Video: Dick Cheney's Fox News Interview and the Defense of Torture

Related Post: Taking Apart The Bushmen's Defence of Torture

Days after the release of the latest Bush-era torture memos, Fox's Sean Hannity gave former Vice President Dick Cheney a 30-minute platform --- 15 minutes last night, 15 tonight --- to spin the "correct" meaning on US foreign policy and waterboarding.

Most of the interview is Hannity-prompted waffle and invective: thousands were killed on 9-11, Bush and Co. protected national security, Vice President Joe Biden is irrelevant, President Obama is an apologizing weakling shaking hands with international dictators. The half-hour's purpose only comes out 10 minutes into the interview (Part 2 of 2 below), when Cheney claims:

One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos..but they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified.

VIDEO (PART 1 OF 2)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7bkK8y2T44[/youtube]

We've got irony: as Vice President, Cheney claimed unprecedented authority to block the release of Government information. We've got fantasy: emerging testimony and documentation --- see the outstanding piece in the Washington Post last month --- confirms that torture not only did not work but stopped the flow of useful information. And we've got the easy joke:

Dick, I know where the memos are that showed "what we gained as a result" of torture. They got misfiled in that big folder labelled, "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction".

VIDEO (PART 2 OF 2)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HBGa19tQUA[/youtube]

Video: Obama Speech to CIA Employees (20 April)

Days after his Administration released memoranda documenting torture during the Bush Administration, President Obama visited CIA headquarters and addressed employees:

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Winning the Culture Wars (Part 2): Stephen Colbert Parts the Gathering Storm

Related Post: Winning the Culture Wars - How the “Gathering Storm” over Same-Sex Marriage was Defeated

"Did you know that if all 50 states approve same-sex marriage, straight marriage becomes illegal?"

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Winning the Culture Wars: How the "Gathering Storm" over Same-Sex Marriage was Defeated

Related Post: Winning the Culture Wars (Part 2) - Stephen Colbert Parts the Gathering Storm

A couple of weeks ago, British newspapers engaged in some silliness over Obama's America. The Daily Telegraph declared, "America's religious Right has conceded that the election of US President Barack Obama has sealed its defeat in the cultural war with permissiveness and secularism." The Observer announced two days later, "Barack Obama brings truce in culture war".

This false truce was exposed last week during the Tea Parties which, beneath their surface complaints over taxes and Government spending, were founded upon social, cultural, and even racial positions. The coding of "American values" signalled the confrontation of decadent "liberal" enemies.

Yet, even as the demonstrations were taking place, a significant episode was being played out on the Internet. In that battle lay not consensus but a victory for the dangerous "liberals", one that would have been hard to conceive even 20 years ago.

The story begins with this video, "A Gathering Storm", from the National Organization for Marriage:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp76ly2_NoI[/youtube]

The "clouds are dark" warning, with the prospect of gay couples invading the living room, is all too familiar to me from 1980s America and, after I left the US, in the 1990s phony crusade against "political correctness". Even last year, the passage of California's Proposition 8, declaring the only acceptable union was between a man and a woman, indicated that Obama's America would not relinquish long-held prejudices.

This time, however, the unexpected (at least to me) occurred. Within hours, there was a Web-based counter-attack. The "Gathering Storm" video was pilloried in comments (most of them calmly and civilly put) and in a series of YouTube rebuttals and parodies:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJGR8YDd_lU&feature=related[/youtube]

On Twitter, the political columnist Anamarie Cox and other mischievous folk began circulating the message, "Suck it @nomtweets!". The National Organization for Marriage's latest scheme, "2M4M" (Two Million For Marriage) was taken over by the "real" 2M4M (Two Men For Marriage).

By the time Stephen Colbert anointed the satirical dissection of the NOM campaign (see separate blog and video), the political signs had been posted: the doors to same-sex marriage are no longer bolted. Following the lead set by Massachusetts in 2004 and then by Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont had begun the process of legalisation, and in New York, Governor David Paterson announed that he would be introducing the measure. Even in Utah --- Utah, perhaps the most socially-conservative state in the US --- the governor said he would support same-sex unions. Prominent Republicans like John McCain's campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, are publicly asking the GOP to abandon its opposition.

None of this is being written with the complacency that the Storms  are gone forever. Cultural fears and invocations of "tradition" can always be summoned to hold the line against advances in civil rights. But, even at a time of economic crisis, there is cause for celebration of a new American politics --- in tone and technique --- that is bringing not dark clouds but a bit of tolerant sunshine.

The Torture Memos: A Quick Response to George W. Bush's Officials

Related Link: Text of the Torture Memos
Related Post: 4 Torture Memos Released, No Prosecutions of Interrogators

I am still concerned that the Obama Administration's release of four Bush-era memoranda documenting the authorisation of torture (or, as Politico insists, "interrogation techniques") is, in part, a deflection from ongoing issues over Executive power and surveillance/rendition/indefinite detention. And I suspect we'll be pursuing those matters in days to come.

But for today, as former members and acolytes of the Bush Administration absolve themselves in the press:

This was torture sanctioned by President Bush and his chief advisors. This was torture that was illegal, immoral, and ineffective. This was a torture that did not win the "War on Terror" but damaged US foreign policy and American standing with other countries and peoples.

This was a brute exercise of power, sanctioned by (but not actually responding directly to) the brutal attacks upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001.

To Michael Hayden, former Director of the National Security Agency/Central Intelligence Agency, and Michael Mukasey, former Attorney General, who write in the Wall Street Journal that the release of the memoranda "makes the problem [of national security] worse":

Both of you, without question or qualm, carried out the orders that violated the Geneva Conventions, defied agencies such as the Red Cross, suspended any notion of US and international law, and --- in certain cases --- led to injury and death. Both of you strove for years to hide these orders. Both of you put out stories of the effectiveness of "interrogation techniques" which were later discredited.

To William Kristol, who sneers at the statement of current Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair that "[these] methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing":

From your editor's chair at the Weekly Standard and with yo social-political connections in Washington, you pressed for a war --- one that would both demonstrate and assure American superiority --- you had been advocating since 1998. Initially, you declared that war against the "jihadists". But, even as you supported the torture of detainees, your priority was not our safety from Al Qa'eda but the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. And, after that, you wanted the overthrow of the Iranian Government.

Your primary concern was not "terrorists". Yet you were happy, in the name of perpetual war, to promote any method, no matter how effectively it shredded our own laws and standards rather than the threat from our enemies.

To Karl Rove, who Twitters about Kristol's column: "Another Must Read":

Your primary, maybe only, concern about the measures taken by the Bush Administration was the extent to which they supported the election and re-election campaigns of Republican candidates. If we raised our voices against torture, that only bolstered your message that we were soft, unreliable, appeasers of the enemy. And you too were only using Al Qa'eda as a foil to get to your #1 battle, the War against Iraq that would ensure a Republican mandate for years to come.

Forgive me, gentlemen, if you are receiving an undue share of my anger, given that the former President, George W. Bush, and the leaders of the campaign for torture, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, should also be held to account. But as they have not responded to yesterday's news....

Your fatuous, sometimes whining criticism of this current Administration for revealing your illegal, immoral, counter-productive seizure and manipulation of power is no better than the criminal blaming the judge who allowed the evidence into his courtroom.

You are deceivers and liars. In an ideal world, you would be held to criminal account for your actions; in this world (ironically thanks to yesterday's Administration decisions) you will face no formal prosecution. Therefore, we can only hope that your ex post facto excuses and pretenses reinforce a determination to ensure that this shall never happen again.