25.12.08
On December 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee (chaired by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain) issued a compelling report into the torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody (PDF), based on a detailed analysis of how Chinese torture techniques, which are used in US military schools to train personnel to resist interrogation if captured, were reverse engineered and applied to prisoners captured in the “War on Terror.”
The techniques, taught as part of the SERE programs (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) include sleep deprivation, the prolonged use of stress positions, forced nudity, hooding, exposure to extreme temperatures, subjecting prisoners to loud music and flashing lights, “treating them like animals,” and, in some cases, the ancient torture technique known as waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning that the torturers of the Spanish Inquisition called “tortura del agua.”
The report rejected the conclusions of over a dozen investigations, conducted since the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004, which identified problems concerning the treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo, but which were not authorized to gaze up the chain of command to blame senior officials for approving the use of torture by US forces, and for instigating abusive policies.
This enabled the administration to maintain, as it did with Abu Ghraib, that any abuse was the result of the rogue activities of “a few bad apples,” but the Senate Committee report comprehensively demolished this defense. The authors wrote:
The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.
Those singled out for blame include President George W. Bush (for stripping prisoners of the protections of the Geneva Conventions in February 2002, which paved the way for all the abuse that followed), former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former legal counsel (and now chief of staff) David Addington, former Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes II, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, former White House general counsel (and later US Attorney General) Alberto Gonzales, former White House deputy counsel Timothy Flanigan, former Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, former Justice Department legal adviser John Yoo, former Guantánamo commanders Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of coalition forces in Iraq.
The one senior official who was not mentioned — presumably because of the talent for remaining behind the scenes that once earned him the secret service nickname “Backseat” — was Dick Cheney. However, just four days later, as if to make up for his omission from the report, Cheney was interviewed by ABC News, and took the opportunity to present a detailed defense of the administration’s national security policies, throwing down a very public gauntlet to critics of torture, Guantánamo, illegal wiretapping and the invasion of Iraq, and raising fears that he was only doing so because a Presidential pardon is just around the corner.
Cheney’s most significant remark was his first admission in public that he was involved in approving the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks (who, it should be noted, claimed responsibility for the attacks before he was captured by US forces). However, the entire interview is worth looking at, as Cheney’s version of the truth does not stand up to scrutiny, and features ten lies that should not be allowed to pass without further comment and analysis.
1. On the supposed legality of unauthorized wiretapping
Asked what he thought about suggestions from Barack Obama’s transition team that the Bush administration’s homeland security policy “has basically been torture and illegal wiretapping, and that they want to undo the central tenets of your anti-terrorist policy,” Cheney replied, “They’re wrong. On the question of terrorist surveillance, this was always a policy to intercept communications between terrorists, or known terrorists, or so-called ‘dirty numbers,’ and folks inside the United States, to capture those international communications. It’s worked. It’s been successful. It’s now embodied in the FISA statute that we passed last year, and that Barack Obama voted for, which I think was a good decision on his part. It’s a very, very important capability. It is legal. It was legal from the very beginning. It is constitutional, and to claim that it isn’t I think is just wrong.”
THE LIE: Although the Bush administration secured Congressional approval for the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) in the week after the 9/11 attacks (the founding document of the “War on Terror,” which granted the President seemingly open-ended powers “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001”), the approval for the warrantless surveillance of communications to and from the United States that followed on September 25 was neither “legal” nor “constitutional.”
In a series on Dick Cheney in the Washington Post last summer, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker explained how, on the day of the 9/11 attacks, Cheney and David Addington swiftly assembled a team that included Timothy Flanigan and John Yoo to begin “contemplating the founding question of the legal revolution to come: What extraordinary powers will the President need for his response?” Gellman and Becker described how Flanigan, with advice from Yoo, drafted the AUMF, and Yoo explained that “they used the broadest possible language because ‘this war was so different, you can’t predict what might come up’.”
In fact, as the authors point out, they “knew very well what would come next: the interception — without a warrant — of communications to and from the United States.” Although warrantless communications intercepts had been forbidden by federal law since 1978, the administration claimed that they were “justified, in secret, as ‘incident to’ the authority Congress had just granted” the President, in a memorandum that Yoo finalized on 25 September. Far from being “legal” and “constitutional,” therefore, the secret memorandum was the first brazen attempt by the key policy-makers (in the Office of the Vice President and the Pentagon) to use the AUMF as cover for an unprecedented expansion of presidential power that was intended to cut Congress, the judiciary, and all other government departments out of the loop.
2. On the definition of torture
Moving on to the allegations of torture, Cheney said, “On the question of so-called ‘torture,’ we don’t do torture, we never have. It’s not something that this administration subscribes to. Again, we proceeded very cautiously; we checked, we had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross. The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful, wouldn’t do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal. And any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong.”
THE LIE: The claim, “we don’t do torture,” which President Bush has also peddled on numerous occasions, is an outright lie. The definition of torture, as laid down in the UN Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, is “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person.” However, in the summer of 2002 (obviously with Cheney’s knowledge), John Yoo, with input from Addington, Gonzales and Flanigan, drafted another secret memorandum, issued on August 1 (PDF), which has become known as the “Torture Memo.” This extraordinary document — one of the most legally manipulative in the whole of the “War on Terror” — drew creatively on historical rulings about torture in countries including Northern Ireland and Bosnia, and attempted to claim that, for the pain inflicted to count as torture, it “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.”
Last summer, Yoo confirmed that Addington (left) was responsible for another of the memo’s radical claims — that, as Commander in Chief, the President could authorize torture if he felt that it was necessary — and also confirmed that a second opinion was signed off on August 1, 2002, which, unlike the first (leaked after the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004) has never been made public. An unnamed source cited by Gellman and Becker explained that this second memo contained a long list of techniques approved for use by the CIA, which included waterboarding, but apparently drew the line at threatening to bury a prisoner alive.
As a result, all Cheney’s talk of “careful” and “cautious” legal advice is nothing more than a failed attempt to justify redefining torture. Outside of the White House and the Pentagon, it has always been abundantly clear that the SERE techniques (let alone the more extreme methods approved for use by the CIA) are torture, pure and simple, and the Senate Committee’s recent report quotes extensively from a number of bodies — the Air Force, the Defense Department’s Criminal Investigative Task Force, the Army’s International and Operational Law Division, the Navy and the Marine Corps — who were opposed to their implementation for this very reason. Others, who took their complaints to the highest levels, were Alberto J. Mora, the head of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and the FBI.
3. On intelligence obtained through torture
Following his defense of the interrogation techniques authorized by the administration, Cheney continued: “Did it produce the desired results? I think it did. I think, for example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was the number three man in al-Qaeda, the man who planned the attacks of 9/11, provided us with a wealth of information. There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything we knew about al-Qaeda came from that one source.”
THE LIE: With exquisite timing, Cheney’s bombastic pronouncements about the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and its supposed value coincided with the publication, in Vanity Fair, of an article by David Rose, in which a number of senior officials from both the FBI and the CIA directly refuted Cheney’s claims. The article, which is worth reading in its entirety, focused primarily on the torture of Abu Zubaydah, Binyam Mohamed and Jose Padilla (which I have discussed at length before), but there were also key insights into the torture of KSM. Although President Bush claimed that KSM had provided “many details of other plots to kill innocent Americans,” a former senior CIA official, who read all the interrogation reports from KSM’s torture in secret CIA custody, explained that “90 percent of it was total fucking bullshit,” and a former Pentagon analyst added, “KSM produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were.”
In addition, Cheney’s claims about KSM were directly contradicted by Jack Cloonan, a senior FBI operative whose torture-free interrogation of al-Qaeda operatives in the years before 9/11 provides an object lesson in how the administration should have operated afterwards. Disputing the unspecified claims that, as Cheney put it, the interrogation of KSM had produced “a wealth of information,” Cloonan said, “The proponents of torture say, ‘Look at the body of information that has been obtained by these methods.’ But if KSM and Abu Zubaydah did give up stuff, we would have heard the details.” Rose added that a former CIA officer asked, “Why can’t they say what the good stuff from Abu Zubaydah or KSM is? It’s not as if this is sensitive material from a secret, vulnerable source. You’re not blowing your source but validating your program. They say they can’t do this, even though five or six years have passed, because it’s a ‘continuing operation.’ But has it really taken so long to check it all out?”
However, what was probably the most damning opinion was offered by FBI director Robert Mueller:
I ask Mueller: So far as he is aware, have any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through what the administration still calls “enhanced techniques”?
“I’m really reluctant to answer that,” Mueller says. He pauses, looks at an aide, and then says quietly, declining to elaborate: “I don’t believe that has been the case.”
4. On approval for the use of torture on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
The key elements of Cheney’s admission that waterboarding was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and that Cheney believed that this was “appropriate,” are as follows:
Jonathan Karl: Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
Dick Cheney: I was aware of the program certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do, and I supported it.
Jonathan Karl: In hindsight, do you think any of those tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others went too far?
Dick Cheney: I don’t.
Jonathan Karl: And on KSM, one of those tactics, of course, widely reported was waterboarding, and that seems to be a tactic we no longer use. Even that you think was appropriate?
Dick Cheney: I do.
THE LIE: Cheney’s explanation of how he came to “support” the CIA program that was responsible for the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (and numerous other “high-value detainees”) suggests that he was little more than an adviser for a preconceived project. Yet again, nothing could be further from the truth.
To understand why, it is necessary to examine how the “Torture Memos” of August 2002 came about, by looking at the events of November 13, 2001, when, under the cover of his regular weekly meeting with the President, Cheney played the leading role in circulating and gaining approval for a presidential order that authorized the President to seize “terror suspects” anywhere in the world and imprison them as “enemy combatants” without charge or trial, (or, if required, to try them in Military Commissions, which were empowered to accept secret evidence and evidence obtained through torture).
Approved within an hour by only two other figures in the White House — associate counsel Bradford Berenson, and deputy staff secretary Stuart Bowen, whose objections that it had to be seen by other presidential advisors were only dropped after “rapid, urgent persuasion” that the President “was standing by to sign and that the order was too sensitive to delay” — the order was the first move in a deliberate ploy to strip prisoners of rights, so that they could be interrogated as the administration saw fit.
This was confirmed the following day, when Cheney told the US Chamber of Commerce that terrorists do not “deserve to be treated as prisoners of war.” It took him another ten weeks to persuade the President to agree with him, but in the meantime the pressure to approve the use of torture increased when, shortly after Guantánamo opened, a CIA delegation came to the White House to explain, as John Yoo described it, that they were “going to have some real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees,” if interrogators were obliged to confine themselves to treatment permitted by the Geneva Conventions.
While this timeline confirms that CIA representatives pressed for removing the protections of the Geneva Conventions in mid-January 2002, it’s also clear that Cheney had a similar plan in mind at least two months earlier. After the CIA visit, Addington wrote another notorious memorandum — to which the rather less articulate Alberto Gonzales put his name — in which the Conventions’ “strict limits on questioning of enemy prisoners” were seen as hindering attempts “to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists.”
This was issued on January 25, and on February 6 Addington provided the President with the words for his next presidential order, which, as Cheney had signaled on November 14, stated that the protections of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners seized in the “War on Terror.” The final development came after the capture of Abu Zubaydah on March 28, 2002, when, as John Yoo explained, CIA officials returned to the White House to ask “what the legal limits on interrogation are.” As described above, this led to the “Torture Memos” of August 2002, even though the torture of Zubaydah began four months before the memos were issued.
In conclusion, then, although the CIA had some input, the development of the entire program, from November 13, 2001 to August 1, 2002, in which prisoners were defined as “enemy combatants,” stripped of all rights so that they could be interrogated, and then set up for torture, was driven not by the CIA but by Cheney and his close advisers.
In Part Two, Andy examines Cheney’s lies about Guantánamo and the invasion of Iraq.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.
As published on the Huffington Post, and as a single article on Antiwar.com; also cross-posted on Common Dreams.
For a sequence of articles dealing with the use of torture by the CIA, on “high-value detainees,” and in the secret prisons, see: Guantánamo’s tangled web: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Majid Khan, dubious US convictions, and a dying man (July 2007), Jane Mayer on the CIA’s “black sites,” condemnation by the Red Cross, and Guantánamo’s “high-value” detainees (including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) (August 2007), Waterboarding: two questions for Michael Hayden about three “high-value” detainees now in Guantánamo (February 2008), Six in Guantánamo Charged with 9/11 Murders: Why Now? And What About the Torture? (February 2008), The Insignificance and Insanity of Abu Zubaydah: Ex-Guantánamo Prisoner Confirms FBI’s Doubts (April 2008), Guantánamo Trials: Another Torture Victim Charged (Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, July 2008), Secret Prison on Diego Garcia Confirmed: Six “High-Value” Guantánamo Prisoners Held, Plus “Ghost Prisoner” Mustafa Setmariam Nasar (August 2008), Will the Bush administration be held accountable for war crimes? (December 2008), The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney (Part Two) (December 2008), Prosecuting the Bush Administration’s Torturers (March 2009), Abu Zubaydah: The Futility Of Torture and A Trail of Broken Lives (March 2009), Ten Terrible Truths About The CIA Torture Memos (Part One), Ten Terrible Truths About The CIA Torture Memos (Part Two), 9/11 Commission Director Philip Zelikow Condemns Bush Torture Program, Who Authorized The Torture of Abu Zubaydah?, CIA Torture Began In Afghanistan 8 Months before DoJ Approval, Even In Cheney’s Bleak World, The Al-Qaeda-Iraq Torture Story Is A New Low (all April 2009), Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi Has Died In A Libyan Prison, Dick Cheney And The Death Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, The “Suicide” Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi: Why The Media Silence?, Two Experts Cast Doubt On Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi’s “Suicide”, Lawrence Wilkerson Nails Cheney On Use Of Torture To Invade Iraq, In the Guardian: Death in Libya, betrayal by the West (in the Guardian here) (all May 2009), Lawrence Wilkerson Nails Cheney’s Iraq Lies Again (And Rumsfeld And The CIA), and WORLD EXCLUSIVE: New Revelations About The Torture Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (June 2009). Also see the extensive archive of articles about the Military Commissions.
For other stories discussing the use of torture in secret prisons, see: An unreported story from Guantánamo: the tale of Sanad al-Kazimi (August 2007), Rendered to Egypt for torture, Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni is released from Guantánamo (September 2008), A History of Music Torture in the “War on Terror” (December 2008), Seven Years of Torture: Binyam Mohamed Tells His Story (March 2009), and also see the extensive Binyam Mohamed archive. And for other stories discussing torture at Guantánamo and/or in “conventional” US prisons in Afghanistan, see: The testimony of Guantánamo detainee Omar Deghayes: includes allegations of previously unreported murders in the US prison at Bagram airbase (August 2007), Guantánamo Transcripts: “Ghost” Prisoners Speak After Five And A Half Years, And “9/11 hijacker” Recants His Tortured Confession (September 2007), The Trials of Omar Khadr, Guantánamo’s “child soldier” (November 2007), Former US interrogator Damien Corsetti recalls the torture of prisoners in Bagram and Abu Ghraib (December 2007), Guantánamo’s shambolic trials (February 2008), Torture allegations dog Guantánamo trials (March 2008), Sami al-Haj: the banned torture pictures of a journalist in Guantánamo (April 2008), Former Guantánamo Prosecutor Condemns “Chaotic” Trials in Case of Teenage Torture Victim (Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld on Mohamed Jawad, January 2009), Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo’s Forgotten Child (Mohammed El-Gharani, January 2009), Bush Era Ends With Guantánamo Trial Chief’s Torture Confession (Susan Crawford on Mohammed al-Qahtani, January 2009), Forgotten in Guantánamo: British Resident Shaker Aamer (March 2009), and the extensive archive of articles about the Military Commissions.
Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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39 Responses
Mark A. Goldman says...
You need to understand that under the Constitution, Cheney had and has no authority to make any decision or in any way act on any of these matters except to the extent that he is acting as an agent, on behalf of, and with the approval of the President.
...on December 28th, 2008 at 3:18 am
Frances Madeson says...
I would like to reinforce Mr. Goldman’s comment. The question of agency is key. It has admittedly been a confusing mess to untangle, but the blame belongs, it must belong, to the President, first, foremost and forever.
...on December 28th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Seven Years Of Guantánamo, And A Call For Justice At Bagram | Dr Aafia Siddiqui - The Prisoner 650 says...
[…] (both in Guantánamo and in secret prisons established by the CIA), lawyers close to Vice President Dick Cheney — led by David Addington, Cheney’s former legal counsel, and now his chief of staff — […]
...on January 13th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Prosecuting the Bush Administration’s Torturers by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] I explained in an article at the time, Cheney’s claim that he was merely responding to pressure from the CIA was patently untrue, as it […]
...on March 24th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Abu Zubaydah: The Futility Of Torture and A Trail of Broken Lives by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] a key element in demolishing the myths that former Bush administration officials — and especially Dick Cheney — are still using in an effort to shield themselves from prosecution, but because these three men […]
...on March 31st, 2009 at 2:37 am
Farce at Guantánamo, as cleared prisoner’s habeas petition is denied by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] jury last summer, after a trial at Guantánamo in the Military Commission system invented by Dick Cheney and his close advisers. Hamdan had actually been one of several drivers for Osama bin Laden, but […]
...on April 7th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Justice extends to Bagram, Guantánamo’s Dark Mirror by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] it had crushed his nascent dissent, when it declared, with an imperiousness that was reminiscent of Dick Cheney and David Addington, that the reach of the law did not extend to […]
...on April 7th, 2009 at 6:42 am
Justice Extends to Bagram, Guantánamo’s Dark Mirror « From The Wilderness says...
[…] it had crushed his nascent dissent, when it declared, with an imperiousness that was reminiscent of Dick Cheney and David Addington, that the reach of the law did not extend to […]
...on April 7th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Ten Terrible Truths About The CIA Torture Memos (Part Two) « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] unlawful, and an equally desperate desire to shield Yoo, Gonzales, Addington — and, by extension, Dick Cheney — from the grave implications of his […]
...on April 24th, 2009 at 12:49 am
Ten Terrible Truths About The CIA Torture Memos (Part Two) « US and Their Allys War against muslims in the world, indicate of falling US and Zionist Empire,(Inshallah)!!! says...
[…] unlawful, and an equally desperate desire to shield Yoo, Gonzales, Addington — and, by extension, Dick Cheney — from the grave implications of his […]
...on April 24th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
CIA Torture Began In Afghanistan Eight Months before Justice Department Approval by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] bullish defense of the Bush administration’s conduct in the “war on terror,” Vice President Dick Cheney stated, On the question of so-called “torture,” we don’t do torture, we never have. It’s not […]
...on April 28th, 2009 at 5:02 am
CIA Torture Began In Afghanistan 8 Months Before DOJ Approval « Muslim in Suffer says...
[…] of the Bush administration’s conduct in the “War on Terror,” Vice President Dick Cheney stated, “On the question of so-called ‘torture,’ we don’t do torture, we never have. […]
...on April 29th, 2009 at 6:08 am
CIA Torture Began In Afghanistan 8 Months Before DOJ Approval « US and Their Allys War against muslims in the world, indicate of falling US and Zionist Empire,(Inshallah)!!! says...
[…] of the Bush administration’s conduct in the “War on Terror,” Vice President Dick Cheney stated, “On the question of so-called ‘torture,’ we don’t do torture, we never have. […]
...on April 30th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Obama’s First 100 Days: Mixed Messages On Torture by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] uneasily in an attempt to avoid confronting the compelling truth that senior Bush officials had admitted that they had been involved in torture, including waterboarding, that both Obama and Holder had stated publicly that waterboarding was […]
...on May 8th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Dick Cheney And The Death Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] remains to be seen, but it is doubtful. In December, while he was defending his involvement in the approval for the use of waterboarding (a form of controlled drowning) on three “high-value detainees” — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu […]
...on May 13th, 2009 at 4:22 am
Lawrence Wilkerson Nails Cheney On Use Of Torture To Invade Iraq by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] Note, Wilkerson explained that he had been so appalled by recent tapes of former Vice President Dick Cheney “extolling the virtues of harsh interrogation, torture, and his leadership,” which had been […]
...on May 15th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Why Did It Take So Long To Order The Release From Guantánamo Of An Al-Qaeda Torture Victim? by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] to one reading of history — the one favored by Vice President Dick Cheney, the prime architect of America’s post-9/11 flight from the law, which has been embraced by […]
...on June 24th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Guantánamo And The Courts Part One: Exposing The Bush Administration’s Lies by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] al-Qaeda or any other terrorist group, and shows up the prison’s defenders (former Vice President Dick Cheney and the politicians mentioned above) as, at best, deluded, and, at worst, outright […]
...on July 15th, 2009 at 10:16 am
A Child At Guantánamo: The Unending Torment of Mohamed Jawad by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] listen to Dick Cheney, or to some serving politicians who are prone to similar hyperbole, you would think that every one […]
...on August 1st, 2009 at 4:08 am
As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] These may seem like harsh words, but they are nothing compared to the sustained scorn that Judge Huvelle poured on the government’s case in a hearing two weeks ago, and for those who have studied Jawad’s case in any detail, they are entirely appropriate, as the case against Jawad first collapsed nine months ago. It would not be an exaggeration to state that, if the Justice Department and the Defense Department decide to proceed with a criminal prosecution, it will demonstrate not only that they have, collectively, taken leave of their senses, but also that no one in a position of responsibility — President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder or defense secretary Robert Gates — has either the courage or the awareness to step in to prevent a clear message being sent out to the world that, far from addressing the excesses of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” the Obama administration is, instead, pursuing exactly the kind of cruel, unjust and incompetent policies that would bring a smile to the lips of former Vice President Dick Cheney. […]
...on August 1st, 2009 at 4:17 am
No Escape From Guantánamo: The Latest Habeas Rulings by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] obstruction from the Justice Department, where Bush-era officials have been behaving as though Dick Cheney is still breathing down their necks, judges had, by the end of July, reviewed 33 cases, and in 28 […]
...on September 11th, 2009 at 3:27 am
On Guantánamo, Lawmakers Reveal They Are Still Dick Cheney’s Pawns by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] is to step back into those dark months after the 9/11 attacks, when former Vice President Dick Cheney and his closest advisors were hatching their plans to hold anyone who ended up in US custody as an […]
...on October 7th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Finding New Homes For 44 Cleared Guantánamo Prisoners by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] Robert Gates to regroup and to accept that confusion plays only into the hands of those haunted by the ghost of Dick Cheney, and that clarity is required. Moreover, despite lawyers’ fears of new waves of litigation, this […]
...on October 14th, 2009 at 1:30 am
Musicians (Finally) Say No To Music Torture by Andy Worthington + The Divine Comedy: Guantanamo « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] interrogation technique,” — which, in any world other than the reality-defying one inhabited by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, would have been defined as torture — several noted musicians have spoken out […]
...on October 23rd, 2009 at 3:27 am
Musicians (Finally) Say No To Music Torture « freedetainees.org says...
[…] interrogation technique,” — which, in any world other than the reality-defying one inhabited by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, would have been defined as torture — several noted musicians have spoken out […]
...on October 26th, 2009 at 12:43 am
The Logic of the 9/11 Trials, The Madness of the Military Commissions « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] intelligence.” Instead of achieving its desired result, this vile program appears to have prevented no actual planned terrorist attack, and led only to the generation of countless false leads, which wasted the resources of the […]
...on November 18th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Torture Whitewash: How “Professional Misconduct” Became “Poor Judgment” in the OPR Report « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] to “the client.” Although George W. Bush evades scrutiny in the report, former Vice President Dick Cheney is mentioned as putting “great pressure” on the OLC regarding revised memos issued in May 2005, […]
...on February 24th, 2010 at 1:08 am
Torture Whitewash: How “Professional Misconduct” Became “Poor Judgment” in the OPR Report « freedetainees.org says...
[…] to “the client.” Although George W. Bush evades scrutiny in the report, former Vice President Dick Cheney is mentioned as putting “great pressure” on the OLC regarding revised memos issued in May 2005, […]
...on February 24th, 2010 at 1:52 am
Abu Zubaydah’s Torture Diary « freedetainees.org says...
[…] (August 2008), Will the Bush administration be held accountable for war crimes? (December 2008), The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney (Part One) and The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney (Part Two) (December 2008), Prosecuting the Bush Administration’s […]
...on March 15th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Abur rahman Rahman says...
You are the best ….
for bringing murders and Fascists and the BORN AGAIN
god talk to me- hell denizen baptist to the world attention…
GOD bless you and your Family..!!!
...on May 14th, 2010 at 4:07 am
Algerian in Guantánamo Loses Habeas Petition for Being in a Guest House with Abu Zubaydah « Eurasia Review says...
[…] them was Abu Zubaydah, as the extent of his torture and the false confessions it yielded has been thoroughly established over the years, but there are also reasons to suspect that any of the four men put forward for trials by Military […]
...on January 20th, 2011 at 2:19 pm
All Guantánamo Prisoners Were Subjected to “Pharmacological Waterboarding” by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] last May, he died, allegedly by committing suicide in prison — but this was of no concern to Dick Cheney, who used his tortured lies to justify the invasion of Iraq in March […]
...on April 16th, 2011 at 6:19 am
Ten Years After 9/11 America Deserves Better Than Dick Cheney’s Self-Serving Autobiography - OpEd says...
[…] while Cheney has been largely successful in claiming that the use of torture was helpful, despite a lack of evidence that this was the case, what strikes me as even more alarming is that many Americans are still […]
...on September 10th, 2011 at 11:59 pm
Refuting Cheney’s Lies | Lew Rockwell says...
[…] always pronounced, and never more so than when Vice President Dick Cheney spoke out. Cheney’s lies and distortions were on open display in the last month before his departure from the White House, as he sought to […]
...on December 9th, 2011 at 2:52 am
Guantánamo And The Many Failures Of US Politicians by Andy Worthington | Dandelion Salad says...
[…] no doubt, by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who appears to be on an endless “Torture Tour,” touting lies about the efficacy of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in keeping the nation safe, and […]
...on November 16th, 2013 at 9:17 am
My Message To Obama: Great Speech, But No Military Commissions and No “Preventive Detention” by Andy Worthington | Dandelion Salad says...
[…] was either necessary or useful (a familiar refrain, but one particularly focused just now on Dick Cheney, who appears to be on an endless Torture Tour). “I know some have argued that brutal methods like […]
...on November 16th, 2013 at 9:19 am
Losing Our Humor Over Guantanamo | The Rag Blog says...
[…] is to step back into those dark months after the 9/11 attacks, when former Vice President Dick Cheney and his closest advisors were hatching their plans to hold anyone who ended up in US custody as an […]
...on August 8th, 2014 at 5:28 pm
Tortured Logic: ACLU launches campaign to ask Eric Holder to investigate Bush and Cheney’s war crimes by Andy Worthington | Dandelion Salad says...
[…] memos themselves and even the boastful admissions of officials including former vice president Dick Cheney, who has been aggressively forthright in his defense of waterboarding. But notwithstanding all this […]
...on October 3rd, 2014 at 7:24 am
Tortured Logic: ACLU launches campaign to ask Eric Holder to investigate Bush and Cheney’s war crimes by Andy Worthington – Dandelion Salad says...
[…] memos themselves and even the boastful admissions of officials including former vice president Dick Cheney, who has been aggressively forthright in his defense of waterboarding. But notwithstanding all this […]
...on June 11th, 2023 at 6:40 pm