Jeremy Scahill: Rebuking Cheney's Torture Propaganda in 7 Easy Steps

[laststeamtrain]

Rebuking Cheney's Torture Propaganda in 7 Easy Steps
By Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports
Posted on September 1, 2009, Printed on September 1, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142336/

First of all, Dick Cheney has all sorts of nerve purporting to speak in defense of the CIA. His administration outed a senior CIA operative, Valerie Plame, in retaliation for her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, exercising his freedom of speech (because he exercised it to criticize the Bush administration’s lie-filled, one-way propaganda train to the Iraq war).

Second, CIA interrogators themselves have said that they believed that Cheney’s torture policy put individual CIA personnel in legal jeopardy. As Greg Sargent has pointed out, on page 94 of the recently released Inspector General’s report, we learn the following:

“During the course of this Review, a number of Agency officers expressed unsolicited concern about the possibility of recrimination or legal action resulting from their participation in the CTC program….One officer expressed concern that one day, Agency officers will wind up on some “wanted list” to appear before the World Court for war crimes…”

This is not even to mention, in a broader sense, the risk to any US personnel that possibly ended up in “enemy” hands where captors of US prisoners could justify their own acts of torture by pointing to US tactics.

Third, Dick Cheney showed utter contempt for the CIA when he went not once, not twice, but more than a dozen times to Langley to pressure analysts to fit intelligence to his political agenda. He and his top aide Scooter Libby were “attempting to pressure analysts on the subject of weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, according to Vincent Cannistraro, a former counterterrorism chief at the CIA. So when Cheney talks about being “offended as hell,” let’s remember how much faith Cheney had in the CIA in the lead up to the Iraq invasion. I’m sure the CIA analysts who he tried to manipulate were “offended as hell” by Cheney’s actions. “The visits were, in fact, unprecedented,” wrote Ray McGovern, who was vice president George HW Bush’s national security briefer. “During my 27-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, no vice president ever came to us for a working visit.” Those personal visits were in addition to the ones Cheney received at home. “I enjoyed having the CIA show up on my doorstep every morning, six days a week, with the latest intelligence,” Cheney said on Fox News Sunday.

<snip>

Seventh, one last point about Dick Cheney and his little toadie Chris Wallace when they talk about how there hasn’t been another attack since 9-11. Remember toadie’s sarcastic words: “I just want to point out to the audience that it is purely coincidental that this country has not been attacked since 9/11.” How about the more than 4,300 US troops that have been killed in Iraq as a result of the Bush-Cheney lie factory? That is more American dead than perished on 9/11. Those young men and women would not have died in Iraq had it not been for the policies of Bush and Cheney.

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http://www.alternet.org/rights/142336/rebuking_cheney%27s_torture_propaganda_in_7_easy_steps/

[fasttense]

1. Yet, the dick couldn't stop 9/11. He was hiding in a undisclosed location while

We the people were dying. He is a coward by anyone's definition.

We had no further attacks on American soil because the terrorists had so many targets in Iraq and Afghanistan to chose form - much easier, closer to home.

[DCKit]

2. Don't forget the anthrax attacks... about a month after 9/11

If they were truly interested in keeping U.S. all safe, there would have been Cipro to go around, too, not just enough for the BushCo* cabinet members and their co-conspirators.

Come to think of it, didn't they all start taking Cipro BEFORE anyone knew there was anthrax in the mail?

[Senator]

3. There hasn't been an asteroid strike either.

Heckuva job dickie?

--