1 Boring Old Man

Cheney: Bush’s actions legal if not impeached

Cheney referenced Abraham Lincoln as an example of another president who "suspended the writ of habeus corpus" during a war, prompting this exchange:

SCHIEFFER:But nobody thinks that was legal.
CHENEY: Well, no. It certainly was in the sense he wasn’t impeached. And it was a wartime measure that he took that I think history says today, yeah, that was probably a good thing to do.

The vice president spent much of the interview defending eight years of the Bush administration’s policies, including its surveillance and interrogation programs. When Schieffer asked if the Bush administration had gone "too far" in its surveillance program, Cheney said no.

CHENEY: I don’t believe we violated anybody’s civil liberties.

Cheney also urged President-elect Barack Obama to continue the Bush administration’s interrogation policies…

CHENEY: I would hope [Obama] would avoid doing what others have done in the past, which is letting the campaign rhetoric guide his judgment in this absolutely crucial area… We were very careful, we did everything by the book, and in fact we produced very significant results

He then claims that Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeus corpus must have been legal because Lincoln wasn’t impeached. What a piece of Cheney-think. Lincoln wasn’t impeached because he saved our Union, and he didn’t make a habit of slithering through the cracks. Cheney would do well to think that a major reason his boss, George Bush, wasn’t impeached is because we’d have him [Cheney] as President!

Next we have, "I don’t believe we violated anybody’s civil liberties." I presume he’s referring to surveillance, because it’s hard to imagine that even Cheney would argue that Torture isn’t violating Civil Liberties [my guess is that he doesn’t consider P.O.W.’s to be fellow human beings]. But what he seems to be saying is that surveillance doesn’t hurt anybody. Privacy, itself, is the Liberty in question. What he means is that since we didn’t go shoot the people, they weren’t hurt. That’s not for him to decide. By definition, their Liberties were violated.

But then we come to his sickest thoughts. "I would hope [Obama] would avoid doing what others have done in the past, which is letting the campaign rhetoric guide his judgment in this absolutely crucial area." He’s big on this campaign rhetoric thing – often discounting others by saying, "Oh that’s just campaign rhetoric." But here, he reveals his true colors. Early in 2008, former Senator Lincoln Chaffee, a Republican "good guy" published Against the Tide:

Cheney swore off ‘moderate’ campaign promises a month after 2000 election
April 1, 2008

In his new book, former Rhode Island Republican senator Lincoln Chafee reveals that even before President Bush was sworn into office after the 2000 elections, Cheney had rejected the “moderate course” laid out in their campaign:

The former Senator describes a December 2000 meeting of Republican moderates with Vice President-elect Cheney. Chafee listened as Cheney swore off the moderate course he and Bush had just finished championing in their campaign.
Hearing Cheney say “the campaign was over and that our actions in office would not be dictated by what had to be said in the campaign,” Chafee writes, was “the most demoralizing moment of my seven-year tenure in the Senate.”

In his book, Chafee angrily adds about the incident,

Mr. Cheney tore our best campaign promises to shreds and the moderates acquiesced instead of pelting him with outrage.

• "We were very careful" to make sure we wouldn’t be held responsible for what we did.
• "we did everything by the book" meaning we found a lawyer [John Yoo] who would rationalize what we were doing and put the DoJ stamp of approval on it.
• "we produced very significant results" There are grave doubts whether either domestic surveillance or torture got us any intelligence at all. But there have been significant results – the world’s disdain and our own shame.