Cheney: Torturers ‘Should Be Praised, They Should Be Decorated’
[su_right_ad]They are heroes, not torturers, says the former vice president.
“I’m perfectly comfortable that they should be praised, they should be decorated,” the right-hand man to former president George W. Bush told NBC television’s “Meet the Press” program, adding, “I’d do it again in a minute.”…
Cheney said there is “no comparison” between the tactics and the deaths of American citizens on September 11, 2001, adding that the CIA “very carefully avoided” the practice of torture.
“Torture is what the Al-Qaeda terrorists did to 3,000 Americans on 9/11,” Cheney said.
“There is no comparison between that and what we did with respect to enhanced interrogation.”
He said he was unfazed that many of the foreign nationals rounded up and held for years, including those tortured, eventually were found not to be terrorists.
“I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective and our objective is to get the guys who did 9/11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States,” he said.[su_csky_ad]
burqa December 14th, 2014 at 8:27 pm
Bad idea for Cheney to bring up 9/11, because he, too received over 100 intelligence reports warning of a massive attack. He, too, refused to react to them.
Undder the pressure of publicity from a commission that recommended we do something about protecting civilian aviation, the White House announced circa March 2001 that Cheney would chair a hard-chargin’ committee to handle terrrorism. In 6 months all they did was hold one meeting where one person was hired and that was it.
Those who tortured and abused prisoners produced worthless intelligence reports.
Here’s former CIA interrogator Glenn Carle on the enhanced interrogation techniques:
“… “almost all the information obtained from EITs was recalled…because it was viewed as unreliable.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/04/torture-bin-laden/
tiredoftea December 14th, 2014 at 8:36 pm
BTW, they fired the guy who alerted them to the threats, Richard Clarke.
KABoink_after_wingnut_hacker December 14th, 2014 at 8:38 pm
They did indeed after ignoring his repeated demands to be heard.
No one should be allowed to forget how incompetent and evil the Cheney/Bush regime was.
tiredoftea December 14th, 2014 at 8:39 pm
I hope it all comes out in their trial for war crimes.
KABoink_after_wingnut_hacker December 14th, 2014 at 8:47 pm
Isn’t amazing that the media forgets that the President who killed Bin Laden is the same man who stopped the torture program, tried to close Guantanamo four times and was left to patch up all the damage this asshole did.
KABoink_after_wingnut_hacker December 14th, 2014 at 8:29 pm
There have been may Presidents who have used military action, but only one who used torture. President Cheney and his mentally challenged little sidekick used torture, lies and deceit to invade, kill and maim hundreds of thousands of people including our own troops. They shamed our nation and tarnished our reputation forever and should be shunned and disgraced if not criminally charged.
Further; this rightwing false equivalency about drones is a red herring and lame excuse.
Drones are a weapon of war that engage in aerial combat just like an F-18, F-16, B-52, A-10 Warthog, Apache helicopter or any other weapon system. Torture on the other hand is the act of committing heinous abuses on a captured & imprisoned individual who is not on any battlefield. Torturing a shackled prisoner is in no way remotely similar as an areal weapons system on a battlefield no matter how many times Fox asserts this lie.
Obewon December 14th, 2014 at 8:30 pm
Greedy Oligarch Party praises Cheney / Palin until 2016~
Just say no to Illegal war criminal torturers..Repossess Cheney’s unused heart now!
crc3 December 14th, 2014 at 9:03 pm
I think he has a jackass heart because he’s livin it….
Blue2016 December 14th, 2014 at 8:33 pm
If any Christians in the GOP are tired of the Pharisees, who tell everyone how to live yet never seem to practice what they preach, I encourage you to switch to Democrat. Human Torture is one of the reasons I switched. I have never regretted it.
burqa December 14th, 2014 at 8:37 pm
Come now.
I take it you have not spent much time in the Religion Forum.
We got some Christian-hating bigots around here who despise you.
tiredoftea December 14th, 2014 at 8:37 pm
Let this guy keep talking. He is creating the prosecution’s case every time he goes on TV to crow about how torturing prisoners is a good thing.
Suzanne McFly December 14th, 2014 at 8:48 pm
I love that he keeps admitting bush knew about it the whole time, Cheney is taking the team down with him.
KABoink_after_wingnut_hacker December 14th, 2014 at 8:49 pm
I noticed that too.
I bet he’s the kind of guy who would shoot a friend in the face.
crc3 December 14th, 2014 at 9:00 pm
Then make his friend apologize for being in the way when Cheney shot him…
Suzanne McFly December 15th, 2014 at 12:18 pm
No way, and if he did he would NEVER get away with it…../s
crc3 December 14th, 2014 at 8:46 pm
Cheney is off his rocker and totally delusional. He obviously doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong OR maybe he is just the devil in a business suit?
KABoink_after_wingnut_hacker December 14th, 2014 at 8:48 pm
Oh he knows the difference alright, so your latter assertion is what I’d agree with.
Hirightnow December 14th, 2014 at 9:08 pm
Maybe senile, like St. Ronnie?
fahvel December 15th, 2014 at 1:42 pm
amoral gluttony is his state of being – he has no soul – just and electric heart that seems to keep on ticking – damned rabbit.
Tim Coolio December 14th, 2014 at 8:59 pm
If Mitt won we would have American boots on the ground in Iran, Syria, Libya, Egypt, and once again in Iraq and maby even N. Korea!
crc3 December 14th, 2014 at 9:05 pm
John McCain can be put in that category also…
Tim Coolio December 14th, 2014 at 9:39 pm
Yes, I’ll have to remember that.
tiredoftea December 14th, 2014 at 11:00 pm
If McCain could rhyme bomb and North Korea, he’d have bombed them, too!
rg9rts December 15th, 2014 at 1:04 am
He’s too busy planning the invasion of Ebola
fahvel December 15th, 2014 at 1:41 pm
yeah, and??????
Carla Akins December 14th, 2014 at 9:14 pm
Uggh.
Mainah December 14th, 2014 at 9:16 pm
Hate to bug you, but my comment is hung up again. This time, I think it’s because I used the shortened version of Richard.
Carla Akins December 14th, 2014 at 9:24 pm
That happens every time we run a Cheney story. Too bad he doesn’t drop off the face of the earth.
Mainah December 14th, 2014 at 9:27 pm
The Dark Lord has the dark side of the force. I think my last shred of hope that he was human, was when interviewed about being grateful for his donor heart … nope. Not at all. Not grateful to the donor and the donor family. How’s that for making people not want to donate.
“What do you mean there’s a chance my heart would be implanted into Cheney or Rumsfeld? Oh HELL NO!” yuppers.
Carla Akins December 14th, 2014 at 9:26 pm
Can’t find it anywhere, do you see it now?
*edit – and it’s no bother.
Mainah December 14th, 2014 at 9:27 pm
Well, I can see it but it says hold on waiting for approval.
Carla Akins December 14th, 2014 at 9:30 pm
Now?
Mainah December 14th, 2014 at 9:30 pm
Yup! Thanks a bunch! It’s all good!
burqa December 14th, 2014 at 11:04 pm
I get the same thing occasionally. Sometimes it decides I need to log on again.
Sometimes when I log on, it tells me I got the wrong answer on the math problem or it tells me I didn’t fill in the password box even when I did.
And they need to change the other message that says, “Sorry, Discus is taking longer than usual. Reload?”
It’s not taking longer than usual. It’s taking the average time to come around.
Used to not be like that.
I gotta wonder if the folks at Viafoura are doing side work for Disqus….
Mainah December 14th, 2014 at 9:30 pm
I see it now. I had to refresh my page. It’s all good.
fancypants December 14th, 2014 at 10:16 pm
what cheney is trying to say is… the gop thinks they are hero’s
tiredoftea December 14th, 2014 at 10:58 pm
The usual really scary divide between life loving lefties and old testament, retribution demanding righties.
fancypants December 14th, 2014 at 11:08 pm
its no surprise the gop likes to watch but would never be the victim
is it time to remove _____ bless America yet ?
fahvel December 15th, 2014 at 1:39 pm
should have erased ______ long long ago – just an evil mofo.
fahvel December 15th, 2014 at 1:39 pm
whew, without another pole, who’da known?
burqa December 14th, 2014 at 10:22 pm
Here’s an interesting article in the form of reviewing 3 books. You’ll want to read it all and save the link. I’m gonna take a few tidbits, but there’s plenty more:
“… Burrows’s book is a landmark whose significance far outweighs recent, popular biographies of the Founding Fathers. His sparkling prose, meticulous research and surprising findings recast our understanding of how the new nation was brought forth. He shows that systematic British atrocities served only to mobilize the American insurgency and harden U.S. resistance. It was a moral Rubicon. Once the British had crossed it, there could be “no compromise, no turning back” in the fight for independence. The British thought that even to refer to Americans as prisoners of war would seem to concede the legitimacy of the rebels’ Congress. So the British had to decide: Were captured Americans to be treated as POWs or as nonpersons to be handled with intimidating brutality? His Majesty’s ministers bobbed and weaved around the question while insisting to an increasingly shocked Gen. George Washington and the pro-American opposition in London that prisoners in the colonies were receiving decent care and two-thirds of a redcoat’s rations. …
Burrows writes, American diplomats who negotiated treaties of commerce beetween 1782 and 1787 with foreign powers such as the Netherlands, Sweden and Morocco took unprecedented steps to mitigate the evils of war. The 1785 treaty with Prussia specifically pledged the young nation “to treat future prisoners of war with the decency and humanity never accorded them by the British,” Burrows says. Prisoner abuse, as New Jersey Gov. William Livingston put it in 1782, was inconsistent “with the honour of the American nation whose glory it has hitherto been to triumph over its Enemy not only by force of arms but by the virtues of humanity.” …”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/30/AR2008123002814.html?sid=ST2009010200955
fahvel December 15th, 2014 at 1:37 pm
facinating how the usa has deteriorated as a bastion of freedom since it was scared by some planes bumping buildings – measure the 911 event as a clinical thing and it was nothing compared to the enslavement of the mid east and the gobbling of its oil.
burqa December 14th, 2014 at 10:36 pm
Here’s another expert in the field, civilian DoD interrogator Katherine Sherwood:
“ “I find the interrogation scenes in the television show ‘24’ repulsive, absurd and even idiotic,” said Katherine Sherwood, a civilian interrogator for the Department of Defense who spoke at the convention. “If I am talking to a bombmaker, I am not trying to get him to tell me he is a bombmaker. I want him to tell me what students he trained, what their nationalities are, what materials he used and who was funding the project.”
Such Hollywood scenarios, Sherwood said, fail to recognize that the central utility of interrogations is in building a lattice of interconnections that can inform military and civilian policymakers.
“Interrogations are about gathering breadth or depth of information,” Sherwood said. “It is not about getting to a single moment of a confession.” ”
“APA Rules on Interrogation Abuse Psychologists’ Group Bars Member Participation in Certain Techniques,” by Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post, August 20, 2007, page A3
jaunita December 15th, 2014 at 12:18 am
Dick Cheney: one sick pup
rg9rts December 15th, 2014 at 1:02 am
Lets start with a noose tied to the back of an F350
Robert Merrill Taylor December 15th, 2014 at 1:07 am
Will someone tell me why this heinous war criminal is not in a jail cell in The Hague?
William December 15th, 2014 at 7:27 am
What would you expect from a guy who felt no remorse or regret after shooting his friend in the face. http://vimeo.com/114207455
fahvel December 15th, 2014 at 1:32 pm
all the guys who did 911 are dead – who was in jail????
alpacadaddy December 16th, 2014 at 5:57 pm
Perhaps if Halliburton Dick was paying any attention whatsoever to the obvious and very well documented run-up to 9/11, instead of focusing on deceiving the American people and setting up Iraq as a major war-profiteering profit center, things might be different… a sorry excuse for a human.
tiredoftea December 16th, 2014 at 5:58 pm
Approve