Contra Cheney, Justice Department is Correct to Investigate Torture
About the Justice Department’s new, limited investigation into CIA torture, former vice president Dick Cheney on Sunday’s Face the Nation accused President Obama of an ”intensely partisan” probe and snarled that “[it] offends the hell out of me”. Well, Mr. Cheney, as you blatantly disregarded our country’s sentiments in its eventual opposition to the Iraq War a few years ago, allow me to respond to you with your infamous one word retort: So?
The Justice Department is correct to open a controversial, but necessary investigation into interrrogation tactics used during your administration, and for a number of reasons. My hometown newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorializes the following, which is well worth sharing:
…A fundamental argument against such a move was that the new administration of President Barack Obama should focus on the problems of the present and future, rather than dig up the bones of the more odious deeds of eight years of President George W. Bush. In general, Mr. Obama has (already) done that.
Another case against the probe is concern that it may set off bureaucratic combat or, more seriously, inflame the sort of noncooperation between the CIA and the Justice Department, which includes the FBI, that was part of the basis of U.S. agencies in general failing to read and share intelligence that could have headed off the tragic 9/11 attacks.
The other side of the argument — which carried the day — was the general abhorrence that most Americans have for the torture of captives. Whose flesh does not crawl when reading about U.S. government employees or their contractors beating up or waterboarding people who have not been brought to trial and may be guilty of nothing other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or of having a name that causes someone to assume they are some kind of subversive?
Americans’ opposition to torture is neither a liberal-conservative issue nor a Republican-Democratic one. Disgust at the practice runs from the American Civil Liberties Union to the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a conservative who was tortured as a prisoner by the North Vietnamese. It is also an issue that runs beyond American xenophobia, which sometimes rears its unattractive head in times of stress, such as wars. It is important to remember that the Bush administration labeled some American citizens “enemy combatants” and could easily have tortured them.
In the end, Mr. Holder’s decision to name an investigator, veteran prosecutor John H. Durham of Connecticut, was correct. If the process leads to decisions to prosecute CIA employees or U.S. contractors who used torture or even those who set the policies that resulted in these practices, so be it. Most CIA employees will appreciate the clarity and guidance this will provide them for the future, regardless of who is president and what are the circumstances under which they hold interrogations.
The appointment by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. of a federal prosecutor to look into reports of CIA torture of prisoners was controversial but necessary.
A fundamental argument against such a move was that the new administration of President Barack Obama should focus on the problems of the present and future, rather than dig up the bones of the more odious deeds of eight years of President George W. Bush. In general, Mr. Obama has done that.
Another case against the probe is concern that it may set off bureaucratic combat or, more seriously, inflame the sort of noncooperation between the CIA and the Justice Department, which includes the FBI, that was part of the basis of U.S. agencies in general failing to read and share intelligence that could have headed off the tragic 9/11 attacks.
The other side of the argument — which carried the day — was the general abhorrence that most Americans have for the torture of captives. Whose flesh does not crawl when reading about U.S. government employees or their contractors beating up or waterboarding people who have not been brought to trial and may be guilty of nothing other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or of having a name that causes someone to assume they are some kind of subversive?
Americans’ opposition to torture is neither a liberal-conservative issue nor a Republican-Democratic one. Disgust at the practice runs from the American Civil Liberties Union to the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a conservative who was tortured as a prisoner by the North Vietnamese. It is also an issue that runs beyond American xenophobia, which sometimes rears its unattractive head in times of stress, such as wars. It is important to remember that the Bush administration labeled some American citizens “enemy combatants” and could easily have tortured them.
In the end, Mr. Holder’s decision to name an investigator, veteran prosecutor John H. Durham of Connecticut, was correct. If the process leads to decisions to prosecute CIA employees or U.S. contractors who used torture or even those who set the policies that resulted in these practices, so be it. Most CIA employees will appreciate the clarity and guidance this will provide them for the future, regardless of who is president and what are the circumstances under which they hold interrogations.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09242/994003-192.stm#ixzz0Ph7ZhuQ8
The appointment by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. of a federal prosecutor to look into reports of CIA torture of prisoners was controversial but necessary.
A fundamental argument against such a move was that the new administration of President Barack Obama should focus on the problems of the present and future, rather than dig up the bones of the more odious deeds of eight years of President George W. Bush. In general, Mr. Obama has done that.
Another case against the probe is concern that it may set off bureaucratic combat or, more seriously, inflame the sort of noncooperation between the CIA and the Justice Department, which includes the FBI, that was part of the basis of U.S. agencies in general failing to read and share intelligence that could have headed off the tragic 9/11 attacks.
The other side of the argument — which carried the day — was the general abhorrence that most Americans have for the torture of captives. Whose flesh does not crawl when reading about U.S. government employees or their contractors beating up or waterboarding people who have not been brought to trial and may be guilty of nothing other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or of having a name that causes someone to assume they are some kind of subversive?
Americans’ opposition to torture is neither a liberal-conservative issue nor a Republican-Democratic one. Disgust at the practice runs from the American Civil Liberties Union to the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a conservative who was tortured as a prisoner by the North Vietnamese. It is also an issue that runs beyond American xenophobia, which sometimes rears its unattractive head in times of stress, such as wars. It is important to remember that the Bush administration labeled some American citizens “enemy combatants” and could easily have tortured them.
In the end, Mr. Holder’s decision to name an investigator, veteran prosecutor John H. Durham of Connecticut, was correct. If the process leads to decisions to prosecute CIA employees or U.S. contractors who used torture or even those who set the policies that resulted in these practices, so be it. Most CIA employees will appreciate the clarity and guidance this will provide them for the future, regardless of who is president and what are the circumstances under which they hold interrogations.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09242/994003-192.stm#ixzz0Ph7ZhuQ8
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Excuse us, Dick, but torture “offends the hell out of” us.
And if he doesn’t already, Cheney should offend the hell out of any conscientious Catholic. What else is it going to take?
Accuse liberals of being hysterically partisan.
Works every time.
This is why I simply don’t trust conservatives who say that liberals are over-reacting to the armed protestors at the town hall meetings.
According to mainstream conservative opinion, liberals are over-reacting to torture, too.
What silly-billies we are!
The only person who knows how frightened Dick Cheney is right about now is his Chinese laundryman!
In the 1960s Thomas Merton wrote an essay, “A devout memory of Adolf Eichmann” in which he bemuses that in the eyes of society (and a psychiatrist), Eichmann was perfectly “sane”. He had a good appetite. He slept well. He was calm and well-balanced and not bothered much by guilt – a faithful officer of a great state who had served his country well.
Merton goes on to say that it is the “sane”, well-adapted ones who we have to worry about.
The same essay could be written today about Dick Cheney.
The essay was published in RAIDS OF THE UNSPEAKABLE and is posted here:
http://thetimeofjubilee.blogspot.com/2009/08/could-same-be-written-about-cheney.html
Unlike certain others, the use of torture and state-terrorism by the United States Government to counter the “terrorism” of so-called “rogue” and “terrorist” states does NOT shock me.
The United States INVENTED “total war” on civilian populations in the post-Christian era:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574374492804706378.html