rssThe World, Through Dick Cheney’s Eyes
Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 11:32 am
- 6 Comments
One more thing about former Vice President Dick Cheney and torture, loosely connected to Ross Douthat’s New York Times column. If you’re Dick Cheney, right now, it’s got to feel like history is repeating itself. My copy of Bart Gellman’s Cheney biography, “Angler,” is at home right now, but if you go through it, you’ll see that a seminal moment in Cheney’s career comes in the 1970s, when the Church and Pike commissions expose massive illegality in the intelligence community, prompting new legal actions to restrain it. (The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was one.) Cheney draws from the experience the conclusion that legitimate executive power is under siege and needs to be expanded from the overreach of Congress if national security is to be protected. As far as I’m aware, Cheney hasn’t given any statement to indicate that Gellman had that wrong.
Leave aside for a moment the merits of the case. Right now, the CIA, at the behest and with the encouragement of the Bush administration, is having its dirty laundry aired through the disclosure of the Office of Legal Counsel torture memos. There’s the prospect — possibly not the likelihood, but at least the prospect — of another congressional commission into past the agency’s interrogation and detention activities during the Bush years. Certainly there’s a Senate intelligence committee inquiry under way. Cheney allies like Porter Goss, a former CIA director, are already warning that agency morale is cratering (which is ironic, since Goss came into the agency like a meatcleaver to purge supposed anti-Bush elements at CIA, but let’s leave that aside). It’s got to feel to Cheney like the end of “Battlestar: Galactica.” All this has happened before, and will happen again …
The question is whether Cheney will examine whether the Bush administration’s actions played any role in contributing to the prospective agency retrenchment. (Let’s stipulate for the sake of argument that such a thing will occur.) Again, leave aside the merits of the arguments for torture or against it. The fact is the Bush administration and the Tenet-era CIA leadership encouraged and blessed the agency to go very far outside the boundaries of what it was previously allowed to do. Never before was the CIA in the detention business. It did not maintain a corps of interrogators before 9/11. And there was never a legal redefinition of U.S. laws and treaty obligations about torture. The available evidence suggests that the congressional leadership of the Democratic Party was complicit in, at least, aspects of that arrangement.
But did Cheney think that the political situation was permanent? That the United States wouldn’t revisit the apparatus of interrogation and detention created in the aftermath of 9/11? Hadn’t the Bush administration placed the CIA out on a limb? Wasn’t it foreseeable that such a thing wouldn’t last forever?
Perhaps the lesson of the Church/Pike era, and this current one, isn’t that Congress ought not to intrude onto the prerogatives of the executive, but rather that the executive shouldn’t require the CIA or other agencies to break/stretch/redefine the law.
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6 Comments
Comment posted April 28, 2009 @ 9:36 am
What is not widely publicized is that the Bush inner of circle (Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld) was positioning themselves to have conservative Republicans rule America for a thousand years (Didn't Germany go through this in the early 30's? What did they call it?) They ruled through by ideology and not by pragmatism. Is it surprising that Cheney et al gutted the intelligence communities to serve their purpose? They thought they did not have to own up to their actions until long after they were gone.
Biden is right. Cheney was the most dangerous VP ever to assume that position. He and Rumsfeld ran George Bush.
Comment posted April 28, 2009 @ 9:51 am
Why is Cheney so vocal Now?
He didn't seen to have a Helluva whole lot to say when he was Blowing Drinking Buddies Heads OFF!
And stacking naked prisoners into pyramids and smearing them with “Excrement”.
Is THIS about HIS Book Deals?
Should we really care Now” about what the Likes of (LON) Cheney and Rush LimBurger ” (STINKS)”.
Comment posted April 28, 2009 @ 6:26 pm
The funny thing about Dick Cheney is that the moron doesn't learn to keep his mouth shut since he has left office. Dick Cheney isn't smart enough to realize that more that he opens his big mouth about his approval of water boarding and other illegal acts that he is just opening the door for International War Crime charges to be laid against him by the International Courts in the Hague, Netherlands.
I wonder Cheney would appreciate being hauled off in Leg Irons and Hand Cuffs and flown to the Hague to be charged with International War Crimes. I wonder how he would like to spend the rest of his life in prison or to be sentenced to death for his actions of the past eight years. There is an old saying an that is “You reap what you sew” and Dick Cheney may pay for his lies of the past eight years and that may be sentenced to death by hanging.
Comment posted April 29, 2009 @ 1:54 am
George Orwell's Animal Farm was not a book or a short story as much as it was a prophecy relevant and regarding to the George W. Bush & Dick Cheney / Haliburton / Jewish Special Ops Administration.
We all know that when we do business off shore the money stays off shore…so I'm sure the motif to be the first trillionaires in the world would be enough to cause the most amount of corruption and self destruction the United States has ever pledged. As far as all the conservatives are concerned – the majority have all lost their way. Racist and blood thirsty for profits, they sold more than their own souls — they sold the souls and lives of many innocent people to distract everyone from the reality of the truth.
Kind of interesting that the price of oil is at an all time low? Never happened when 'they' were in office. Pretty easy to see that the former administration COULD possibly have had contracts to keep the oil prices high so they all can reap the highest profits ever recorded to date relevant to oil, petrol and gas related corporation profits.
Final comment is that if we were to give Dick Cheney 1 question to answer while connected to a lie detector test – that question (for me) would be “Are you a neo-racist?” – I would love to see him say No – and would also love to share the results. Bias & Racist politicians should NOT serve office. They are a danger to this world….that's been proven. They should quit talking and start making some arrests.
Comment posted April 29, 2009 @ 8:54 am
George Orwell's Animal Farm was not a book or a short story as much as it was a prophecy relevant and regarding to the George W. Bush & Dick Cheney / Haliburton / Jewish Special Ops Administration.
We all know that when we do business off shore the money stays off shore…so I'm sure the motif to be the first trillionaires in the world would be enough to cause the most amount of corruption and self destruction the United States has ever pledged. As far as all the conservatives are concerned – the majority have all lost their way. Racist and blood thirsty for profits, they sold more than their own souls — they sold the souls and lives of many innocent people to distract everyone from the reality of the truth.
Kind of interesting that the price of oil is at an all time low? Never happened when 'they' were in office. Pretty easy to see that the former administration COULD possibly have had contracts to keep the oil prices high so they all can reap the highest profits ever recorded to date relevant to oil, petrol and gas related corporation profits.
Final comment is that if we were to give Dick Cheney 1 question to answer while connected to a lie detector test – that question (for me) would be “Are you a neo-racist?” – I would love to see him say No – and would also love to share the results. Bias & Racist politicians should NOT serve office. They are a danger to this world….that's been proven. They should quit talking and start making some arrests.
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