OLBERMANN: It is true what they say. For some guys, when they retire, they lose their edge and miss a step here and there and just stop caring—which brings us to our fourth story tonight: Old man Cheney.
Do you ever get the feeling some people aren‘t even trying anymore? In fact, when he told FOX News that CIA operatives investigated for possible torture will have to pay for their own lawyers, even Chris Wallace corrected him. Not the first time Cheney said it, mind you, but the second. On everything else, Wallace was silent.
On Obama‘s new interrogation task force, Cheney, quote, “I don‘t even know who‘s running it. This guy, it was in all the papers, John Brennan. He was over at the CIA when you were vice president.
Grandpa Dick also claiming—before the preliminary investigation into CIA torture has even begun—that it‘s all political.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHENEY: They‘re going to go out and investigate the CIA personnel who carried out those investigations. I just—I think it‘s an outrageous political act that will do great damage, long term, to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: An outrageous political act to be carried out by this man prosecutor John Durham, appointed by the Bush Justice Department to investigate CIA destruction of interrogation videos. And outrageous political act first recommended by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the ethics office of the Bush Justice Department.
“The Weekly Standard‘ today reporting that Mr. Bush‘s attorney general, Michael Mukasey, when hay saw an early draft, quote, “questioned why the ethics office recommended that investigation.” That same office, not as the old (INAUDIBLE) claims Mr. Obama, that same office was the one to suggest disbarring Bush lawyers who had green lighted torture.
And, of course, the logical fallacy that torture must have worked because al Qaeda has not attacked again. Vice president‘s dodos, ignorance about terrorism apparently still immune to the fact that the first World Trade Center bombing was followed by more than 8 ½ years without any attack.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHENEY: I guess the other thing that offends the hell out of me, frankly, Chris, is we had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from al Qaeda. The approach of the Obama administration should be, to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, how did you do it?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: With us tonight, Jeremy Scahill, contributor at “The Nation” and author of “Blackwater: The Rise of the World‘s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.”
Good evening.
JEREMY SCAHILL, “THE NATION” MAGAZINE: It‘s sobering to think that man actually had his finger on the trigger.
OLBERMANN: And still thinks he does. That‘s the other part of it.
Mr. Obama said, Mr. Holder said—they both did this—that they will only investigate those who actually went beyond the Bush/Cheney guidelines, which has infuriated many on the left on the pretext that breaking the law is enough to merit investigation, let alone breaking the law that broke the law—but why would Cheney object to Obama enforcing rules that come from Bush and Cheney?
SCAHILL: Right. Well, let‘s remember that Dick Cheney doesn‘t want the American people—not to mention the U.S. Congress to know anything that happened under his administration—that when he took us to the dark side, as he talked about it.
But let‘s remember here that these legal justifications, quote-unquote, “for torture,” that‘s what it was, that Cheney and Bush and their lawyers developed, they were incredible stretches of the law to begin with. They violate the basic principles of multiple conventions, including the Convention Against Torture, which was, of course, ratified under that militant leftist Ronald Reagan, that violates the Geneva Convention as that draft-dodging man who had never know torture if he endured it for years, John McCain condemned on the Sunday talk shows this weekend.
So, the fact is, I think, that Dick Cheney wants to cover up all the criminality, all of the wrongdoing from the American people.
OLBERMANN: There remains no proof, no evidence in the last batch of documents revealed that torture saved anyone—even people on the right-wing have said it‘s not there. The Bush liaison to homeland security said you might be able to infer it from what is written there but it‘s not in the report. Chris Wallace failed to ask about evidence that torture hurt us and not just in terms of reputation but in terms of our safety. You never brought that—never brought the negatives up in this interview.
SCAHILL: Right. Well, I mean, watching Chris Wallace, quote-unquote, “interview” Dick Cheney, and in the words of Andrew Sullivan, it was like watching a teenage journalist interviewing the Jonas Brothers. I mean, the only way it could have been lower is if Sarah Palin interviewed Dick Cheney herself.
So, if you just looked at the so-called questions that Chris Wallace asked Dick Cheney, there was not a single hard question there, except when he corrected him—as you pointed out—on the issue of the CIA paying for the defense of these individuals.
We don‘t have real journalism, for the most part, in this society when we talk about the question of torture. The fact is, that if the American people were aware in detail, drumbeat coverage of what was being done in their name—power drills, squeezing of testicles, slamming people‘s heads against walls—all of the things that went on, it would stop. That‘s the role of journalists, and yet we see this infotainment with Dick Cheney, a war criminal.
OLBERMANN: Let me reverse-engineer this as I suggested. Has it occurred to Cheney or anybody who defends him what he is ultimately suggesting for the future, that if any administration can‘t look—this one—can‘t look back at what crimes or wrongdoing may have been committed by the previous one, that that‘s basically a signal to anybody in the Obama administration, “Hey, go ahead, do whatever you want because nobody in the future can come back and investigate you” is essentially a divine right of precedence then, isn‘t it?
SCAHILL: Right. I think there are two things here. One, Dick Cheney is fighting to have these policies continue. That‘s really the point here. He is not thinking about what Obama—what the Obama people are going to do. He‘s thinking about what he wants to continue to happen in the dark corners of the Earth of secret prisons at Guantanamo and Bagram.
But that raises a more important point. The Obama administration needs to hold these individuals accountable from top to bottom so that we send a message, going forward, that torture is going to be unacceptable in this country. The media set the tone and they get an “F” for their coverage on this issue.
OLBERMANN: Last point briefly. Cheney wanted to attack Iran. He mentioned this. But nobody in his own administration agreed with him. What does that tell us?
SCAHILL: Well, I mean, I think—given the amount of power Cheney had, it shows us how close to nuclear midnight we actually were.
OLBERMANN: Yes.
SCAHILL: . when it came to a war in Iran. It also is a vindication of all the reporting that Seymour Hirsch did about Cheney‘s role.
OLBERMANN: Exactly.
SCAHILL: . in the threats against Iran.
OLBERMANN: And it also says that there are—were, in fact, ideas that were too crazy even for George Bush.
SCAHILL: And that‘s also true.
OLBERMANN: Jeremy Scahill of “The Nation”—great thanks for coming in.
SCAHILL: Thank you.
OLBERMANN: I don‘t want to complain but the poll dancers in this place leave a lot to be desired.
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