DOWNLOADS: (117)

PLAYS: (580)

Embed

The man who convinced President George W. Bush to reinterpret the Geneva Convention's prohibitions on torture on Sunday declared that "we can never be safe in a society like ours" and terrorists will always want to attack America because they are "unhappy about U.S. foreign policy."

On Sunday, CNN's Candy Crowley invited former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to explain what might have radicalized the men who carried out last week's bombings at the Boston Marathon.

"The next attack is likely to come from someone who looks like you and I -- American citizens, someone who speaks perfect English, someone who can travel freely in this country," Gonzales remarked. "The truth of the matter is, there are some people in this country -- around the world who are very unhappy about U.S. foreign policy, and as a result of that, hostility rises, rage rises. And people want to reach out against the United States."

Crowley wondered if it was even possible to "keep America America and keep America safe."

"I think we can keep America America," Gonzales insisted. "But clearly we can accommodate both our security and we can accommodate our liberties. But let's face it, let's be realistic. In a society like ours where we enjoy so many freedoms, you know, to expect that we can be 100 percent safe, I think, is unrealistic. We are clearly safer today than we were on 9/11, we've done a lot to make America safer today."

"But we will never be safe in a society like ours."

In a 2002 memo to then-Presiden George W. Bush, Gonzales argued that the so-called War On Terror meant that the United States was not bound by "quaint" rules in the Geneva Convention that prohibit torture.

"This new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges," Gonzales wrote.

Bush eventually agreed and within weeks, military interrogators were being trained on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which a nonpartisan group recently determined were "clearly torture."

DOWNLOADS: (163)

PLAYS: (653)

Embed

I'm not sure why PBS and CBS News feel that the public needs to be treated to yet another fawning interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney, but maybe they're hoping to pick up some of that Fox viewership, because Charlie Rose's hour long disgrace propping this guy up is what we're usually treated to on that network.

Apparently Cheney doesn't mind the drone program and called it a "good program" -- but what bothers him about it is not what should disturb most of us, like whether it's legal, the lack of oversight, overreach by the executive branch and the fact that dropping bombs on civilians' heads is just going to create more enemies and potential blowback when people rightfully get sick of watching their friends and their family members killed.

No, Cheney doesn't care about any of that. What bothers him is that we're killing these supposed terrorists instead of torturing them as we were doing under the Bush administration.

Cheney: Obama wants to weaken U.S. role in world:

Cheney insists that Obama's worldview and foreign policy is making the U.S. "vulnerable to the future."

And while Cheney voiced support for Obama's use of drones -- calling it a "good program" -- he said the president's national security nominees reflect "choices ... based on people who won't argue with him" and in the case of Hagel, "I think he wants a Republican to be the foil ... for what he wants to do to the Defense Department, which I think is to do serious, serious damage to our military capabilities."

Turning to a controversial policy of the George W. Bush administration, Cheney defended the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, saying that officials engaged in a "very long, difficult and elaborate process" with the Justice Department to determine "where the red line is."

"And we got approval for the programs that did go, that they were quote 'not torture,'" he said, but added that ultimately the administration stopped the use of waterboarding "because there was so much flak over it."

Rose did actually ask Cheney why he won't call the program torture during the interview, but there was zero follow up to this response. You can add this interview to the mile long list of evidence that proves that anyone who claims that PBS is some "liberal" network deserves to be mocked roundly for such a ridiculous assertion.

DOWNLOADS: (472)

PLAYS: (761)

Embed

As if the interview with former CIA torture architect Jose Rodriguez on 60 Minutes wasn't bad enough, Sean Hannity followed up the next day with an even more infuriating interview of Rodriguez as well. If you were disgusted by Leslie Stahl lobbing friendly softballs to this war criminal, it's probably not going to do your blood pressure any good to watch the Hannity job he received the next evening on Fox.

Hannity brought on Pat Buchanan this Wednesday evening and was continuing to parrot Rodriguez's talking points that without torture, President Obama would not have had the intelligence needed to send in the SEAL team after bin Laden.

As Media Matters has been documenting, carrying water for Bush and Cheney's torture program is nothing new for Fox or the right-wing media. You can read more about that from last year here: Right-Wing Media Still Hyping EITs, Ignoring Experts' Dispute, and here: Right-Wing Media Tout Bin Laden Death As Victory For Torture, Ignore Dispute.

And here is their latest report debunking Hannity's talking points in the clip above: One Book Defending Waterboarding Doesn't Change The Fact That Torture Doesn't Work:

In a book published Monday, Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service during the Bush administration, defends the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) such as waterboarding, a technique that groups such as Amnesty International have called "torture." Rodriguez claimed that EITs "led to the capture and killing of Usama bin Ladin." However, multiple experts, including a CIA interrogator, an FBI counterintelligence expert, a former CIA inspector general, and the chairs of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, have said that these techniques were not effective or did not lead to the strike against bin Laden. [...]

One can hear the same argument Rodriguez is making on Fox News and other conservative media outlets, which have touted bin Laden's death as a victory for EITs and President Bush. But it's an argument rebutted by many experts, who dispute whether the use of EITs yielded critical intelligence that led to bin Laden.

And you can read those rebuttals in the rest of their post. I'm still waiting for Hannity to take up that offer Keith Olbermann made for him to be waterboarded back in 2009 if he still doesn't think it's torture. Transcript of Hannity and Buchanan below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (558)

PLAYS: (1838)

Embed

During an interview with George W. Bush which aired on C-SPAN's Q&A discussing his book Decision Points at the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, the former president was asked if he was "concerned that legislation that you passed such as the Patriot Act opens the door for potential abuse by future presidencies?". Never mind the abuses during his presidency that failed soundly.

He followed it up by saying that he was glad the Congress decided to pass The Patriot Act and renew it again no matter which party was in the majority and defended his administration's spying and torture, or as he called it "enhanced interrogation" that he claimed was necessary to keep us safe from terrorism. He also claimed that The Patriot Act assured that civil liberties were not undermined.

Nothing like some major revisionist history from Bush with no one there to push back during this softball forum from C-SPAN.

CAMERATO: Good morning Mr. President. My name is C.J. Camerato and I’m from Boston Massachusetts and I’m curious, were or are you concerned that legislation that you passed such as the Patriot Act opens the door for potential abuse by future presidencies?

BUSH: Great question. The law that was passed twice by the Congress, once when Republicans controlled the Congress, when we controlled the Congress and once after the ’06 election when we got soundly thumped, guarantee civil liberties and there’s a lot of safeguards in the law. And I don’t think a president can… can, through executive order preempt the safeguards in the Patriot Act. There are plenty of checks and balances in our system and throughout the book and historians will note throughout my presidency that I worked assiduously to make sure that civil liberties were not undermined.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (1656)

PLAYS: (2451)

Embed

The Bush administration's biggest supporter of enhanced interrogation techniques is now saying that waterboarding should have been an option for the failed Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab.

"I think you ought to have all of those capabilities on the table," Cheney told ABC's Jonathan Karl Sunday."

Cheney went on to say he opposed the Bush administration's ban on waterboarding. "I was a big supporter of the enhanced techniques," he said.

A complete transcript of Cheney's interview with Jonathan Karl is available here.

John Amato:

Cheney basically helped create torture for the Bush administration...Why is Cheney back on TV anyway? Oh, to try and justify his war crimes. And for the media, that was an opinion since he hasn't been charged with one. And the media continues to let him make his case for torture.

And he squirms when the name Richard Reid is brought up because he has no answer for what the Bush/Cheney did on the shoe bomber case. They had three months to figure out what to do with Reid and Cheney says they didn't have enough time to get it together. He also passes the buck when Karl cornered him over not putting Reid into military custody.

KARL: OK. So -- so was it a mistake when your administration took on the Richard Reid case? This is very similar. This was somebody that was trying to blow up an airliner with a shoe bomb, and he was within five minutes of getting taken off that plane read his Miranda rights, four times, in fact, in 48 hours, and tried through the civilian system. Was that a mistake?

CHENEY: Well, first of all, I believe he was not tried. He pled guilty. They never did end up having a trial. Secondly, when this came up, as I recall, it was December of '01, just a couple of months after 9/11. We were not yet operational with the military commissions. We hadn't had all the Supreme Court decisions handed down about what we could and couldn't do with the commissions.

KARL: But you still had an option to put him into military custody.

CHENEY: Well, we could have put him into military custody. I don't-- I don't question that. The point is, in this particular case, all of

that was never worked out, primarily because he pled guilty.

Wow, nice try. Karl should have kept up the questions on Reid, but let him move off it and still hit him with evidence and events that undermined Cheney's arguments. A Reagan appointed judge spoke out about Reid that Cheney disagreed with and then Cheney had to distance himself from the Bush administration when they touted how many people were tried in the civilian courts.

Full Transcripts via ABC:

Continue reading »