You remember the good old days when then-Vice President Dick Cheney was rarely seen or heard? Now that he's no longer holed up in his famous undisclosed location, the as-yet-unindicted former vice-president won't shut up. He's been on a media blitz in recent weeks, launching an impassioned defense of the Bush administration's anti-civilization policies.
If lack of truthiness, as Stephen Colbert would call it, were a legally recognized disability, Cheney could easily get one of those blue handicapped parking spot tags for his limo.
Two journalists from McClatchy offer a detailed analysis of the many "omissions, exaggerations and misstatements" (their words) found in a speech Cheney gave yesterday.
According to the piece, Cheney distorted comments from the director of national intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair to defend "enhanced interrogation techniques" (torture), even though Blair said there was no evidence that such techniques were necessary.
Cheney's often claimed that torture has saved American lives. Strangely, he did not quote from the CIA director general or from the FBI director who both said there was zero evidence to back up such fantasies.
Cheney claimed that revealing torture techniques would allow America's 'enemies' to better prepare their combatants, even though Adm. Blair approved the release of the torture memos because they would be prohibited under Obama and because "we do not need these techniques to keep America safe."
The piece also pointed out that some of the most critical information about the 9/11 attacks were obtained from the very first al-Qaeda operative captured; the information was obtained through 'traditional' (civilized, non-torture) methods. The agent who obtained the information told a Senate subcommittee that the use of torture "was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al-Qaida."
Cheney stated "the key to any strategy is accurate intelligence." A strange comment considering how much Cheney and other far right neo-cons relied on dubious information supplied them from Iraqi exile groups to mislead the public into supporting the aggression against Iraq. Even back in Machiavelli's time, they knew not to trust the exiles. I'd be surprised if Cheney really cared at the time if the information was accurate. He knew it served his purposes.
Cheney claimed that only "ruthless enemies of this country" were kidnapped and sent to secret prisons. A 2008 McClatchy Newspapers investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to U.S. officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.
Cheney claimed that after 9/11, the administration had to take seriously "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists." The last State Department report on international terrorism to be released before Sept. 11 said Saddam's regime "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President [George H.W.] Bush in 1993 in Kuwait." And according to a Pentagon study released last year, Saddam's security services had "no direct operational link" with al-Qaeda.
Is Cheney willfully dishonest or so self-delusional as to be that divorced from reality? Anyone can speculate but only he knows for sure. But at least former president George W. Bush has had the grace to fade quietly into the sunset without harming America's reputation any further.
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