LA Times: Dark powers, the sequel

[marmar]

Dark powers, the sequel
The president's recent executive order allows the CIA to detain anyone the agency thinks is a terrorist -- or a terrorist's kid.
By Rosa Brooks
July 27, 2007


'We ... have to work the dark side, if you will," Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC's Tim Russert, five days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "We've got to spend time in the shadows using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies.
That's the world operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal.'

It was an odd thing to say. Throughout our history -- from John Winthrop's 1630 "City Upon a Hill" sermon to President Clinton's foreign policy speeches -- our leaders have been quick to assure us of the opposite premise: We will prevail against our enemies because (and only if) we're on the side of light, rather than the side of darkness. We will prevail not through spending "time in the shadows" but through our commitment to freedom, democracy, justice and the rule of law.

Granted, previous rhetorical commitments to the side of light were at times accompanied by some pretty dark episodes. But if we didn't always manage to live up to the values we publicly embraced, our public commitments at least gave us a yardstick for measuring ourselves -- and declared to the world our willingness to be held to account when we fell short.

But in keeping with Cheney's admonition to "work

the dark side," this administration has openly embraced tactics that no previous administration would have formally condoned. In prior wars, for instance, we granted the protections of the Geneva Convention to our enemies as a matter of policy, even when those enemies -- like the Viet Cong -- lacked any legal claim to the convention's protections. Yes, some U.S. soldiers abused Viet Cong prisoners anyway -- but when they did so, they violated the clear written laws and policies of the United States.

Contrast that with the Bush administration, which refused to recognize any Geneva Convention rights for the "unlawful enemy combatants" captured in the war on terror until finally ordered to do so by the Supreme Court.

Within months of Cheney's "dark side" comments, Guantanamo filled up with hooded, shackled prisoners kept in open-air cages. The Justice Department developed legal defenses of torture, we opened secret prisons in former Soviet bloc countries and the president authorized secret "enhanced" interrogation methods for "high-value" detainees. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-brooks27jul27,1,4695928.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

[bemildred]

1. "You don't know the power of the dark side, Luke."

Personally, I think that circulatory disease has eroded what little real intelligence Cheney had to start with, which is why we get this sort of paranoid and juvenile twaddle from him when he makes the mistake of being candid about his thoughts.