or the rack? Especially if the suspect or witness refuses to talk or to admit what we suspect. There is no end to the regime of torture. Once a little is accepted, no manner of cruelty will go unused.