Cheney's Cowardly, Self-Serving Speech

I've been insanely busy this past week (preparing for a trial), so I haven't been able to follow the news as closely as I usually do.  I did finally get around to watching Dick Cheney's speech, however, and I couldn't let it go without comment.   It may be the least honest, most cowardly, and most obviously self-serving speech that I've ever seen a prominent politician deliver.  Let's start with this:

Today, I'm an even freer man. Your kind invitation brings me here as a private citizen - a career in politics behind me, no elections to win or lose, and no favor to seek.

Yes, Cheney is just here to speak his mind. He's not running for office, so what possible motive could he have to lie or distort the truth? Oh yeah, maybe it's relevant that he was the chief architect of all of these illegal policies and therefore has significant personal legal exposure. Other than that, though, his opinion is completely unbiased.

This was the world in which al-Qaeda was seeking nuclear technology, and A. Q. Khan was selling nuclear technology on the black market. We had the anthrax attack from an unknown source. We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists.

Notice the careful language at the end. Saddam had ties to "Mideast terrorists." As he was making the public case for war with Iraq, Cheney was much less careful in his choice of words, asserting over and over again--based on intelligence he knew was inaccurate--that Saddam had ties with al Qaeda. Now he doesn't have the courage to repeat it. He's essentially conceding here that he misled the nation.

So we're left to draw one of two conclusions - and here is the great dividing line in our current debate over national security. You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked, and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event - coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort. Whichever conclusion you arrive at, it will shape your entire view of the last seven years, and of the policies necessary to protect America for years to come.

This is such a colossal straw man. You either accept all of his policies or you have learned nothing from 9/11. This is "the great dividing line in our current debate"? Please. Most of the policies Cheney is defending in this speech were rejected by the Bush administration itself years ago. Half of the administration almost resigned in 2004 rather than continue to carry out these policies. Speaking of which:

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.

Of course Cheney fails to mention why this program was newsworthy in the first place, i.e., because it was blatantly illegal. So illegal that virtually all of the senior officials in the Bush DOJ (as well as the FBI Director) came within hours of resigning in protest over it. They only backed down when Bush sided with them over Cheney. And these were all conservative Republicans who were dedicated to fighting terrorism and were operating in the exact same environment as Dick Cheney. We're talking about John effing Ashcroft, not Dennis Kucinich. That's how bad this was. But apparently the media should just ignore blatantly illegal programs, even when scores of government officials are coming forward, risking prosecution, to blow the whistle on it.

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.

We're now up to hundreds of thousands? It keeps going up. By the next speech, torturing people will have saved the space time continuum from rupturing.

Our successors in office have their own views on all of these matters.

Yes, it's only the Obama administration that has different views on this. That's why the Bush administration itself stopped using these techniques years ago.

Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted, in effect treating political disagreements as a punishable offense, and political opponents as criminals. It's hard to imagine a worse precedent, filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse, than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors. 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.

Translation: some are suggesting that I should be prosecuted. I don't want to be prosecuted.

Seriously, is it possible to give a more self-serving speech? And somehow prosecuting people for violating the law will lead to "trouble and abuse"? You know what also leads to trouble and abuse? Allowing people to violate the law and abuse their power without accountability.

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, by far, the most cowardly thing I've ever heard a politician say. There is absolutely no question that there is a straight line between the techniques Cheney authorized and what happened at Abu Ghraib. This has been documented over and over again by numerous investigations. The grunts at Abu Ghraib didn't just conjure up out of their imaginations the abusive techniques that they used on Iraqi prisoners. Those were the very same techniques that the OLC signed off on at Cheney's request. Whether or not Cheney intended these techniques to migrate to Iraq, they did, and that outcome was completely predictable. The simple truth is that Abu Ghraib would never have happened but for Cheney's actions. So for him to pass off all responsibility and pretend that there's no relationship between his interrogation program and what happened at Abu Ghraib is unbelievably cowardly. Those "malevolent men" were doing exactly the same things that Cheney is now defending.

We know the difference in this country between justice and vengeance. Intelligence officers were not trying to get terrorists to confess to past killings; they were trying to prevent future killings. From the beginning of the program, there was only one focused and all-important purpose. We sought, and we in fact obtained, specific information on terrorist plans.

Except when they were trying to get people to confess to past links between al Qaeda and Iraq for purely political purposes.

Behind the overwrought reaction to enhanced interrogations is a broader misconception about the threats that still face our country. You can sense the problem in the emergence of euphemisms that strive to put an imaginary distance between the American people and the terrorist enemy. Apparently using the term "war" where terrorists are concerned is starting to feel a bit dated. So henceforth we're advised by the administration to think of the fight against terrorists as, quote, "Overseas contingency operations." In the event of another terrorist attack on America, the Homeland Security Department assures us it will be ready for this, quote, "man-made disaster" - never mind that the whole Department was created for the purpose of protecting Americans from terrorist attack.

This from a man who has, throughout this same speech, repeatedly referred to "enhanced interrogation techniques." Good lord.

Attorney General Holder and others have admitted that the United States will be compelled to accept a number of the terrorists here, in the homeland, and it has even been suggested US taxpayer dollars will be used to support them. On this one, I find myself in complete agreement with many in the President's own party. Unsure how to explain to their constituents why terrorists might soon be relocating into their states, these Democrats chose instead to strip funding for such a move out of the most recent war supplemental.

Thanks, Harry Reid. Also, I'm curious who Cheney thinks pays for Guantanamo if not the U.S. taxpayers.

Another term out there that slipped into the discussion is the notion that American interrogation practices were a "recruitment tool" for the enemy. On this theory, by the tough questioning of killers, we have supposedly fallen short of our own values. This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the President himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It's another version of that same old refrain from the Left, "We brought it on ourselves."

Of course, earlier in the speech, Cheney said that Obama's decision to withhold publication of prisoner abuse photos was the right decision, implicitly because releasing them would turn them into a "recruitment tool" for terrorists. Indeed, virtually every Republican has been explicitly making this argument with respect to those photos. So apparently photos of abuse can be a recruitment tool, but it's ridiculous to suggest that actually abusing people might have a similar effect.

I've gone on long enough. So has Cheney. He's a coward and liar and he doesn't deserve the attention.