“I have the sense that [Hillary Clinton's] one of the more competent members of the current administration, and it would be interesting to speculate about how she might perform were she to be President.”

But it is surprising that Cheney would say this:

“I disagree with [Obama] on a great many issues,” he said. “I think he has not been very effective, frankly, especially in the economic arena.”

“In spite of a lot of bold talk, we haven’t seen the kind of action that’s required to get the economy moving again and restore growth and hope and prosperity.”

That seems like an implicit acknowledgement (!) from the Vice President of the Bush Administration that they screwed up things pretty bad. But shouldn’t that mean he has no credibility to talk about this topic?

At a closed briefing in 2003, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee raised no objection to a C.I.A. plan to destroy videotapes of brutal interrogations, according to secret documents released Monday.
[...]
According to a memorandum prepared after the Feb. 4, 2003, briefing by the C.I.A.’s director of Congressional affairs, Stanley M. Moskowitz, Scott Muller, then the agency’s general counsel, explained that the interrogations were reported in detailed agency cables and that officials intended to destroy the videotapes as soon as the agency’s inspector general completed a review of them.

“Senator Roberts listened carefully and gave his assent,” the C.I.A. memo says. (emphasis mine)

In November 2005, after nearly three years of internal debate, the agency destroyed 92 videotapes of interrogations of two people suspected of being terrorists, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

That action has been under criminal investigation by the Justice Department since early 2008. A prosecutor, John H. Durham, is trying to determine whether it violated court orders to preserve evidence related to detention and interrogation or violated any laws.

The CIA memo leaves no doubt that Roberts understood exactly what he was assenting to the destruction of:

Last August, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. directed Mr. Durham to expand his inquiry to consider whether the interrogations themselves broke any law. Mr. Holder noted that in at least a few instances, interrogators went beyond methods authorized by the Justice Department, including threatening Mr. Nashiri with a pistol and a power drill.

Those incidents were also described in the 2003 briefing for Mr. Roberts; when they were described, “Senator Roberts winced,” according to the memo on the briefing.

Roberts’s defense, by the way, consists of arguing that he did not assent, he only failed to dissent. He seems to believe that there’s an important distinction to be made between affirmatively approving, and implicitly approving by being in a powerful oversight position and raising no objection:

But Mr. Roberts, through a spokesman, denied having approved the destruction of the videotapes, which is under criminal investigation, and defended his record in overseeing the interrogation program.

His assertions were backed by his former staff director on the Intelligence Committee, William D. Duhnke, who said that while the senator had not objected to the tapes’ destruction, he was “in receive mode” and was simply listening to get the facts about the interrogation program, which he was learning about for the first time.

It is entirely because people like Roberts chose to define their jobs this way, because people like Roberts abdicated the oversight responsibility vested in them and decided that all they would do is be in receive mode and simply listen, that the Bush-Cheney regime was able take our most hallowed American values and grind them so comprehensively into the dust.

(To expose the shallow sophistry of Duhnke’s argument, we only need to ask: “Okay, so what did Senator Roberts do about it after he had listened and got the facts? When did he digest the facts and get out of receive mode?”)

Turds like Pat Roberts contributed to the stains we now have on our national honor — the stain, for example, of having unrepentantly practiced torture as a matter of state policy — just as much as excrescences like John Yoo.

Too bad the only shame turds like Pat Roberts will be forced to face for their actions is the shame of being forced to argue publicly: “Come on, I wasn’t an active collaborator, I collaborated only by looking the other way!”

But such is the wisdom of Obama, and not too many people seem to care. (It’s not like it matters, after all. It’s just a bunch of stains on our national honor. Sure, they aren’t indelible but, hey, why bother to cleanse our national honor?)

Here, in the spirit of Jeff Foxworthy, is an introspection guide. (Or, if you will, a litmus test for gauging pinkness.)

If you don’t think serial adulterers (or serious adulterers) need to embrace Christianity in order to rebuild their lives and marriages (and recover their golf game), you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you think that strip-searching 18 to 28-year-old Muslim men at airports does constitute racial profiling, you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you don’t consider Newt Gingrich to be a political thinker, you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you think that it’s nuts to block confirmation of the TSA chief because you don’t think TSA employees should be able to join a union, you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you think that Charles Krauthammer is a whiny, self-indulgent mental midget, you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you don’t think it’s funny to say that we should return all Gitmo detainees to Yemen, and use “Predator missiles to strike the baggage-claim area 20 minutes after they arrive”, you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you wish that Prick Cheney (and his daughter) would just be banished from a) polite society, b) the airwaves, you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you think that the American health care system is neither “working just fine”, nor “just dandy“, you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you think that Bush, not Obama, is the one responsible for the fact that the “past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times”, you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you think that the Iraq war did divert much-needed resources away from the Afghanistan war, you’re probably not Donald Rumsfeld‘s mom, but one of the army historians responsible for writing the official history of the Afghanistan war (and a member of the secular-socialist left).

If you think that Karl Rove is both a propagandist for the Republican party and an apologist for the Bush regime but certainly not a journalist, you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you don’t think Barack Obama is a “Power Hungry Arrogant Black Man, you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you think that for Dick Cheney and his cohorts to attack the president over the Christmas Day Crotchfire attack, is “ugly,” “scurrilous,” “unfounded,” and “baseless”, you might be one of the contributors to the Washington Post‘s very conservative editorial page (and a member of the secular-socialist left).

If you think it’s sleazy for Michael Chertoff to go on TV and tout the need for the federal government to buy more full-body scanners for airports, without any disclosure that “the Chertoff Group, his security consulting agency, includes a client that manufactures the machines”, you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you think this post is funny in parts, you might be a member of the secular-socialist left.

If you think that all of it is funny, “Hi Mom!”

If you think that most of it is funny, you’re definitely an atheist pinko fascist commie faggot baby-killer traitor to this country, and it behooves you to permanently switch your TV to Fox News, and to truly embrace Christianity, so that you do not continue to imperil your immortal soul, especially after Jesus went to all the trouble of dying to save you from your sinful treason.

(Here’s the scary thought: all the links are just from the past few days. Imagine if someone compiled a similar list for the last decade. Or even just 2009.)

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham makes this outrageous assertion in a bizarre piece arguing that what the country really needs at this point is for Dick Cheney to run for president in 2012:

No one foresaw Cheney’s reemergence as a force in the politics of the 21st century until it happened.

Just to put that in perspective, a new Washington Post poll asked Republicans “who in the GOP best reflects the party’s principles”. Our Dick didn’t exactly shine:

… only a single person in the poll cites former vice president Richard B. Cheney.

Maybe that’s what Meacham means? Dick is a singular force in the politics of the 21st century?

Today, after successfully winning a lawsuit against the Department of Justice, under court order, CREW received documents related to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s interview with the FBI in the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA identity. The transcript reveals that Mr. Cheney – generally credited with razor sharp intellect and recall – demonstrated an astonishing inability to recollect even simple facts much less the numerous conversations others have testified to regarding his involvement in the administration’s efforts to discredit former Ambassador Joe Wilson.Mr. Cheney’s memory frequently failed to improve, even when confronted with his own hand-written notes.

A federal judge says the FBI must publicly reveal much of its interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative.

The FBI interviewed Cheney in June 2004 as it was investigating the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity after her husband criticized the Bush administration. Both the Bush and Obama administrations said they wanted to keep the interview confidential because future vice presidents may not cooperate with criminal investigations if it became public.

But U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled Thursday that there is no justification to withhold the entire interview since the investigation has concluded. He said that limited parts could be withheld to protect national security or personal privacy.

This does, of course, mean that the terrorists are about to win. It means that our national security is about to crumble around us. And even worse, Liz Cheney is about to embark on a fresh round of mendacious TV appearances.

In a case that altered airport security worldwide, three British Muslims were imprisoned Monday for at least 30 years each for a plot to kill thousands by blowing up trans-Atlantic airliners with liquid explosives hidden in soda bottles.

The judge described the foiled suicide bombings — meant to rival the Sept. 11 attacks — as “a grave and wicked” conspiracy, likely the most serious terrorist case ever dealt with by a British court. …

Abdulla Ahmed Ali — the plot’s ringleader — was given a minimum of 40 years in prison, one of the longest sentences ever handed out by a British court. Assad Sarwar, 29, and Tanvir Hussain, 28, were imprisoned for a minimum of 36 years and 32 years respectively at London’s high security Woolwich Crown Court.

(Judge Richard Henriques) told all four men they could spend their entire lives in prison if they are judged to continue to pose a threat to the public once they have completed the minimum requirements of their sentences.
[...]
Ali’s 40-year minimum sentence is among the highest jail terms ever meted out in Britain. Although judges can sentence convicted murderers to life without the possibility of parole, it is rare for convicts to spend their whole lives in prison. Only about 25 people have ever received sentences in Britain that condemn them to die behind bars.

The harsh sentences were justified not only by the scale of the carnage these terrorists sought to unleash, but also by the apparently fallacious argument that the plot was not just aspirational but virtually operational:

Police officials said they believe the plotters were just days away from mounting their attacks when officers rounded up dozens of suspects in August 2006. The arrests led to travel chaos as hundreds of jetliners were grounded across Europe.

Investigators concede the group hadn’t managed to produce a viable bomb at the time of their arrests or purchased airline tickets, but insist the plot was serious.

“This was a viable and meticulously planned conspiracy and I conclude it was imminent,” Henriques said.

You may remember the whole brouhaha that erupted in 2006 when it was revealed that British authorities were forced to arrest the conspirators well before they felt they had finished gathering evidence:

Dick Cheney, the former US Vice President, nearly destroyed Britain’s efforts to bring the airline bomb plotters to justice, police and intelligence experts said today.

By ordering the early arrest of Rashid Rauf, the bombers’ link man in Pakistan, Washington forced British police to detain the suspects in the UK before all the evidence had been gathered, it was claimed.
[...]
Although Britain was running the investigation, including a massive round-the-clock surveillance of 200 suspects, the UK was not warned that Rauf – the al-Qaeda facilitator who kept the English plotters in touch with bomb experts and terrorism trainers in Pakistan – was going to be arrested.

“We believed the Americans had demanded the arrest and we were angry we had not been informed,” said Mr Hayman, writing in The Times today.
[...]
“The arrest hampered our evidence-gathering and placed us in Britain under intolerable pressure.”

The consensus at the time was that Dick Cheney had precipitated the arrests well before the aspirational plot came close to becoming operational. It was felt that Cheney had seriously jeopardized the possibility of securing convictions against the key plotters. And now, lo and behold, the key plotters have been successfully convicted and given long sentences.

However, this seems to have been accomplished only by judicial perversion of the facts of the case. The prosecution and the judge seem to have agreed to resolutely distort and ignore all the evidence that the plotters were very far from being able to actually carry out the plot. Police officials cheerfully testified that they believed the plotters were just days away from mounting their attacks. The judge cheerfully pronounced that the evidence had convinced him that the attacks were imminent.

However, the plotters had a liquid explosives bomb only in theory. They had not even come close to translating the theory into a bomb that actually worked. This is how far away they were:

It took government scientists 58 attempts over six months, and at a cost of 650,000 pounds ($1,078,000) to create a viable bomb using the plotters’ design, Bishop said. Henriques dismissed his argument.

If this is British Justice, it’s funny how remarkably it resembles Guantanamo justice.

First, there was Palau, seven weeks ago, agreeing to accept 17 Uighurs as “a small thing we can do to thank our best friend and ally for all it has done for Palau”, and also in grateful thanks for our willingness to offer them “up to $200 million in development, budget support and other assistance in return for accepting the Uighurs”.

Then, we learned that Bermuda had actually pipped Palau at the post, and taken four of those 17 Uighurs.

And now the coalition has expanded beyond tropical island paradises, although we still remain firmly in the island category:

Ireland will take in two detainees from the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba within the next couple of months, a senior government official said on Wednesday.

Ireland has previously said it was looking at taking in two Uzbek prisoners identified for resettlement to help facilitate President Barack Obama‘s order that the prison for foreign terrorism suspects be closed by the end of January.

(2)
Dick Cheney has always maintained that everyone at Guantanamo was the worst of the worst. (In fairness, we must point out that many people — not all of whom have enjoyed the hospitality of the U.S. government in Guantanamo — regard Dick Cheney as the worst of the worst.)

Presumably, Cheney will have an apoplectic fit at the appropriate time — either in person or through his duly constituted spokesdaughter — about how these dangerous terrorists will “receive permanent residency rights … a legal status that would allow them to work and move freely.”

It seems to me that either you have to concede that many people were transported to Guantanamo and held there for long years for absolutely no reason — no reason, that is, other than Bush and Cheney being adamantly unwilling to ever admit that any mistakes were made in the conduct of The War Against Terror — or you have to actively call on the gods to smite down the Palaus, Bermudas and Irelands of this world for providing safe haven and material support to dangerous terrorists.

Investigative reporters have been forced to fall back on lots of heavy breathing; there haven’t been even brief and tantalizing glimpses of any flesh.

This is the best the NYT could do Saturday:

Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities. They have said the program was started by the counterterrorism center at the C.I.A. shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year.

According to the NYT, “the unidentified program was devised” in “the tense months after Sept. 11, when Bush administration officials believed new Qaeda attacks could occur at any moment (and) intelligence officials brainstormed about radical countermeasures.” Moreover,

Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, said last week that he believed Congress would have approved of the program only in the angry and panicky days after 9/11, on 9/12, he said, but not later, after fears and tempers had begun to cool.

They do a bang-up job of whetting the appetite, don’t they? But it’s not exactly clear whether a single one of the seven veils is ever coming off (or when).

The Washington Post was able to add more tantalization, but not even the flimsiest of actual details:

Two former agency officials who were familiar with the program said it involved a series of proposals over several years for providing the intelligence agencies with a “needed capability,” one of the officials said. The latest proposal was aired in the spring of 2008 but was not carried out, the officials said.

Likewise the L.A. Times:

One former official said that … the program fell on a continuum between foreign intelligence collection and covert action; the latter involves taking steps to influence events overseas, and generally falls within more stringent congressional notification rules.

They do underline that the unknown details must be pretty hot stuff:

A senior congressional aide said the magnitude of the program and the decision to keep it secret should not be downplayed. “Panetta found out about this for the first time, and within 24 hours was in the office telling us,” the aide said. “If this wasn’t a big deal, why would the director of the CIA come sprinting up to the Hill like that?”

(Incidentally, I am intrigued by the L.A. Times‘ report that the CIA has “opened an internal inquiry in recent days into the history of the program and the decisions made by a series of senior officials to withhold information about it from Congress.” What exactly do they plan to investigate? Why the CIA obediently complied with Cheney’s order to withhold information from Congress? If so, maybe at some point they will eventually get around to investigating why the CIA obediently complied with orders to operate secret prisons, and to perform extraordinary renditions and torture? Or are those things not considered more objectionable than withholding information from Congress? )

Meanwhile, here’s how little flesh intrepid investigative reporters have been able to put on display so far. According to the L.A. Times:

Some former high-level CIA officials said they remained puzzled about which program could be at the center of the budding controversy.

Are they just being disingenuous? Or are there really multiple CIA programs that fit the publicly disclosed “facts”? To recap, those “facts” are:
— a counterterrorism program launched shortly after 9/11 that involved planning and training off and on from 2001 until this year, but which never became fully operational
— a program that Cheney decreed (pun intentional) must be kept secret from Congress
— a program that involved a series of proposals over several years for providing the intelligence agencies with a “needed capability”
— a program that falls on a continuum between foreign intelligence collection and covert action

Admittedly, that’s pretty thin gruel. But former high-level CIA officials are actually aware of several CIA programs that would fit?

*** Update, 6:36 a.m. ***

The Wall Street Journal claims to have the scoop:

A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.

What’s not clear is why Cheney would order the CIA to keep such a program secret from Congress. Maybe the devil is in the details?

A federal judge said Thursday that he wants to look at notes from the FBI’s interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan‘s decision to review the documents followed arguments by Obama administration lawyers that sounded much like the reasons the Bush administration provided for keeping Cheney’s interview from the public.

Obama may as well sign a presidential proclamation which all the networks and news channels are required to air every hour on the hour, saying that everything the Bush administration wanted to hide or keep secret will indeed be kept secret.

Hats off, though, to Judge Sullivan. Here are the lemons that the Obama Justice Department presented him with:

Justice Department lawyers told the judge that future presidents and vice presidents may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could become available to their political opponents and late-night comics who would ridicule them.

“If we become a fact-finder for political enemies, they aren’t going to cooperate,” Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith said during a 90-minute hearing. “I don’t want a future vice president to say, ‘I’m not going to cooperate with you because I don’t want to be fodder for ‘The Daily Show.’”

Instead of turning Jeffrey Smith into something resembling lemonade, Judge Sullivan just drily told the Justice Department they “must give him more precise reasons for keeping the information confidential”.

I would love to see this go all the way to the Supreme Court. They decided yesterday — in a 5-4 ruling that may as well be called “Let The Bastards Fry” — that “prisoners do not have a constitutional right to demand DNA testing of evidence that remains in police files.” But maybe they would find a constitutional right for vice-presidents not to be ridiculed by late-night comics?