Thursday, May 14, 2009

Go Away, Dick

Talking Points Memo has a great piece by Lawrence Wilkerson -- a Republican -- about how Dick Cheney has created a significant and multi-faceted deception to keep the cause of torture alive and to make it a political issue in 2010.

In this piece, Wilkerson describes Cheney's lies in three ways:
  1. Cheney is lying that no Americans were killed by terrorists in the seven plus years since 9/11. In fact, more Americans have been killed by terrorists since Cheney became de-facto president than on any other leader's watch in US history.
  2. Cheney is lying when he says that his "harsh interrogation methods" have been responsible for the fact that there have been no other terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11. In fact, the reason why this is so is because we dropped our troops into al Qaeda's backyard, and in doing so have certainly also presented far more attractive targets than civilians on the US homeland. Now, 5,000 of our troops are dead, more than the entire victim list of 9/11.
  3. Cheney is lying when he says that Obama has made the country less safe by banning the use of torture. In fact, torture was discontinued after the Abu Ghraib photos were released because the agencies involved in the torture didn't want to be prosecuted for continuing anything that had been revealed by the Abu Ghraib scandal. In fact, if anyone is responsible for making the country less safe because of a cessation of torture, it's Bush and Cheney. In fact, the Bush administration authorized the use of torture in Spring 2002, long before getting any of their so-called legal opinions from attorneys at the Office of Legal Counsel (Yoo, Bradbury, Bybee). The main reason for this was not to prevent further attack, but to establish a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein -- the main justification for going to war. We already know that going to war in Iraq was predetermined from the start of the first Bush/Cheney term, as Richard Clarke, the nation's counterterrorism czar, has written that al Qaeda was put on the back burner in the months leading up to 9/11 because the focus was put on Iraq (as well as walking away from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty).

Wilkerson expresses what I would express were I part of what is left of the Republican Party. With only 21% of Americans actually self-identifying as Republicans, they are about as marginalized a population as one can get. He wants Cheney to go away and let the Party create an identity that is separate from one of torture, lies, and secrecy.

Fat chance of that happening, Larry. I say grab a few of your intellectual equals and start a new party.

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