Robert Parry: Cheney Exposes Torture Conspiracy

[laststeamtrain]

Cheney Exposes Torture Conspiracy

By Robert Parry
February 14, 2010

If the United States had a functioning criminal justice system for the powerful – not just for run-of-the-mill offenders – former Vice President Dick Cheney would have convicted himself and some of his Bush administration colleagues with his comments on ABC’s “This Week.”

On Sunday, Cheney pronounced himself “a big supporter of waterboarding,” a near-drowning technique that has been regarded as torture back to the Spanish Inquisition and that has long been treated by U.S. authorities as a serious war crime, such as when Japanese commanders were prosecuted for using it on American prisoners during World War II.

Cheney was unrepentant about his support for the technique. He answered with an emphatic "yes" when asked if he had opposed the Bush administration’s decision to suspend the use of waterboarding – after it was employed against three “high-value detainees” sometimes in repetitive sequences. He added that waterboarding should still be “on the table” today.

Cheney then went further. Speaking with a sense of impunity, he casually negated a key line of defense that senior Bush officials had hidden behind for years – that the brutal interrogations were approved by independent Justice Department legal experts who thus gave the administration a legitimate reason to believe the actions were within the law.

However, on Sunday, Cheney acknowledged that the White House had told the Justice Department lawyers what legal opinions to render. In other words, the opinions amounted to ordered-up lawyering to permit the administration to do whatever it wanted.

In responding to a question about why he had so aggressively attacked President Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism policies, Cheney explained that he had been concerned about the new administration prosecuting some CIA operatives who had handled the interrogations and “disbarring lawyers with the Justice Department who had helped us put those policies together. ...

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http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/021410.html

[WhiteTara]

1. We can thank the Spanish Court for starting the

process of prosecuting these war criminals. The inquiry (trial) begins tomorrow and not a moment too soon.

[jtrockville]

3. It's hard to find info on this. Where did you hear the date?

This is the most recent article I could find, and it doesn't mention too many specifics of Spain's inquiry:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/cole

[WhiteTara]

4. right here on DU

it was the first article of the day. I have been almost euphoric ever since.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7711928&mesg_id=7711928

I'd post from the article, but I don't know a short way.
:hi:

[jtrockville]

5. Thanks. I can't believe I missed it.

[WhiteTara]

7. Isn't it exciting? n/t

[jtrockville]

8. It's certainly a relief to know someone is investigating.

I'm ashamed we haven't done this ouselves. But I'm very grateful Spain is proceeding.

[WhiteTara]

10. now it looks like the Spanish government

is trying to shut him down. I hope he doesn't cave!

[rfranklin]

2. He knows he can speak without fear, Obama has exonerated him...

It is a disgrace. He's right up there with his heroes, Pinochet, Suharto and Marcos.

[pbrower2a]

6. Cheney: above the Bill of Rights?

This happens when people pretend to be beyond judgment due to their "superiority".

Dick Cheney seems to have become a Nietzschean "superman", someone beyond ethical judgment by others because he is supposedly exempt from judgment. One must ask oneself: can anyone be above the law?

We are talking about the most fundamental laws of the United States -- the Constitution itself, the section known as the Eighth Amendment. Torture may not appear literally, but "cruel and unusual punishment" should be sufficient enough to describe torture, either as punishment as a judicial measure upon conviction or a method of punishment used in eliciting testimony.

Dick Cheney soils the reputation of the United States by using its laws to mean things that those laws have never meant. We no more need torture to deal with terrorists than we needed it to deal with gangsters.

[Enthusiast]

9. I like this:

"We no more need torture to deal with terrorists than we needed it to deal with gangsters."

And we don't need torture to deal with terrorists any more than we need it to deal with those that perpetrated this economic collapse on the country.

It can be reasonably argued, I think, that the speculators and bankers have killed far greater numbers than all the "terrorists" combined. The same could be said of the insurance industry.