"Ask Jane Mayer Anything: Should Bush Officials Be Tried For War Crimes?" (video)

Andrew Sullivan with video (01:35).

Howie P.S.: The spoiler is "it's not going to happen. They didn't want to take the CIA on."

Daily Mail (UK)--"Cheney fears trial as war criminal': Colin Powell aide hits out at former VP"

Daily Mail (UK):

An aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell has hit out at Dick Cheney, saying the former Vice President s fears being 'tried as a war criminal'

Powell's long-time aide and chief of staff, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson told ABC news Cheney, 'Was president for all practical purposes for the first term of the Bush administration,' adding, '[He] fears being tried as a war criminal.' MORE...

Papantonio: "The Ugly Life of Dick Cheney" (video)

Ring of Fire Radio, video (06:43)

Mike Papantonio joins Lizz Winstead and Ed Schultz on The Ed Show on MSNBC to talk about Dick Cheney’s forthcoming “memoir.” Mike talks about what he hopes Cheney will disclose in his new book, including the truth behind his secret energy meetings and maybe even some disclosure on how he destroyed Valerie Plame’s career.

Chris Matthews: "Politico is a news conduit for Dick Cheney" (video)

fshakir1, video (01:52).

Howie P.S.: Every once in a while Tweety is on the money. More video from Countdown, video(11:24) pushing back on Cheney:

Sully on Chris Wallace

Andrew Sullivan:

When future historians ask how the United States came not only to practice torture but to celebrate it and treat torturers as heroes, a special place in hell among the journalists who embraced and justified it should be reserved for Chris Wallace.

Letterman - Top Ten Dick Cheney Excuses (video)

CBS, video (02:18).

Howie P.S.. Mocking is a poor substitute for jail and justice, but it's all I've got at the moment.

ED Show: "Crime but no punishment for Cheney" (video)

MSNBC-ED Show, video (12:35).

Howie P.S.: Sen. Bill Nelson, Rep. Rush Holt and former CIA Officer Jack White join ED to discuss what Congress should do in the wake of Cheney's latest misdeed.

ED schools Morning Joe on the "new normal" and Dick Cheney (video)

MSNBC-ED on Morning Joe, video (15:52).

"Still More Doubts Arise About CIA’s Info On Torture Briefings"

Greg Sargent:

Today’s Washington Post has a big story about Dick Cheney and torture that’s important for a number of reasons, not least because it raises still more doubts about the CIA documents that purported to detail what members of Congress were told and when about the use of torture.

The story reports that Cheney personally oversaw four or more briefings of members of congress about the torture program as part of an aggressive campaign in 2005 to maintain support for the use of torture.

But here’s the thing: The CIA documents that Republicans have widely cited as proof that Nancy Pelosi lied about what she knew didn’t mention Cheney’s presence at these briefings. Instead, as WaPo notes, the docs said that the info about who oversaw those particular briefings was “not available.”

Pelosi was broadly pilloried by Republicans and neutral observers for saying the CIA lied. Yet here’s yet more evidence that the CIA’s documents were incomplete at best and willfully misleading at worst.

The story also raises an important question: Why did the CIA omit from those documents any mention of Cheney’s presence at any of these briefings? Was the claim that the info was “not available” an outright falsehood designed to cover up Cheney’s role?

Marcy Wheeler has some must-reading on the WaPo story.

I’m hoping to dig into this more today, so please let me know your thoughts.

Cheney walks back (some of) his lying words (with video)

Howie Intro: Undoubtedly reacting to the push back from all sides, Cheney and daughter Liz used their Open Mike at FAUX to soften his personal attack on Obama and dilute the messaging around Iraq and 9/11. From Rachel Weiner's story on HuffPo, with video:

"On the question of whether or not Iraq was involved in 9-11, there was never any evidence to prove that," he told the "On The Record" host in a joint interview with his daughter Liz. "There was "some reporting early on ... but that was never borne out."

In an interview with Fox News' Greta van Susteren, former Vice President Dick Cheney admitted that there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in the September 11th attacks.

"On the question of whether or not Iraq was involved in 9-11, there was never any evidence to prove that," he told the "On The Record" host in a joint interview with his daughter Liz. "There was "some reporting early on ... but that was never borne out," Cheney said. "George ... did say and did testify that there was an ongoing relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq, but no proof that Iraq was involved in 9-11."

Asked in 2004 if Iraq was involved in the attacks, Cheney was less clear, telling CNBC, "We don't know."

In other interviews around that time, Cheney was similarly vague, suggesting that the link could exist. President Bush repeatedly encouraged a false connection between Iraq and the attacks, although he later claimed to have only said there was a "relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

Liz Cheney complimented Obama's family, and said that she hoped he would "talk about democracy and I hope he'll also talk about women's rights" on his trip to Egypt. Asked if President Obama was "soft," Dick Cheney responded, "I can't say that. I think he's still learning."

Watch:

"Think Again: Dick Cheney's Post Presidency"

Former Vice President Dick Cheney flexes his punditry muscles on CNN's "State of the Union."

Yet Carter and Gore served up vegan fare compared to the red meat Cheney is spewing. And yet because his de facto presidency was never fully recognized or admitted by the media—many of whose members felt the need to prop up President Bush no less urgently than did the White House Communications staff—his unprecedented assault on a sitting president just weeks into his first term goes unrecognized for the breach of protocol it clearly is.

Jane Mayer recognized this during the Bush presidency, explaining in a New Yorker profile of his aide, David Addington, that “the media focuses relentless attention on the president, on the premise that he is actually the chief executive. But for all intents and purposes, Cheney is chief, and Bush is more in the ceremonial role of the queen of England.”-from the post by Eric Alterman and Danielle Ivory on americanprogress.org.

"Levin: CIA Torture Documents Cheney Wants Don’t Prove Squat"

Greg Sargent: with video from Rachel Maddow (03:06):

There’s some important news about Dick Cheney and torture in a speech that Senator Carl Levin gave before the Foreign Policy Association this week.

Specifically: Levin confirmed that he’d seen the classified CIA documents that Cheney has been asking the CIA to declassify and release — and said that they don’t prove Cheney’s claim that torture worked by any stretch.

Levin’s comments are highly newsworthy because they give us the most detailed picture yet of what’s in the documents Cheney wants. You can watch Levin’s speech right here at TPM. This is what Levin said about the documents:

Mr. Cheney has also claimed that the release of classified documents would prove his view that the techniques worked. But those classified documents say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of the abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified so that people can judge for themselves what is fact and what is fiction.

If this is true, it’s big. A Senator who has seen the documents Cheney claims will prove that torture saved lives says that those docs contain absolutely nothing about whether the torture techniques were actually responsible for yielding any valuable intelligence.

Networks such as MSNBC have given literally hours of airtime to Cheney and his daughter Liz to claim endlessly that these docs will prove Cheney’s torture assertions. These claims have gone almost entirely unchallenged, due to the classified nature of the documents. You’d think that a contrary claim from a well-respected Senator who has also seen the docs would merit a few passing mentions, too.

Howie P.S.: How many more of Cheney's fucking lies will need refuting before he drinks his final cup of STFU?

"Former Interrogator Rebukes Cheney for Torture Speech (video)

bravenewfilms, with video (03:37):

Dick Cheney says that torturing detainees has saved American lives. That claim is patently false. Cheney's torture policy was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of American servicemen and women.

Matthew Alexander was the senior military interrogator for the task force that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq and, at the time, a higher priority target than Osama bin Laden. Mr. Alexander has personally conducted hundreds of interrogations and supervised over a thousand of them.

"Torture does not save lives. Torture costs us lives," Mr. Alexander said in an exclusive interview at Brave New Studios. "And the reason why is that our enemies use it, number one, as a recruiting tool...These same foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight because of torture and abuse....literally cost us hundreds if not thousands of American lives."

Col. Wilkerson: "Cheney Kept Some Things From the President"

Cenk Uygur, with audio (17:21):

We interviewed Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, on The Young Turks and he had some very interesting things to say. Including:

"Cheney was co-president. I'd go further than that and say that for national security issues and other critical issues Cheney was the President."

"I found the incredible arrogance and lack of humility of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to be stunning almost right off the bat."

Referring to the decision to abuse detainees:

"I don't think there's any question it goes to Cheney. I'm increasingly of a mind that a lot of it goes to Cheney and stops there. Not just because of the president's disinclination to do detail, but I also think that Cheney kept some things from the president.

Lawrence Wilkerson: They should have what I would call reference authority. In other words, they should be able to turn it over to the appropriate authorities for prosecution, and a recommendation should be rendered with that if they believe laws were broken and they believe the proper authorities ought to take action.

Cenk Uygur: Dick Cheney seems to have an equivocal answer on Face the Nation when asked, "Did the president know about this abuse?" and he said, "Well I think he should have known" or something along those lines. Is there some chance that Dick Cheney just flat out gave the orders and didn't tell the president?

Lawrence Wilkerson: Absolutely! In my mind I have no problem believing that. I have no problem at all believing that.

"Cheney on TV Open" (video)

NBC-SNL, video (04:10):

Cheney and GW are reunited on TV.

Howie P.S.: On this Memorial Day, keep in mind the death and destruction the real-life Cheney and Bush are responsible for.

"A dark lord comes shrieking into the light"

Andrew Sullivan (Sunday London Times):

He was for so long the invisible man. Hunkering down in an undisclosed location, poring over the bureaucratic details that made him a master of manipulating the American ship of state, appearing only for military speeches or conservative fundraisers, the former vice-president Dick Cheney loved the shade.

For him, power was best exercised indirectly — in the always confidential lunches with the president, or by sitting silently through cabinet or military meetings, letting others guess his intentions. He rarely campaigned, seldom explained and never, ever, apologised. And when he actually had to ask for votes in the 2004 re-election campaign, you could sense his Coriolanus-like contempt for the demos. All he wanted was to leave the stage for the offices where the real decisions were made.

Even war — that most public of acts — was private to him, as he said on September 16, 2001: “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows, in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful.”

That is Cheney’s vision of effective governance: things are done “quietly, without any discussion”; any means available are used for him to achieve his ends; and nobody knows where he is.

Now, you can’t turn on the television without seeing his leaner, tanned but still grim visage. Since Barack Obama was elected, Cheney has appeared on the big Sunday talk shows five times: that’s more than his tally from 2003 to the end of 2006. The blogosphere twitches with each of his soundbites and his daughter Liz spends hours on television and radio, backing him up.

The strangeness of this is not related entirely to his usual reticence. It is unheard of for a former vice-president to attack a succeeding president aggressively before he has assembled his full cabinet. Even Al Gore, a man who won more votes than George W Bush in the 2000 election, said nothing critical of him for years. It is particularly odd to see Cheney assail Obama on defence and security — while Obama has retained the defence secretary of the Bush administration, Robert Gates, and has bent over backwards to increase troops in Afghanistan, delay an exit from Iraq and nominate a new general for the Afghan campaign, Stanley McChrystal, whom Cheney has previously showered with praise.

Cheney, moreover, is not the best spokesman for Cheney. He has an approval rating of 30% and a disapproval rating of 63%, while he viciously attacks a president with a favourable rating of 64%. None of this is helping his political party. One Republican strategist told The Washington Post last week: “We want Bush to be a very distant memory in the next election. The more Cheney is on the front burner, the more difficult it’s going to be.”

So what on earth is going on? Here’s what’s going on. Cheney is afraid. He knows he is losing the argument about his record. The cumulative effect of leaked reports detailing the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has altered public perceptions. In the most recent poll, 71% of Americans accept the legal fact that waterboarding is torture; and Cheney has openly bragged of using it. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that 71% of Americans, even if they think torture is justified, now believe their last vice-president was a torturer. This is not a good way to go down in history. Nor is it a good way to be perceived by public prosecutors tasked with enforcing the law.

Worse, Cheney’s Bush-era colleagues are turning on him. Philip Zelikow, a key aide of Condoleezza Rice, has testified in Congress that his memo arguing against Cheney’s torture techniques was targeted for destruction. Another former government aide, Lawrence Wilkerson, responded to Cheney’s Sunday interview last week with an all too apt reference to the power-hungry “dark side” villains of Star Wars: “Let’s just say that five minutes of the Sith lord was stunningly inaccurate.”

Ali Soufan, the FBI agent who interrogated the Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah, has said publicly that all the useful information came before Cheney insisted on waterboarding the man — and that he was waterboarded to prove a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda, not to prevent future terrorist attacks. In fact, the emerging pattern of the worst torture of prisoners shows it occurred not in the wake of 9/11, to prevent future attacks, but after the botched invasion of Iraq, to justify false intelligence claims.

Bush’s key weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, disclosed last week that when he was interrogating one of Saddam’s aides, Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi, in that post-invasion period, a very senior Bush official intervened to propose torturing al-Dulaymi to get evidence of a link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. Nobody doubts it was Cheney.

Now, we find out that a quarter of the footnotes of the 9/11 commission report were based on “intelligence” gleaned through the torture and abuse of Al-Qaeda prisoners. As anyone can tell you, the reliability of such evidence is suspect at best — and nobody on the commission was told how the information was gathered.

What do we know about Al-Qaeda and its threat? The problem with torture is not just that it is evil, but that it destroys the possibility of knowable, testable truth. We need truth to defend ourselves.

Even Cheney knows that if he doesn’t push back hard on all of this, the weight of Washington opinion will swing against him. The capital city is a fickle, unprincipled place and, once stripped of office, he can no longer intimidate or threaten to get his way. A memoir will be too late. And so he is forced into the limelight to which he is unused. He has made unforced errors. Last Sunday he picked a fight with the former secretary of state Colin Powell, arguing that Powell was no longer a real Republican. As if Powell does not have the ammunition to fight back. And as if, in a contest for public opinion, Cheney could even begin to compete with Powell’s popularity.

Powell’s former aide Wilkerson said last week: “When will someone of stature tell Dick Cheney that enough is enough? Go home. Spend your $70m. Luxuriate in your Eastern Shore mansion. Stay out of our way as we try to repair the extensive damage you’ve done — to the country and to its Republican party.”

The only person who could really do that is Bush. And he is as silent as he is absent. Telling, don’t you think? And, from Cheney's point of view, ominous.

Howie P.S.: I don't like to give Cheney more attention than absolutely necessary but I missed this last week during my health care "vacation."

"Cheney Lost to Bush"

David Brooks:

President Obama and Dick Cheney conspired on Thursday to propagate a myth. The myth is that we lived through an eight-year period of Bush-Cheney anti-terror policy and now we have entered a very different period called the Obama-Biden anti-terror policy.

As both Obama and Cheney understand, this is a completely bogus distortion of history.

The reality is that after Sept. 11, we entered a two- or three-year period of what you might call Bush-Cheney policy. The country was blindsided. Intelligence officials knew next to nothing about the threats arrayed against them. The Bush administration tried just about everything to discover and prevent threats. The Bush people believed they were operating within the law but they did things most of us now find morally offensive and counterproductive.

The Bush-Cheney period lasted maybe three years. For Dick Cheney those might be the golden years. For Democrats, it is surely the period they want to forever hang around the necks of the Republican Party. But that period ended long ago.

By 2005, what you might call the Bush-Rice-Hadley era had begun. Gradually, in fits and starts, a series of Bush administration officials — including Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Jack Goldsmith and John Bellinger — tried to rein in the excesses of the Bush-Cheney period. They didn’t win every fight, and they were prodded by court decisions and public outrage, but the gradual evolution of policy was clear.

From 2003 onward, people like Bellinger and Goldsmith were fighting against legal judgments that allowed enhanced interrogation techniques. By 2006, Rice and Hadley brought Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in from a secret foreign prison to regularize detainee procedures. In 2007, Rice refused to support an executive order reviving the interrogation program. Throughout the second Bush term, officials were trying to close Guantánamo, pleading with foreign governments to take some prisoners, begging senators to allow the transfer of prisoners onto American soil. (It didn’t occur to them that they could announce the closure of Gitmo first, then figure out what to do with prisoners.)

Cheney and Obama might pretend otherwise, but it wasn’t the Obama administration that halted the practice of waterboarding. It was a succession of C.I.A. directors starting in March 2003, even before a devastating report by the C.I.A. inspector general in 2004.

When Cheney lambastes the change in security policy, he’s not really attacking the Obama administration. He’s attacking the Bush administration. In his speech on Thursday, he repeated in public a lot of the same arguments he had been making within the Bush White House as the policy decisions went more and more the other way.

The inauguration of Barack Obama has simply not marked a dramatic shift in the substance of American anti-terror policy. It has marked a shift in the public credibility of that policy.

In the first place, it is absurd to say this administration doesn’t take terrorism seriously. Obama has embraced the Afghan surge, a strategy that was brewing at the end of the Bush years. He has stepped up drone activity in Pakistan. He has promoted aggressive counterinsurgency fighters and racked up domestic anti-terror accomplishments.

As for the treatment of terror suspects, Jack Goldsmith has a definitive piece called “The Cheney Fallacy” online at The New Republic. He lists a broad range of policies — Guantánamo, habeas corpus, military commissions, rendition, interrogation and so on. He shows how, in most cases, the Obama policy represents a continuation of or a gradual evolution from the final Bush policy.

What Obama gets, and what President Bush never got, is that other people’s opinions matter. Goldsmith puts it well: “The main difference between the Obama and Bush administrations concerns not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging. The Bush administration shot itself in the foot time and time again, to the detriment of the legitimacy and efficacy of its policies, by indifference to process and presentation. The Obama administration, by contrast, is intensely focused on these issues.”

Obama has taken many of the same policies Bush ended up with, and he has made them credible to the country and the world. In his speech, Obama explained his decisions in a subtle and coherent way. He admitted that some problems are tough and allow no easy solution. He treated Americans as adults, and will have won their respect.

Do I wish he had been more gracious with and honest about the Bush administration officials whose policies he is benefiting from? Yes. But the bottom line is that Obama has taken a series of moderate and time-tested policy compromises. He has preserved and reformed them intelligently. He has fit them into a persuasive framework. By doing that, he has not made us less safe. He has made us more secure.

Barack Obama

"torture prosecutions - it's not just for hippies any more"

Lanny Davis:

I have written many times in this space that I oppose any criminal prosecution of prior-administration officials on torture or other issues relating to the Iraq War and the war on terrorism, especially those CIA interrogators who relied in good faith on the instructions of policymakers and the legal opinions issued by Justice Department senior officials.

I have agreed with President Obama on the need to look forward, not backward.

But … I have changed my mind about the need to indict former Vice President Dick Cheney for complicity in illegal torture.
.

His insistence on putting himself on multiple TV programs and conservative radio talk shows, not only defending torture but offering the defense that it worked, has changed my mind. Not only that — he went on to attack Mr. Obama as weakening the United States in the war on terrorism because Mr. Obama immediately announced that torture would no longer be allowed.

Dem's fighting words. They are also, in my view, reckless and irresponsible. They seem to be laying down a marker that in case, God forbid, there is a terrorist attack, Mr. Cheney can be the first to blame it on Mr. Obama's policies and say, "I told you so."

Even more, they seem to be an in-your-face dare by Mr. Cheney to the U.S. criminal justice system: "I am Dick Cheney, I approved violations of the law in the name of the war on terror, and what are you going to do about it?"

It reminds me of Gary Hart's reaction in the early days of his 1988 presidential campaign to the rumors of his womanizing. Mr. Hart denied the charge — and then dared the media to catch him. Well, they took him up on his dare (specifically, the Miami Herald did). And they caught him — at least in a compromising situation that led to his withdrawal from the campaign.

So as to Mr. Cheney: I think it is time to take him up on his implicit dare and indict him for violating the 1994 federal law against torture.

Not to do so, in light of Mr. Cheney's arrogant public challenges, may reinforce the notion that Mr. Cheney can get away with lawbreaking, and be proud of it, because he is a former vice president, and because he is the tough, intimidating Dick Cheney who everyone (at least many) in the Bush administration feared.

So I think it's important to take Mr. Cheney up on his challenge, despite all the disadvantages that had led me to oppose prosecutions of the former administration.

Here is what the indictment of Mr. Cheney would look like; it's not that complicated.

First, as to the law: The 1994 federal law making torture illegal defines torture as "any act that causes severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, intentionally inflicted on a person for such purpose as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession."

The two top officials at the Office of Legal Counsel — Jay S. Bybee (who is now a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) and John Yoo, now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley Law School — tried in 2002 to "reinterpret" the term "severe pain" out of existence by requiring a torture victim to feel pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

But their colleagues at Justice — not only at the OLC, but also the Criminal Division — repudiated their legal gymnastics and restated the definition of torture plainly set forth in the 1994 federal law and the Convention Against Torture. For this and other reasons, both Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee should at the very least be investigated for ethical violations and possible disbarment.

Second, as to the facts — here is what we know or have good reason to believe:

• We know that waterboarding was intentionally used against detainees to obtain information.

• We know that waterboarding causes "severe pain or suffering." It involves strapping a man to an inclined board with his head below his feet, wrapping a cloth across his face, and pouring water into his nostrils and mouth, which convinces the victim that he faces imminent death by drowning. It has been used as torture from the Inquisition to Nazi Germany, and was prosecuted as a war crime after World War II.

• Finally, there is strong circumstantial evidence that Mr. Cheney knew waterboarding was being used against detainees, that he expressly approved its use, or that he actually directed interrogators to use it. If any of these are true, then Mr. Cheney could be guilty under U.S. laws of being a co-conspirator or an accessory to a crime.

An indictment, of course, is only an accusation of criminal conduct. Mr. Cheney must be presumed innocent until a jury of his peers finds him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Many people still think, and I was among them until recently, that it would be better not to put the country through the divisive and backward-looking experience of seeing a former vice president on trial for crimes committed while in office. But given Mr. Cheney's decision to publicly attack the president on the subject, perhaps we have no choice but to take Mr. Cheney up on his challenge.

I am hoping that in the final analysis, the case of the People vs. Dick Cheney will provide all Americans with an opportunity to answer the vital question as to whether a democratic society based on moral values should defend the use of torture, even if at times it successfully obtains important information from a terrorist.

I am hoping our answer as a nation will be similar to the eloquent one provided by Israeli Supreme Court President Aharon Barak regarding the use of torture by the Israeli Security Services:

"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day, they strengthen its spirit and its strength and allow it to overcome its difficulties."

"Is The Most Forceful Advocate For Probing Torture ... Dick Cheney?"

Zachary Roth:

This goes way beyond strange bedfellows. But it looks like Dick Cheney has emerged as the single most forceful proponent of a full investigation of the Bush administration's torture policies.

In an interview on CBS's Face The Nation yesterday, the ex-veep claimed, as he has before, that the Obama administration's rejection of torture has made us less safe. But he also went further ever in repeatedly arguing -- contra congressional Republicans -- that we need to look back at the details of the torture program before moving forward.

Here's what Cheney told Bob Schieffer:

When you get rid of enhanced interrogation techniques, for example, or the terrorist surveillance program, you reduce the intelligence flow to the intelligence community upon which we based those policies that were so successful.

So I think before they do that sort of thing, it's important to sit down and find out what did we learn?

Cheney also reminded Schieffer that last month he had requested that the National Archives release several CIA memos which, he has said, will show that torture was effective.

"Release the memos," he said yesterday. "And we can look and see for yourself what was produced." He continued: "If we're going to have this debate, it ought to be a complete debate, and those memos ought to be out there for people to look at and journalists like yourself to evaluate in terms of what we were able to accomplish with these policies."

Cheney even told Schieffer that he'd "talk to" congressional investigators about the program, adding: " I wouldn't be out here today if I didn't feel comfortable talking about what we're doing publicly."

Of course, the investigation Cheney appears to want to see would have a very different focus from the one that, say, Jonathan Turley is looking for. While torture opponents want a probe to look at exactly who ordered and approved the harsh techniques, with a view to possible prosecutions, the former VP instead seems to want concentrate on the question of torture's effectiveness -- and seems interested only in evidence that would bolster his case that has helped save lives.

Still, it's hard to look at either question without getting into the other. Which is why the clear consequence of Cheney's position is to lend support to those calling for a full accounting of what happened.

So how about this for a head-turning new slogan for torture opponents? "Listen To Dick Cheney: Investigate Torture."

Howie P.S.: Eugene Robinson and Liz Cheney discuss her father's arguments, video (14:36), and agree that on only one thing, more information should be released and examined. Liz is as resolute (stubborn) as her father. Andrea Mitchell follows their debate and attempts to sort out the facts.

"White House To Declassify “Holy Grail” Torture Report That Could Undercut Cheney"

Greg Sargent:

There’s a big piece of news about Dick Cheney and torture buried toward the end of this big Washington Post piece about the torture wars.

Specifically: The White House has decided to declassify and release a classified 2004 CIA report about the torture program that is reported to have found no proof that torture foiled any terror plots on American soil — directly contradicting Cheney’s claims. The paper cites “allies” of the White House as a source.

Dem Congressional staffers tell me this report is the “holy grail,” because it is expected to detail torture in unprecedented detail and to cast doubt on the claim that torture works — and its release will almost certainly trigger howls of protest from conservatives. Tellingly, neither the CIA nor the White House knocked down the story in response to my questions, with spokespeople for both declining comment. Here’s the key nugget from the Post piece:

Government officials familiar with the CIA’s early interrogations say the most powerful evidence of apparent excesses is contained in the “top secret” May 7, 2004, inspector general report, based on more than 100 interviews, a review of the videotapes and 38,000 pages of documents. The full report remains closely held, although White House officials have told political allies that they intend to declassify it for public release when the debate quiets over last month’s release of the Justice Department’s interrogation memos…

Although some useful information was produced, the report concluded that “it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks,” according to the Justice Department’s declassified summary of it.

This news is particularly timely in light of Cheney’s continuing high-profile claims that torture may have saved “hundreds of thousands of lives.” The report is the one I wrote about recently that the ACLU obtained through litigation in highly redacted form. It has an entire redacted section that discusses the “effectiveness” of torture — or lack thereof.

The release of this thing is going to be a big deal.

You heard it here first.

Barack Obama