Gord's Notebook : More Proof That The CIA Used Torture While Dick Cheney Defends Its Use & Claims Obama Has Made America Less Safe & Is Reponsible For Economic Crisis

UPDATE: 12:46 PM & 1:13 & 1:57 PM March 17, 2009

More evidence of CIA use of Torture during Bush /Cheney Regime
Cheney still Fear Mongering
Cheney defends the use of torture
Cheney Loves Rush Limbaugh and other homophobic,sexist and racist hate mongers
Cheney claims Mission Accomplished in Iraq after six years
Cheney claims Obama has made America less safe
Cheney blames the Democrats and Obama for the Economic Crisis
( but wasn't Cheney and Bush in charge over the last eight years)
Washington Post and others in Mainstream Media once again defend Bush/ Cheney Regime

Anyway one needs to remember Dick Cheney's attitude towards the majority of average Americans.

DICK Cheney "SO" March 20, 2008

Once again Dick Cheney claims that the use of torture made America safer. But some in the US media are still arguing over what is and what is not torture. According to Cheney torture is defined by techniques which may cause organ failure or death . So waterboarding and other techniques no matter how abusive are not torture. Even Buchanan in this clip is unsure about what is and is not torture. Further Buchanan takes Cheney at his word that he and Bush stopped a number of attacks on the US by Terrorists.

also note Buchanan defends Dick Cheney claiming that the Obama spokesperson should treat Cheney with respect. Buchanan does not accept the widely held belief that Cheney was and is a heartless thug and ideologue who lied to the American people and contravened American laws , the US constitution and the Bill of Rights and International Laws.

Dick Cheney offers no apology for the mess in Iraq. He and others said the Iraq invasion would be a cake-walk and the US would be greeted as liberators. If they were liberators why did they disband the army & police forces and fire thousands of bureaucrats leaving the country ungovernable. By the Bush administration's own claims before and during the initial stages of the war it was in the end a disaster. The country is still in need of a massive rebuilding project just to get the country back to where it was before the US invasion.So what should have taken a few months has taken over six years and still Cheney and the Neocons claim it as a success.

Dick Cheney gives endorsement to Rush Limbaugh and the anti-Obama Extremist Rhetoric. So to Cheney stirring up racism and extreme hatred for Obama and the Democrats is the way the Republican Party should go.

Cheney Loves Rush Limbaugh March 16

PAT BUCHANAN RIPS DICK CHENEY ON HARDBALL WITH CHRIS MATTHEWS MARCH 16 2009

Rep Joe Sestak Counters Cheney-babble

After John King interviewed Dick Cheney, he talked with former three-star Admiral and now Rep. Joe Sestak about the interview, Afghanistan, and the economy.

Note John King is surprised that Joe Sestak criticizes Dick Cheney , Then King goes on to use the The Republican Talking Points about Obama's Stimulus Bill - Big Government and over spending. King like other right wingers or Neocons and Neoliberals claims to be against Big Government but did not see anything wrong with the Bush administrations abuses while in power. Nor did King bother to bring up the issues of the Billions lost in Iraq through mismanagement and corruption ie Cheney's corporation Haliburton and KBR and other war profiteers. The point is that according to Republicans when one of their friends is able to make outrageous profits off of a war that's just American entrepreneurship at its best but to help out average Americans during an economic crisis is wrong and pernicious .

And here's a bit of commentary by Keith Olbermann on Cheney's Interview at the Bush Loving Network CNN.
Countdown With Keith Olbermann # 5 Story, The G.O.P. Turns To Cheney, 3-16-09 Part 1

Cheney is delusional & his judgement is unsound- Cheney has been proven wrong about his forecasts again and again. Olbermann asks why were there no hard hitting follow up questions in the CNN King interview.

Countdown With Keith Olbermann # 5 Story, The G.O.P. Turns To Cheney, 3-16-09 Part 2

And another report on the use of torture by US personnel has been leaked ; in this case from the Red Cross:

" Red Cross Described 'Torture' at CIA Jails
Secret Report Implies That U.S. Violated International Law :The report graphically describes abuse of Abu Zubaida." By Joby Warrick, Peter Finn and Julie Tate
Washington Post , March 16, 2009

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.

The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA "black site" prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

The findings were based on an investigation by ICRC officials, who were granted exclusive access to the CIA's "high-value" detainees after they were transferred in 2006 to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 14 detainees, who had been kept in isolation in CIA prisons overseas, gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding, or simulating drowning.
...Abu Zubaida describes being shackled to a chair at the feet and hands for two to three weeks in a cold room with "loud, shouting type music" blaring constantly, according to the ICRC report. He said that he was questioned two to three hours a day and that water was sprayed in his face if he fell asleep.

At some point -- the timing is unclear from the New York Review of Books report -- Abu Zubaida's treatment became harsher. In July 2002, administration lawyers approved more aggressive techniques.

Abu Zubaida said interrogators wrapped a towel around his neck and slammed him into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was also repeatedly slapped in the face, he said. After the beatings, he was placed in coffinlike wooden boxes in which he was forced to crouch, with no light and a restricted air supply, he said.
...Danner said the organization's use of the word "torture" has important legal implications.

"It could not be more important that the ICRC explicitly uses the words 'torture' and 'cruel and degrading,' " Danner said in a telephone interview. "The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions, and when it uses those words, they have the force of law."

He discounted the possibility that the detainees fabricated or embellished their stories, noting that the accounts overlap "in minute detail," even though the detainees were kept in isolation at different locations.
Human rights groups echoed his assessment.

"These reports are from an impeccable source," said Geneve Mantri, a counterterrorism specialist at Amnesty International. "It's clear that senior officials were warned from the very beginning that the treatment that detainees were subjected to amounted to torture. This story goes even further and deeper than many us of suspected. The more details we find out, the more shocking this becomes."

Also see:

NY Times uncritically quoted Cheney saying Bush administration detention policies were "done legally"March 16, 2009 Media Matters

Summary: In a New York Times article, A.G. Sulzberger quoted without challenge Dick Cheney's assertion that Bush administration policies on detentions and intelligence gathering were "done legally" and "in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles." Sulzberger did not note that the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected Bush administration policies regarding detentions, that the Justice Department has withdrawn Bush administration memoranda authorizing interrogation practices, and that the International Committee of the Red Cross has reportedly determined that interrogation practices used during President Bush's tenure in office amounted to torture.

and from The Washington Post acting as defenders of Cheney Bush Regime and its policies while trying to undermine Obama's administration :

"Obama Team Derides Cheney's Criticisms
Former VP Said Obama's Policies Will "Raise The Risk" Of Terrorist Attacks On U.S." Washington Post , March 17, 2009

and see Glenn Greenwald's article at Salon.com:

The outrageous offenses against Richard Cheney, Salon.com, March 17, 2009

Over the weekend, Dick Cheney -- at John King's prodding -- accused Barack Obama of, among other things, lying to the public about his proposed domestic policies, taking advantage of the financial crisis to foist enlarged government on unsuspecting citizens, and leaving us all more vulnerable to slaughter by the Terrorists. When asked about those comments, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy, so they trotted out the next most popular member of the Republican cabal. . . . Not taking economic advice from Dick Cheney might be the best possible outcome of yesterday's interview."

Some reporters are horrified that Dick Cheney would be spoken of with such disrespect. CBS' Chip Reid immediately objected (and the video conveys even more than the words how offended he was):

Can I ask you, when you referred to the former Vice President, that was a really hard-hitting, kind of sarcastic response you had. This is a former Vice President of the United States. Is that the attitude -- is that the sanctioned tone toward the former Vice President of the United States from this White House now?

On his Twitter feed, ABC News' Rick Klein was similarly aghast at Gibbs' disrespect...

but Greenwald characterizes Cheney as :

Dick Cheney is one of the most divisive -- and disliked -- political officials in memory. Maybe Chip Reid and Rick Klein haven't heard, but he just presided over the virtual collapse of the American economy and is directly implicated in severe war crimes and other pervasive criminality. Yet they speak of him -- and demand that everyone else treat him -- as royalty: This is the former Vice President of the United States you're talking about; have you no decency?