1 Boring Old Man

 

• "We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists." Here, he continues with his fiction that al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were connected through some kind of "known ties." This is the first instance in this speech of what will be a remarkable ability to skip over the actual allegations that are central to the complaints about he and the Bush Administration.
• "We decided, as well, to confront the regimes that sponsored terrorists, and to go after those who provide sanctuary, funding, and weapons to enemies of the United States. We turned special attention to regimes that had the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction, and might transfer such weapons to terrorists." "regimes that sponsored terrorists?" "sanctuary, funding, and weapons?" "regimes that had the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction?" Well, Afghanistan and the Taliban provided sanctuary. No one objects to that invasion. But the rest of it? He again assumes that this covers Iraq. We don’t buy that was ever true, yet he continues to imply it even today.
• "The key to any strategy is accurate intelligence, and skilled professionals to get that information in time to use it. In seeking to guard this nation against the threat of catastrophic violence, our Administration gave intelligence officers the tools and lawful authority they needed to gain vital information." While many of us question the "tools" given, the information sought was to justify an already foegone conclusion, particularly waterboarding. This "give our boys the tools" line has been coming up since the whole business with torture was ever introduced.
• "Our government prevented attacks and saved lives through the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which let us intercept calls and track contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and persons inside the United States. The program was top secret, and for good reason, until the editors of the New York Times got it and put it on the front page. After 9/11, the Times had spent months publishing the pictures and the stories of everyone killed by al-Qaeda on 9/11. Now here was that same newspaper publishing secrets in a way that could only help al-Qaeda. It impressed the Pulitzer committee, but it damn sure didn’t serve the interests of our country, or the safety of our people." They have never addressed the central issue in this issue. Their need for surveillance isn’t questioned. It’s their insistance on no oversight, going around the F.I.S.A. court, or some alternative arrangement. He’s blasting the New York Times who sat on this story for a whole year – plenty of time for them to find some suitable oversight mechanism. Cheney nor anyone else has ever really addressed why not have oversight. It’s another fiction about the allegations at hand, that we are saying no surveillance. We [and the law] are saying no surveillance without judicial oversight.
• "In the years after 9/11, our government also understood that the safety of the country required collecting information known only to the worst of the terrorists. And in a few cases, that information could be gained only through tough interrogations." May or may not be true. At issue, did tough interrogations produce any information that could be believed? More to the point, were they, in fact, looking to find information that wasn’t true? information to bolster their forgone conclusions? Than seems to be the case.
• "In top secret meetings about enhanced interrogations, I made my own beliefs clear. I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people." Show us that…
• "Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers." Here, Cheney makes an accusation that the Obama Administration actively redacted information that would prove that these interrogations provided us with valuable intelligence. Further, that they are witholding documents that prove Cheney’s point. Bush and Cheney could’ve released those documents themselves. I see no evidence that Obama’s peoplew want to "discredit Cheney." They want us to shut up.
• "Apart from doing a serious injustice to intelligence operators and lawyers who deserve far better for their devoted service, the danger here is a loss of focus on national security, and what it requires. I would advise the administration to think very carefully about the course ahead. All the zeal that has been directed at interrogations is utterly misplaced. And staying on that path will only lead our government further away from its duty to protect the American people." Thanks for the advice. We’ll consider it for a few minutes, then return to the task of getting the truth into the public record.
• "In public discussion of these matters, there has been a strange and sometimes willful attempt to conflate what happened at Abu Ghraib prison with the top secret program of enhanced interrogations. At Abu Ghraib, a few sadistic prison guards abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulations, and simple decency. For the harm they did, to Iraqi prisoners and to America’s cause, they deserved and received Army justice. And it takes a deeply unfair cast of mind to equate the disgraces of Abu Ghraib with the lawful, skillful, and entirely honorable work of CIA personnel trained to deal with a few malevolent men." This is an old argument so thoroughly debunked that it requires little response.

This speech is  a repetition of Cheney’s narrative from the very beginning. al Qaeda and Iraq were in cahoots. Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction they might have given to Terrorists. Torturte was necessary and saved American lives. Abu Ghraib was a freak, not related to his policies. The Obama Administration is out to get him, and actively concealing information that will exonerate him [them]. He avoids the Central Allegations against them altogether: that they cooked up the reasons for invading Iraq; that they tortured people to get confessions to cover the Invasion; that they infiltrated the DoJ OLC to get their CYA opinions; and that most of what Cheney says in this speech is a public fiction. Dick Cheney might well be a patriot, but his way of expressing that patriotism was deceitful and way over the line of either his authority or commom decency.

When I read this speech, I think I learned something. As always, when I rfirst ead it, I felt intimidated. Dick Cheney has a way of sounding like an authority – which he is not. It’s a style that’s familiar to me, though not in this intimidating way. Narcissistic people speak with an almost infectious confidence. They believe that what they think is correct. They are uniquely impervious to criticism because they discount it as spurious attacks. And they have no curiosity or doubt about their own narratives. This speech of Dick Cheney’s could’ve been given in 2002 or anywhere in-between then and now. None of the intervening evidence has changed anything: No ties between al Qaeda and Iraq; no weapons of Mass Destruction; no welcome with open arms; outrage over the torture program; outrage over the OLC; the conviction of Scooter Libby; the 2008 election results; the collapse of the economy; etc. His story remains unchanged and continues to include lies of commission and omission just as it has from the start. It’s his confidence that makes him seem intimidating.