Protecting America or himself?
Dick Cheney would have us believe that torturing prisoners made Americans safer, that the information we gained by tying up some of these creeps and drowning them almost to the point of death hundreds of times was vital to protecting American lives. But what if we find out that he had actually tortured some of them BEFORE the war got shifted to Iraq (and away from our clear enemy Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and Pakistan) in order to get them to admit a link to Saddam Hussein in Iraq? What if it turns out the torturing was done purely for political reasons so they could make the case to invade Iraq and take over the oil fields there (one of the biggest producers in the middle east)? Wouldn’t that make these orders obviously illegal?
According to the reports when the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks was captured about 20 days before the invasion of Iraq (which had been gearing up for some time) the first questions he was asked was not about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden or the leaders of Al Quaeda, but about possible links to Iraq.
Dick Cheney, the only person to ever publicly curse out a senator on the floor of the senate (using the F word no less!); someone with direct ties to the military industrial complex, who arranged huge no bid contracts to go to the very company he is tied to; the guy who illegally “outed” a CIA operative (can you say “Treason”), ruining her career and endangering her life because her husband could find no real evidence that Iraq was tied to Al Qaeda; its no wonder he’s booked on every news channel he can get on every night – he’s afraid he’ll be going to trial soon.
Comment posted on 6-2-2009
I received a note from a relative who takes issue with my suggestion that Cheney may have committed a treasonable offense.
Article III, section 3 of the US Constitution:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court”
So technically, if he did “out” Valerie Plame (as it appears he did), Cheney aided our enemies by revealing one of our CIA operatives, compromising national security for the purposes of changing the focus of the war to Iraq (as he and the rest of the PNAC crowd long asserted they would do given half a chance) which could constitute treason (although it is a bit of stretch).
I am forced to agree that just being a foul mouthed, arrogant bully and endangering the US through a multitude of inept, deceptive, and self-serving decisions does not make him necessarily treasonous.
Comment posted on 6-2-2009
I’m the relative that disagrees with Nate’s treasonous assessment. I need to read through the site and get my bearing but I look forward to enjoying some stimulating discussion.
You can say a lot about Cheney, like him or hate him and I don’t necessarily disagree with the “foul mouthed, arrogant bully…” remarks, but Cheney was well within his professional rights to discuss those items with his staff. Intent is difficult to prove and (from experience) insiders discuss this type of information maybe to freely at times and sometimes legitimately not keeping in mind certain sensitivities. Again what was Scooter’s intent when he mentioned her CIA connection, I don’t know and we can only speculate. I’m of the opinion that Amb Wilson was just as politically motivated to work counter to Bush and was did not provide an objective/unbiased opinion from his trip. Truth is, the article in question that outed Plame was a back page article that could have gone unnoticed by the masses if not for the “outrage” and outcry from Wilson and Plame themselves. They “outed” themselves.
On the point of aiding our enemies, what truly “aided” our enemies was the Obama administration allowing the interrogation memos to be released to the world. It provides our enemies with insight into our resolve, our tactics, and strengthens their anti-interrogation programs. That type of intelligence information would be considered a significant find if we had gotten that on our enemies and we give it up freely.
Comment posted on 6-2-2009
It would probably be best if I didn’t just knee-jerk react to this comment, but I can’t help myself. While 9/11 was an amazing and impressively successful attack, the perpetrators were at least initially a very small and nearly irrelevant organization that had been plotting against us for a very long time. The attacks on our nation came on BUSH’s watch (or lack thereof) – a man who took more vacations than any sitting president in our history.
I fully supported the attack on the Taliban (I hated them for destroying those statues having a keen interest in archaeology) for harboring Osama, but I will never forgive either of them for lying to the American people and the Congress about evidence for a connection to Iraq, leading to several thousand unnecessary American deaths, compounding the worst economic disaster in 75 years by squandering what was a surplus on a personally motivated and poorly planned military action, bungling the occupation, allowing Al Quaeda to grow stronger, breaking laws left and right to spy on Americans, having their lawyers draw up documents to make obviously illegal and inhuman torture and other war crimes appear legal (there is not much argument here – the US has prosecuted Americans and hung foreigners for these same acts in the past), for allowing this culture of abuse to grow into the scandal at Abu Ghraib (which I have read may have been the direct motivating factor behind attacks which account for as many as 1,000 American deaths), for countless innocent Iraqis killed (perhaps as high as 100,000 dead), for handing companies they were directly connected with no bid contracts and “privatizing” our military instead of calling for a draft (because they knew it all would unravel on them pretty quickly if they did) and all for a new base on top of one of the most oil rich areas in the middle east. For destroying our standing in the world, and our credibility, and removing any idea that we stood for human rights and democracy as they continued to prop up the tyrants around the world that swore to work in our favor while they called for democracy in Iraq. For a multitude of other crimes and misdemeanors for which we can’t hold them to account because they helped destroy the economy so completely we can’t afford to waste our attention on bringing them to justice.
They are scared – and they have a right to be. If we can straighten out the whale of a mess these poster kids for underachievers everywhere got us into, maybe then we’ll have a little time to really examine what I believe will go down as the absolutely worst American presidency *ever*.