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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 4/23/09

Cheney Agonistes

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Mike Malloy
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Dick Cheney has suddenly become a champion of openness in government. Pigs are darting around the sky and Sean Hannity finally is pregnant. Which of those three statements is not true. Take your time. This is an open-book test. And you can use your semester notes, too.

In his recent television appearance on Fox, Cheney says he wants transcripts of C.I.A. torture sessions made public. Those sessions, this insane war criminal maintains, will reveal how necessary the torture was in getting information that saved hundreds, nay, thousands, of American lives. (Duck! There’s another flying pig! Look out!)

Beatings, partial drownings, slamming detainees against walls, punching, kicking, poisonous stinging insects, forced nudity, sleep deprivation, profound disruption of sensory input, exposure to extreme cold and heat, all of it was so very necessary in prying loose information the psychopathic former vice president claims would have been used to . . . to . . . (Look out! Another one!) keep us snug and secure at night when we climb into our cozy beds and he slides back into his box of sacred dirt.

Bullshit. Total bullshit, Dick. You know it; the interrogators know it; and the clutch of voyeuristic administration freaks who joined you at midnight in the Offal Office to watch the videos know it. You bastards did it for the same reason every despotic jerk-off throughout history did it -- because you could.  Because you had absolute power over people who had never been charged with a crime, given legal counsel, provided a chance to confront their accusers, all that weak-kneed garbage guaranteed by Bush’s “goddam piece of paper,” the U.S. Constitution. You’re the worst type of coward, Dick. The type that worms his way to enormous power simply to act out his own sick interpretation of abuse, destruction and contempt for life. All life. The whole goddam planet, right Dick?

In an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times a former F.B.I. special agent rips your fantasy of torture equals intel to pieces, Dick. He writes,

One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use. It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

This is the agent’s way of saying what most thinking Americans already know, Dick. Simply put, you’re a f*cking liar. And, because of your lies thousands of American soldiers have been killed -- murdered by you and your hand-puppet president -- and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been blown into red mist and bone fragments. However, you couldn’t care less, right, Dick?  Torture videos in the company of other moral zombies -- Rice, Bush, Rumsfeld, Yoo, Gonzalez, Bybee -- are fun and, when you add a bottle of wine and some salty snacks, can make for an evening’s entertainment, right, Dick?

The F.B.I. special agent continues:

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions - all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

Wow. This F.B.I. creep must be a Democrat, right, Dick? What’d he write again? There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. Who would write such nonsense when the truth is torture works. Why, just ask any of dozens of “private contractors” you and your partners hired to destroy the human dignity of prisoners who had been charged with nothing and found guilty of nothing, Zubayda’s “confessions” to the contrary notwithstanding.

But, the F.B.I. special agent is not content to stop there in his revealing your lies (and your taste for torture videos). He goes on:

Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.

There’s more, Dick, and not just from this particular source. Pick up today’s Times and read the whole piece. Do a google search using your name and the word “torture” and see what you get. Look, Dick, we all have our dark little secrets and perverse types of, um, entertainment. But, for most of us, those dark pleasures don’t result in mega-death, war, and screaming human beings. Couldn’t you just switch to Internet porn? I’ll bet Lynn knows web sites that will give you all the thrills you can handle. And, by the way, I don’t think you’ll have web access when your ass finally goes to prison. But, not to worry. Maybe you’ll get a cell mate who’ll provide a rousing substitute for mere videos. An interactive substitute.

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Mike Malloy is a former writer and producer for CNN (1984-87) and CNN-International (2000). His professional experience includes newspaper columnist and editor, writer, rock concert producer and actor. He is the only radio talk show host in America to have received the A.I.R (Achievement in Radio) Award in both (more...)
 
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