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.

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.

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.

WHITE HOUSE TRIES TO SPIN ABSOLUTION FOR ORDERING TORTURE

The stuff coming out of the White House on waterboarding and how it isn't torture because some guys in the Office of Legal Counsel (read John Yoo and others) wrote a memo in which they said it wasn't - boggles the legal mind.

An opinion of the John Yoo cannot make something that exists not exist. It is not up to John Yoo to pass upon something like waterboarding and transform it into goldilocks like the alchemists of old.

Is waterboarding torture? We all know that it is. To say the opposite just won't pass the laugh test. If AG Mukasey and Intelligence Czar McConnell are unsure, then by all means they should volunteer to have themselves waterboarded.

Bush and Cheney and the rest of the gang will have some explaining to do in the near future. I mean before the International Court of Justice, and maybe even in front of a U.S. federal judge in the local district court. No self dealing will get them immunity from ordering the CIA to engage in torture.

By the way, I thought the Enlightenment in France in the Eighteenth Century put an end to such barbarisms and vestiges from the Inquisition. But no. Bush and Cheney have plunged Americans back into medieval days when trials by water and fire forced even the purest and most innocent to confess to unspeakable crimes.

BUSH SAYS TORTURE IS ILLEGAL AND WE DON'T DO TORTURE - BUT WATERBOARDING IS OKAY

What's wrong with the reasoning of the White House and Bush on waterboarding?

Here's how those guys reason - Torture is illegal. Waterboarding is not illegal. Therefore, waterboarding is not torture. This according to Olivier Knox writing for AFP, quoted by Dan Froomkin in his White House Watch.

When Bush is out of office in another 11 months, will there be anyone in power who will defend waterboarding? Waterboarding defender John Yoo will long be gone, the same with former legal counsel now appellate judge Bybee who wrote that notorious memo saying waterboarding was not illegal. Furthermore, Bush will have no Dick Cheney to defend the practice or defend the Bush reasoning.

We all know that waterboarding is torture and is reprehensible. But these guys have resurrected it, as if it were a legitimate interrogation technique. History will not kindly look upon Bush and his minions.

JOHN YOO VS. NEAL KATYAL ON THE NEWSHOUR

The NewsHour with Judy Woodruff had a debate tonight between John Yoo and Neal Katyal on the rationale behind the detention center at Guantanamo. Katyal was incisive, insightful, illuminating. Yoo was defensive and meandering. Scorecard: Katyal 10, Yoo 3. Katyal argued that the suspension of the protections of the Constitution was and is the main purpose of Guantanamo. Yoo's defense was that war justifies removal of the Great Writ and other constitutional guarantees. The same John Yoo who supported the Department of Justice in allowing harsh interrogation techniques and gave "legal"cover to Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in using methods short of organ failure to extract "useful" information from suspects. Here is the John Yoo/DOJ definition of "torture" :

"Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death. For purely mental pain or suffering to amount to torture (under U.S. law), it must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years. . . . We conclude that the statute, taken as a whole, makes plain that it prohibits only extreme acts.''