In the Weekly Standard Bill Kristol nominated a response from Dick Cheney to a Chuck Todd question as “Answer of the Year”:
I hereby nominate Dick Cheney’s answer to Chuck Todd’s question about a United Nations official who’s called for the criminal prosecution of U.S. interrogators, as the 2014 Sunday Show Answer of the Year:
CHENEY: I have little respect for the United Nations, or for this individual, who doesn’t have a clue and had absolutely no responsibility for safeguarding this nation and going after the bastards that killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11.
Todd interviewed Cheney on Meet the Press and Cheney was unapologetic:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney unapologetically pressed his defense of the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques Sunday, insisting that waterboarding and other such tactics did not amount to torture and that the spy agency’s actions paled in comparison to those of terrorists targeting Americans.
“Torture, to me … is an American citizen on his cellphone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York on 9/11,” Cheney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “There’s this notion that there’s moral equivalence between what the terrorists did and what we do, and that’s absolutely not true. We were very careful to stop short of torture.”
He ridiculed the notion that any of it put our troops at more risk:
Cheney also disputed the notion that any American taken prisoner overseas by terrorists was now at greater risk of being subjected to techniques like those used by the CIA.
“He’s not likely to be waterboarded. He’s likely to have his head cut off,” the former vice president said of a potential American taken hostage by a group like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. “I haven’t seen them waterboard anybody.”
And he made one thing very clear:
“I’d do it again in a minute,”
He even suggested that the interrogators were heroes who should be decorated for their work.
Like him or hate him, you have to respect the guy. He is consistent. He is principled. He is honest- perhaps the last honest man. He made a decision and he sticks by it. Unlike pathetic democrats, he doesn’t lie about his past. And we know for a fact that Nancy Pelosi is an execrable stinking liar.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7Nss8Kc-LM[/youtube]
Pelosi denied ever knowing about waterboarding but proof of her deceit emerged long ago:
Intelligence officials released documents yesterday saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda suspects, seeming to contradict her repeated statements that she was never told the techniques were actually being used.
In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress briefed on the tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House intelligence committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The memo, issued to Capitol Hill by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency, notes that the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered “EITs including the use of EITs” on Abu Zubaida. EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique, and Abu Zubaida, whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured. He also was the first to have the controversial tactic of simulated drowning, or waterboarding, used against him.
Pelosi knew. They all knew. In the aftermath of 9-11 democrats would do anything to find and punish the plotters of the attacks and prevent another.
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).
Individual lawmakers’ recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. “Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing,” said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. “And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.”
Between 2001 and 2007 68 members of Congress were briefed on EIT’s:
The report (embedded below) shows that the CIA briefed at least 68 members of Congress on the CIA interrogation program, including “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) . It details the dates of all congressional briefings and in most cases, the members of Congress in attendance and the specific subjects discussed. Keep in mind though, that the topic for each one of these meetings was interrogation of prisoners.
For example in April 2002 both the House (HPSCI) and Senate (SSCI) committees on intelligence were briefed on the “Ongoing Interrogations of Abu Zubaydah, who was mentioned in the Feinstein report. According to the report, at this time EITs were referenced but there is no evidence they were discussed in detail. However later meetings not only discussed but gave examples of EITs being used, (but attendees weren’t mentioned). Finally near the end of 2002 we see that the most Senior members of the House and Senate committees had meetings totally devoted to EITs.
How many times have you seen me write that liberals have zero long term memory?
It’s worth it to once more remind them what their miserable hypocrite leaders once said:
Feinstein:
On May 26, 2002, Feinstein was quoted in the New York Times saying that the attacks of 9/11 were a real awakening and that it would no longer be “business as usual.” The attacks, she said, let us know “that the threat is profound” and “that we have to do some things that historically we have not wanted to do to protect ourselves.”
Jay Rockefeller:
“He’s in safekeeping, under American protection. He’ll be grilled by us. I’m sure we’ll be proper with him, but I’m sure we’ll be very, very tough with him.”
When Blitzer asked about how KSM would be interrogated, Rockefeller assured him that “there are presidential memorandums that prescribe and allow certain measures to be taken, but we have to be careful.” Then he added: “On the other hand, he does have the information. Getting that information will save American lives. We have no business not getting that information.”
Now they want you to forget what they said and they want to batter those who did the work they once cheered. It’s despicable. Once the new Congress is seated hearings should be held in which these members fo Congress should be called in to testify and publicly reminded of their past words.
This is what makes Dick Cheney so admirable. He is an honest man, undeterred by the opinions of those who were spoiled teenagers in September 2001 and now have grown into full blown smartass liberals with 20-20 hindsight. He is the noble contrast to those scofflaws who would rewrite history. He spurs us to remember what it really was like in those dark days and how astonishingly and inherently duplicitous democrats are.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 40 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 45 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter who is in the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
I admire Darth Cheney’s tenacity and unapologetic, no-nonsense convictions. However, he might have missed the news reports regarding Foley and other ISIS prisoners receiving waterboarding treatment at the hands of their captors (and of course, decked out in orange jumpsuits as reminiscent of Gitmo detainees).
That said, I doubt Jihadi John & Co. managed the waterboarding session for the same purposes and under the same legal constraints that the CIA were supposed to operate under, as per OLC authorized restrictions.
I remember seeing a picture of Mr. Cheney with Halderman and Erlichman way back when President Nixon was in office. He (Mr. Cheney) has certainly seen a great deal and been in attendance when informed thinking took place. He is a true patriot and elder statesman and is dead-on regarding the UN. One World Order is inevitable, I just wish its perpetrators were not so slippery.