America's most overrated smart guy, Dick Cheney, has been taking to the airwaves lately to insist that if the Obama Administration is going to release the quack legal memos which justified the Bush Administration's lawless reign of torture and mayhem, then the CIA should also declassify the reports of the "testimony" "elicited" during the torture chamber sessions. So that we get a balanced picture.
The Dick never fails to amaze me. A lawyer somewhere, knowing he's going to have to defend Cheney someday, is squirming right now, wishing the Dick would just shut the f*** up, head to some ranch in Texas and shoot someone with a shotgun. Whatever. Just stop talking to The Dick's "friends" at Fox News, because this is not helping.
In a very dark way, there is something comical about Cheney. He never loses that growling gravitas, that heavily serious way he has of taking himself absolutely seriously; and yet, over and over and over again, he's wrong. Not just sort of wrong, either. Fundamentally, hilariously, unbelievably wrong. And still, there he is again, holding forth. Setting the record straight. The guy who was Vice President when the worst terrorist attack in American history occurred lectures everyone on how to keep America safe.
The Dick is missing a very fundamental point with his justifications for torture: the Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a signatory, does not permit any form of justification.
"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever may be invoked to justify torture, including war, threat of war, internal political instability, public emergency, terrorist acts, violent crime, or any form of armed conflict. Torture cannot be justified as a means to protect public safety or prevent emergencies. Neither can it be justified by orders from superior officers or public officials. The prohibition on torture applies to all territories under a party's effective jurisdiction, and protects all people under its effective control, regardless of citizenship or how that control is exercised."
Summary of Article 2 of the Convention. What The Dick has done, by extolling the benefits of pouring water into the lungs and wall-slamming the heads of various Arab captives, and stuffing them into tiny boxes with bugs and the rest of his Marquis de Sade wish-list, is to establish the necessary mens rea (state of mind) for convicting him (and Bush) of war crimes and violations of various anti-torture statutes in the federal code. He has established that the torture was deliberate and calculated and achieved the effect he was after; yet, as noted, the "justification" he offers cannot be used to defend, exonerate or even mitigate his crimes. It's not even admissible. Not a bad day's work for The Dick.
So he's left with a single defense: all this stuff he and the High Command put into action, probably as early as the summer of 2002 as part of an effort to establish the nonexistent link between Saddam Hussein and 9-11 -- you see, it wasn't really torture. Thus the flurry of legal memos after the fact, attempting to define torture out of existence. Thus the reinvention of history, pretending that the United States has not itself prosecuted as war crimes the very acts which Bush and Cheney authorized.
Bush is either being smarter or his lawyer is better at client control. He's not saying anything. Bush & Cheney missed their chance on January 19, 2009; they should have done the Pardon Two-Step. The Dick is doubling down on that mistake by running his mouth (or at least one side of it). For what they authorized, ordered and approved was in fact torture. And now the Obama Administration is administering a water torture of its own: the slow drip of disclosures. First the release of the legal memos. Now the additional photos of detainee abuse. And the Big Enchilada will happen when one of those videotapes of a screaming, struggling captive finally gets smuggled out and scores one billion hits on YouTube. And then The Dick will see it never really mattered whether he could convince Sean Hannity or not.
Let's just hope that Nancy Pelosi and a lot of the democrats on the Intelligence Oversight Committee are also indicted. Oh yea, I forgot, Nancy doesn't remember ever being told they actually were going to use what she was briefed on. I guess because of that she didn't feel any need to at least say she disagreed with the idea. Also, as a Christian, I find it almost amusing to hear the left speak about how it undermines our morality. These are the people who, including Obama, under the Freedom of Choice Act, would allow partial birth abortions to once again be acceptable. Morality? I'm at a loss.
ReplyDelete