Cheney justifies torture, blames Iraq war on Iraqis

In interview with Jim Lehrer. Really pretty much more of the same there. I will be so glad to see these people finally gone. Only a few more days.

Cheney:

I can tell you what the policy was; I can tell you that we had all the legal authorization to do it, including the sign-off of the Justice Department. I can tell you it produced phenomenal results for us, and that a great many Americans are alive today because we did all that. And I think those are the important considerations.

This is total crap, as anyone knows who's read anything about what the interrogators themselves (such as Matthew Alexander [pseud.]), or reliable investigative journalists such as Jane Mayer (The Dark Side), have said and shown. For example, it is now established beyond any reasonable dispute that virtually everything obtained from torturing the infamous Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was totally useless and false. (That's what you always get from torture, as any reasonable human being with a smattering of historical education knows). And just this week we learn that many if not almost all of the trials of actual terrorists held at Guantanamo are so compromised that convictions will likely be impossible; these people will have to be released eventually. And why? Because the Bush administration fucked it up so badly. That's why. There's no other reason.

The self-justification of these incompetent fools is literally sickening.

Most Disgraceful Element of Bush Legacy

I suspect that the single most disgraceful element of President Bush's legacy (at least from an American point of view) will be the historical conclusion that thousands of American soldiers needlessly died as a consequence of the adminstration's use and tolerance of torture. This is the allegation of former military interrogator Matthew Alexander (pseudonym) in an op-ed in Tuesday's Sunday's Post (11/30). "Alexander" is the guy who got Sunni extremists to rat out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, by using traditional confidence and rapport building interrogation techniques (the kind that actually work). He quite credibly says the number of American military killed as a result of the recruitment effect (on Arabs) of our country's torture policy will never be known, but it's reasonable to estimate it at close to the number killed in the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks.

Update: This comment from "Alexander" is telling, and chilling: "How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans."

In case it isn't self-evident, the mechanism for this tragedy is as follows: Arab nationalists, and such people as Iraqis displaced from their usual occupations and/or homes as a result of war, came to see America as a violent oppressor, which tortures captives (as do many Arab countries, but this was not America's former reputation). As a result, probably tens of thousands, or more, men became persuaded to fight against American forces. The results of the interrogations "Alexander" describes frequently included descriptions of precisely this process.

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["Matthew Alexander" is the author of How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq, and his op-ed is presumably in conjunction with a book tour. He appeared on Democracy Now! and Countdown this week, but otherwise has garnered little attention.]