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Monday, August 31, 2009
Dick Cheney is offended

 
We interrupt this vacation...

My vacation house, tucked against the side of a North Carolina mountain, does not have a television. This is a beautiful thing, because it reduces to zero the odds that some serial Washington dissembler will invade my space on Sunday morning. The Sunday shows habitually recycle the same bamboozlers - people like Dick Cheney - and it's frankly a bore.

Nevertheless, as I sat in a restaurant yesterday, sure enough, there was Dick Cheney grousing on the TV monitor, in a video clip from Fox News Sunday. I couldn't help but wonder what had sparked his ire (yet again), and what fact-challenged assertions he was undoubtedly inflicting (yet again) on the Sunday audience.

It turns out that Cheney doesn't like the Justice Department's decision to investigate whether CIA operatives broke the law while questioning suspected terrorists; in Cheney's words, "it offends the hell out of me, frankly."

That's a good one. Dick Cheney, who marched us to war with a litany of lies (many of them uttered on Sunday talk shows), declares that he is offended by the Justice Department's attempt to uphold the rule of law. Could attorney general Eric Holder possibly garner a better endorsement for his decision? 

Cheney argued yesterday that torture has worked. He told Fox News that his "sort of overwhelming view" is that torture has been "absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives, in preventing further attacks against the United States." The torture, he said, has "worked very, very well."

It's amazing. This guy's credibility was shredded years ago, yet he still gets air time; indeed, his latest assertions were shredded before he even taped his Fox appearance.

A CIA Inspector General’s report on the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, authored in 2004 and finally released last week, identifies a series of "unauthorized, improvised, inhumane and undocumented” tactics, and fails to offer any conclusive evidence that such tactics yielded information that saved American lives.

In fact, the author of the CIA report stressed this point in an interview with the Los Angeles Times last Tuesday. In the words of former Inspector General John L. Helgerson, "You could not in good conscience reach a definitive conclusion about whether any specific technique was especially effective, or (whether) the enhanced techniques in the aggregate really worked."

Even Frances Townsend, who served as the Bush team's homeland security adviser, conceded on CNN the other day that the CIA report offered no documented evidence that torture worked. As she put it, "It's very difficult to draw cause and effect...The report doesn't say that."

Yet whereas the CIA inspector general said that he could not demonstrate "in good conscience" that torture yielded information that saved American lives, Dick Cheney was granted air time yesterday to once again stray far beyond the parameters of empirical evidence - and to demonstrate that, on this issue, he is actually far to the right of Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan, after all, who signed and championed the UN Convention on Torture, which decreed: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

Fox News didn't challenge Cheney on any of these points. Chris Wallace didn't ask him about the CIA Inspector General's comments, or Townsend's comments, or Reagan's legacy. By contrast, we had this scintillating Q&A exchange about the Justice Department's decision to launch its torture probe:

Wallace: "You think this is a political move, not a law enforcement move."

Cheney: "Absolutely."

Fox News critics are happy these days with the advertising boycott campaign against Fox host Glenn Beck - specifically, the news that roughly 40 advertisers have either pulled their spots from Beck's show or refuse to sponsor him. But Beck is merely one of the more extreme manifestations of the Fox formula. There will always be plenty of advertisers who have no qualms about indulging Dick Cheney's fabulist impulses.

Posted by Dick Polman @ 10:13 AM  Permalink | 255 comments
Comments   
Posted 10:24 AM, 08/31/2009
rightwingsheeple
Dick Cheney is a lot of things that can't be printed here....but who really cares of he's offended. I'm offended that he received multiple deferments for military service himself because he's a coward yet he along with W ordered thousands of soldiers into an unjust invasion and occupation.
Posted 10:44 AM, 08/31/2009
jwad (D)
I am offended that obama is trying to put CIA officers in jail while he condones the release of Libyan terrorist. Watching his popularity circle the great toilet bowl of American politics is a great and deserved thing.
Posted 10:55 AM, 08/31/2009
chasing history
Cheney sends him lame brained daughter out to fight his wars. The guy is a dope and a coward.
Posted 11:07 AM, 08/31/2009
CD75
Fox News is Number One for a reason. Meanwhile, CNN and MSNBC wallow with their 5 viewers.
Posted 11:10 AM, 08/31/2009
CD75
To all the liberals who are against the so-called "enhanced interrogation", answer this question: would you be against these means to obtain this information if that information would have saved your or a loved one's life? Would you sacrefice your loved ones for your ideals?
Posted 11:12 AM, 08/31/2009
jwad (D)
CD75 Fox only has viewers that are stupid and uninformed.
Posted 11:14 AM, 08/31/2009
CD75
As these great Americans in the CIA have protected you for the last 8 years, all you can do is spit on them and mock them. Talking about real offensive conduct. Under Obama, America has digressed into a partisan regime like Argentina and other third world countries where those in current power abuse those out of power.
Comment removed.
Posted 11:17 AM, 08/31/2009
CD75
Dick, I like your words "who marched us to war with a litany of lies". You are just a Keith Olberman in print. Are you proud of that?
Posted 11:31 AM, 08/31/2009
Fernando08
Proscription lists are out of fashion since the wave of reactionary assassinations of the 1960's, lucky for the republicans that their biggest foes are vegetarians, whale savers and refugees from yoga class. It could have be a lot worse for Dick than emotional distress.
Posted 11:35 AM, 08/31/2009
tom - wilmington, de
Talk about fact challenged. Many of those "40 advertisers" say they never advertised on Beck's show to begin with, and several others simply asked to not have their ads shown during Beck but still advertise on Fox. Meanwhile, Beck scored big last week with over 3 million total viewers for a 5pm time slot....he outdrew both MSNBC and CNN combined for their total prime time lineup in both total and the key 25-54 demographic. I bet he is really worried about Color of Change (a group started by one of Obama's czars..Van Jones...and their boycott...he is laughing all the way to the bank.
Posted 11:52 AM, 08/31/2009
Yersinia Pestis
Torturers aren't great Americans, they are terrorists themselves, and they didn't keep anybody safe from anything. The wingnuts' childish minds bow down before their very own Lord of the Flies...
Posted 11:59 AM, 08/31/2009
CD75
There is a disturbing totalitarian aspect of Dick's smears and rants for today. Eric Holder has expressly and implicitly accused Cheney of misconduct and much worse via the investigation, yet, Dick and his minions whine that nobody wants to hear Cheney's side of the story even though he was apparently in the loop and at the top of the management chain on the "torture" issues. Dick then smears Fox News for reporting on it. Obviously, Dick wants America to just hear one side of the story (Obama's). Today's rant is just another example that Dick is just a cog in the state run media of Obama. So much for journalism and freedom.
Posted 12:00 PM, 08/31/2009
NEPhilly
yersinia, that is the problem in a nutshell! The hard left can't tell the difference between CIA agents protecting America and terrorists out to hurt her!
Posted 12:00 PM, 08/31/2009
CD75
Yersenia, your rant reminds me of Animal Farm and 1984. Anthem and Atlas Shrugged also remind me of you.
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About Dick Polman

Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.

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All commentaries posted before April 18, 2008, can be accessed at www.dickpolman.blogspot.com.

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