Rice and Cheney, People Who Don't Know

Update: "The one trait that defines establishment pundits more than any other is a pathological inability ever to accept blame or admit error. That's because they work in the most accountability-free profession in America, where people like Bill Kristol (with a record like this) and Jeffrey Goldberg (with a record like this) get promoted despite no retractions or remorse, and establishment media stars in general can pretend that they bear no responsibility for enabling the abuses and crimes of the Bush years."
- Glenn Greenwald, Salon

First-rate Sunday morning reads in the New York Times and Washington Post rebutting the always foolish Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice.

Frank Rich and Richard A. Clarke, the national coordinator for security and counterterrorism under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, rip apart the recent Cheney-Rice lies that even now continue apace with the "unsettling return to the post-9/11 dynamic (Frank Rich)" on the part of the corporate media and Congressional Democrats.

Writes Clarke:

'Unless you were there, in a position of responsibility after September 11, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans,' Condoleezza Rice said last month as she admonished a Stanford University student who questioned the Bush-era interrogation program. ...

Yet listening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. ...

I have little sympathy for this argument. ...

Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. ...

Yes, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice may have been surprised by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- but it was because they had not listened. And their surprise led them to adopt extreme counterterrorism techniques -- but it was because they rejected, without analysis, the tactics the Clinton administration had used. The measures they uncritically adopted, which they simply assumed were the best available, were in fact unnecessary and counterproductive.

The reaction of thinking journalists when Rice and Cheney began their we know better, you had to be there line should have been extreme skepticism and consider-the-source, there-they-go-again ridicule.

As President Obama is aware, this skepticism resides in the electorate that put him into office and remains impatient for a complete presidential repudiation and reversal of Cheney-Rice disgrace.

Obama releases torture memos, vows 'never again'

Update: Ex-Bush aides: Releasing torture memos is dangerous
Now the terrorists will know how we'll torture them, the theory goes,
writes Mike Madden.

Good, not good, great:
by Glenn Greenwald:
Obama releases torture memos
If early reports are correct that there are few redactions in the Bush-era documents, the president will have passed a major test

Bad. On the other hand Bush, Cheney, Yoo, Gonzales, Addington, Feith, Haynes, and Bybee and the whole rotten bunch ought to get the ax before anyone. Maybe retributive justice vis a vis exposure won't do anyone any good.
by Alex Koppelman: Administration takes one step forward, one back
The DOJ will release disputed memos about torture, but CIA officials won't be prosecuted for waterboarding

Never again, Obama says below; he has set the record straight, what more can we ask?

Perhaps more facts.

"As the President recognized, there is no valid reason to shield these memos when the techniques they describe have already been exposed and discontinued by the new administration," says Elizabeth Goitein, Director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Project.

"Disclosure is only the first step though," Goitein adds. "There must also be accountability for the illegal policies and practices sanctioned in these memos. We cannot move forward toward a sound and effective national security policy unless we address the systemic failures that allowed the despicable practices described in these memos to be adopted and implemented. That's why we need an independent, non-partisan commission to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding torture and other counter-terrorism practices that violated our laws and our values."

---
Statement of President Barack Obama on Release of OLC Memos

The Department of Justice will today release certain memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel between 2002 and 2005 as part of an ongoing court case. These memos speak to techniques that were used in the interrogation of terrorism suspects during that period, and their release is required by the rule of law.

My judgment on the content of these memos is a matter of record. In one of my very first acts as President, I prohibited the use of these interrogation techniques by the United States because they undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer. Enlisting our values in the protection of our people makes us stronger and more secure. A democracy as resilient as ours must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals, and that is why these methods of interrogation are already a thing of the past.

But that is not what compelled the release of these legal documents today. While I believe strongly in transparency and accountability, I also believe that in a dangerous world, the United States must sometimes carry out intelligence operations and protect information that is classified for purposes of national security. I have already fought for that principle in court and will do so again in the future. However, after consulting with the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, and others, I believe that exceptional circumstances surround these memos and require their release.

First, the interrogation techniques described in these memos have already been widely reported. Second, the previous Administration publicly acknowledged portions of the program – and some of the practices – associated with these memos. Third, I have already ended the techniques described in the memos through an Executive Order. Therefore, withholding these memos would only serve to deny facts that have been in the public domain for some time. This could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States.

In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution. The men and women of our intelligence community serve courageously on the front lines of a dangerous world. Their accomplishments are unsung and their names unknown, but because of their sacrifices, every single American is safer. We must protect their identities as vigilantly as they protect our security, and we must provide them with the confidence that they can do their jobs.

Going forward, it is my strong belief that the United States has a solemn duty to vigorously maintain the classified nature of certain activities and information related to national security. This is an extraordinarily important responsibility of the presidency, and it is one that I will carry out assertively irrespective of any political concern. Consequently, the exceptional circumstances surrounding these memos should not be viewed as an erosion of the strong legal basis for maintaining the classified nature of secret activities. I will always do whatever is necessary to protect the national security of the United States.

This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.

The United States is a nation of laws. My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals. That is why we have released these memos, and that is why we have taken steps to ensure that the actions described within them never take place again. ###

The MAeLstrom

[A scan of news articles and commentary on the internet.]

Scooter Libby Love Letters, Washington elite petition judge on behalf of convicted Cheney aide: The Smoking Gun — The Smoking Gun houses the letters asking that Lewis Libby should lie with impunity. Frank Rich writes: But what makes these letters rise above inanity is the portrait they provide of a wartime capital cut adrift from moral bearings. As the political historian Rick Perlstein has written, one of the recurrent themes of these pleas for mercy is that Mr. Libby perjured himself "only because he was so busy protecting us from Armageddon."

Soldiers Haunted by War Struggle to Get Care — Dana Priest and Anne Hull lay out in the Washington Post how troops who are returning from the battlefield with psychological wounds find a mental-health system that makes healing difficult.

More US Personnel Killed in Iraq than Reported — John R Moffett writes at opednews.com that, "The U.S. military has never released complete statistics on contractor casualties or the number of attacks on privately guarded convoys. The military deleted casualty figures from reports ... the military wanted to hide information showing that private guards were fighting and dying in large numbers because it would be perceived as bad news."

Wisconsin Republican Committee Chair May Kill Bill Helping Rape Victims — Mobile’s Take blog notes: “This Bill will allow rape victims in Wisconsin to be given information about and access to emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms.” The Neanderthal in question who wants to kill the popular rape victim-assistance bill is state Rep. Mark Gundrum (R-New Berlin).

The General’s Report — Seymour M. Hersh writes: “How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties,” in the New Yorker.

Judge orders domestic surveillance docs public — From ThinkProgress: “Just one day after a news that an internal audit found that FBI agents abused a Patriot Act power more than 1000 times, a federal judge ordered the agency Friday to begin turning over thousands of pages of documents related to the agency’s use of a powerful, but extremely secretive investigative tool that can pry into telephone and internet records.”

The April request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation asked the FBI to turn over documents related to its misuse of National Security Letters, self-issued subpoenas that don’t need a judge’s approval and which can get financial, phone and internet records. Recipients of the letters are forbidden by law from ever telling anyone other than their lawyer that they received the request. Though initially warned initially to use this power sparingly, FBI agents issued more than 47,000 in 2005, more than half of which targeted Americans. Information obtained from the requests, which need only be certified by the agency to be 'relevant' to an investigation, are dumped into a data-mining warehouse for perpetuity."

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