Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Dick Cheney: Torture Report Is 'Full Of Crap'

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said that the the torture report released Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee was "full of crap," during an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier on Wednesday.

Cheney claimed that the CIA's torture produced "actionable intelligence" and was necessary to protect the United States after 9/11. Cheney made similar comments to The New York Times during an interview on Tuesday, telling the newspaper that if I had to do it over again, I would do it.” Cheney made that same comment in March 2014, saying "the results speak for themselves" and denying that practices like waterboarding are torture.

"We asked the agency to go take steps and put in place programs to catch the bastards who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again, and that's exactly what they did. And they deserve a lot of credit, not the kind of condemnation they're receiving from the senate Democrats," Cheney told Fox.

Asked about the report's conclusion that the CIA deliberately misled the White House on the torture program, Cheney said that it was "not true."

While Cheney said that he "didn't know all of the allegations out there," he continued to deny that the program tortured individuals, and that the Bush administration had taken deliberate steps to avoid doing so. Pressed on the committee's finding that interrogators force fed detainees through their anuses, Cheney said that the procedure was not one of the techniques authorized by the program.

"I don't know anything about that specific instance, I can't speak to that," he said. "I guess the question is what are you prepared to do in order to get the truth about future attacks against the United States."

While promoting his book in 2011, Cheney said he has "no regrets" about the use of waterboarding.

Cheney has argued information obtained from waterboarding detainees led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. When CNN host Jake Tapper told Cheney that was a disputed point during a July 2014 interview, Cheney stood firm in his belief in the use of waterboarding.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com/
Author: Paige Lavender

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