...Make Sure You Won’t Be Prosecuted When Caught
In an ABC News interview, Cheney made these remarks:
"I supported it," he said regarding the practice known as "water-boarding," a form of simulated drowning. After World War II, Japanese soldiers were tried and convicted of war crimes in US courts for water-boarding, a practice which the outgoing Bush administration attempted to enshrine in policy.
"I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do," Cheney said. "And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it."He added: "It's been a remarkably successful effort, and I think the results speak for themselves."
ABC asked him if in hindsight he thought the tactics went too far. "I don't," he said.
Americans should view these remarks in the same way that one might have viewed Cheney’s “So?” remark this year:
On the fifth anniversary of President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, President Bush said he has no doubts about waging the unpopular war despite the "high cost in lives and treasure."
Vice President Dick Cheney had a different message. Informed during a Good Morning America interview broadcast Wednesday that two-thirds of Americans now think the war was not worth fighting, Cheney said: "So?"
"So you don't care what the American people think?" ABC's Martha Raddatz asked.
He added: "I think we cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations of the public opinion polls. There has in fact been fundamental change and transformation and improvement for the better. That's a huge accomplishment."
For people like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Yoo, Addington, etc., their modus operandi must be something like this: If you’re going to do something illegal, don’t get caught, but if you are going to get caught, make sure you won’t suffer any consequences.
Cheney can admit to any war crime right now. He can admit to torture or waging illegal war. He and his friends could trot out in front of some member of the press and reveal one more element of his Project for the New American Century plan every day until Obama is inaugurated and expect nothing to happen.
Last week, a report was released on the “treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.” Sen. Carl Levin and Sen. John McCain put together an “Executive Summary and Conclusions” on their investigations, which involved Senate Armed Services Committee inquiries on June 17th and Sept. 25th of this year.
The report (known as the Rumsfeld Report) said “the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples””, as Rumsfeld famously claimed after photos of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib were leaked. Furthermore, “the fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to us aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”
The Rumsfeld Report goes on to explain how on February 7, 2002, Bush signed a memo asserting that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the “war on terror.” Prior to that, in December 2001, the Depart of Defense General Counsel’s office solicited information on detainee “exploitation” from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), which according to the report is “an agency whose expertise [is] in training American personnel to withstand interrogation techniques considered illegal under the Geneva Conventions.”
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