Liz Cheney vs Lawrence O'Donnell: Debating torture on GMA
By John Amato Monday May 25, 2009 8:00am
The long-awaited debate over Dick Cheney's lust for torture finally took place between Lawrence O'Donnell and Mini Cheney on ABC's Good Morning America last week.
Mini Cheney is just as slick as her father when it comes to throwing out the right-wing canards on torture, and she has avoided most people who have a good grasp of the facts when she goes on the air. The fact that wingers are getting a lot of airtime to reargue their position is helpful to them because they play the word games very well. The Luntzification Effect has reaped huge rewards for them in the last decade.
Transcript via ABC:
CHRIS CUOMO: Couldn't have a more important question, really. So, let's continue this debate. We're joined by Liz Cheney, former State Department official and, of course, daughter of former Vice President Cheney and Lawrence O'Donnell, former Senate Democratic chief of staff, live from Los Angeles. Thank you to you both for being here.
LIZ CHENEY: Great to be here. Thank you, Chris.
CUOMO: So, let's get to the big question. Liz, I'll start with you. Why are we as Americans less safe right now because of President Obama's philosophy?
CHENEY: Well, I think it's in part because of his actions. I think taking the step of releasing the legal memos that laid out in great detail exactly what techniques we used in our enhanced interrogation program gave, as my dad said yesterday, the terrorists a new insert for their training manual. We know former Director of National Intelligence Mike Hayden has explained, we know that terrorists train to these techniques, so it's one thing to say we're not going to do them anymore, which as a policy is the President's right to do. But, then to take the step and say we're releasing all this information, you know, I think very clearly makes us less safe. It takes a tool out of the toolbox for every former president or future president.CUOMO: Mr. O'Donnell, is the President's instinct to play nice putting us at risk?
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL (Fmr. Senate Democratic chief of staff): Well, you know, the interesting thing about Liz and her dad's position is that a releasing of a memo has made the country less safe and so the Cheney family suggestion is now to release more of it. So, you know, you can't have it both ways. You can't say that if we release classified information it makes us less safe and now let's release more of it. That's their position and the funny thing is that Dick Cheney's argument and Liz's argument with the Obama administration is really an argument that began in the Bush administration when Dick Cheney started to lose the fights in house. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed in practices under the Obama administration.
CHENEY: You know- It's absolutely- That's actually not true, Lawrence. No. Well, Lawrence-
O'DONNELL: It was George W. Bush. It was George W. Bush who stopped waterboarding. Liz, you know who stopped waterboarding. You know who banned it. It was the Bush White House that stopped it. That's who stopped it. That's who said we're not-
CHENEY: Lawrence- Would you like to hear what I do know? 'Cause I'm happy to tell you what I do know. What I do know, actually, is that there's a big difference, as I'm sure you probably know too, I don't know if when you were in the Senate you had access to classified information. But there's a big difference between information that really does, in fact, compromise sources and methods, which is the information that was in the legal memos that were released, which is why you had four former CIA directors and the current CIA director ask the President, please don't release this information. The point that my dad has made is now that that information is out there, now that we have said to the terrorists, here's how we're going to interrogate, here's how we used to interrogate, we won't be able to do it anymore, the American people-
O'DONNELL: All-
CHENEY: Lawrence, let me finish my point.
CUOMO: Hold on, Lawrence. Let Liz finish.
O'DONNELL: Liz, you didn't let me finish so we'll play it your way. Go ahead.
CHENEY: Let me finish my point. Thank you. All we're asking is that the American people themselves have the opportunity now to decide. The American people should be able to see, because this whole debate is about whether or not enhanced interrogation kept the country safer. There are documents that show the intelligence we gained from that program and the American people ought to be able to judge for themselves. That's the main point. I think you know, it's fundamentally, you know, disingenuous for the White House and its supporters to say, well, the President can't declassify these memos or he can exercise his right to classify some but not others. I just think the American people deserve better than that.
CUOMO: Let's get past the vocabulary a little bit here, both of you, also. Enhanced interrogation. Is that just another word for torture and is that the game America should be in? That's something that seems to be danced around here in both speeches, needs to be addressed. Let me start with you, Lawrence, because you were waiting on that one. Is this just another term for torture? Is that what you think is going on here?
O'DONNELL: It is torture. This government has prosecuted people in the past for doing exactly this. But Dick Cheney believes that it's not torture and that is essential to his position. He can never acknowledge what waterboarding actually was, as practiced by the Bush administration, because it was torture. Every definition of torture is included in that. And, you know, what's really silly about it is the Cheney notion it was a very effective program, that waterboarding in these kind of torture methods were effective. If it was effective, why did they use it on only three people? If it was effective, why didn't they use it on the 500 people, 500 people that Bush/Cheney administration released from Guantanamo? 75 of whom we know, we know, we now know have gone back into the terrorism business. That was a failure of the Bush/Cheney administration to keep America safe by processing people correctly at Guantanamo. It let go a minimum of 75 people who have gone back into the terrorism.
CUOMO: Is that accurate? I mean, you hear what he's saying, have you been releasing them back?
CHENEY: No, of course, absolutely it's not accurate.
O'DONNELL: Your father said it yesterday! Liz, your father said yesterday that 14 percent of them went back into terrorism.
CHENEY: Lawrence, let me start at the beginning and go through the points that you made. Lawrence, that's true.
CUOMO: Let's get the response.
CHENEY: I'm not denying that. I'm not denying that, Lawrence, but now let me go through all of the inaccuracies in what you just said. First of all, the question of whether or not enhanced interrogation is torture has been answered. And it's been answered legally. And it's not that Cheney or President Bush or anyone else believed it to be torture. The Justice Department-
O'DONNELL: Are you afraid of calling it waterboarding? Are you afraid of the term waterboarding? Oh, okay. Great.
CHENEY: Lawrence, are you going to let me answer here? Waterboarding is not torture. And you ought- I would refer to you Attorney General Holder's testimony-
O'DONNELL: Why has this country prosecuted people for waterboarding? Why did we do that?
CHENEY: Lawrence- Because they did a number of other things in addition to waterboarding. But, let me go through the points you made. First of all, Attorney General Holder had a hard time explaining exactly what the legal definition is of waterboarding that would make it torture. We've done it to our own people. Secondly, your argument about why didn't we do it to 500 others proves our point. It was used in three cases when we had terrorists who had information about potential attacks on the United states of America. So, the notion that somehow, you know, we should have waterboarded everybody. I'm surprised that's a position you've taken this morning.
O'DONNELL: I'm not taking it! I don't think we should have waterboarded anyone because it doesn't work and there is zero evidence that it works.
CHENEY: Lawrence. Lawrence, on the issue of the people who were released from Guantanamo.
CUOMO: Hold on. Liz, finish this point. Then we got to wrap this.
CHENEY: You need to let me finish this point. There is zero evidence that we have seen. There is evidence that we haven't seen, the White House won't let us see. 14 percent of the people who released from Guantanamo already have returned to the fight and that's exactly-
O'DONNELL: Released by the Bush/Cheney administration.
CHENEY: And that's why it's so dangerous for the Obama administration to say it'll close Guantanamo and bring those people to the United States.
CUOMO: Liz, Lawrence, thank you very much. I'm cutting you both off so it's fair because we got to wrap this. But it's a great discussion for us to be having, the idea that we're having it all raises security issues. Should we be discussing it in public, having the President and former vice president.
CHENEY: And it should be noted that Lawrence thinks we should have waterboarded 500 people at Guantanamo. I think that-
O'DONNELL: I did not say that, Liz! I asked why your father didn't waterboard more people to make America safe.
CHENEY: And I told you the answer to that.
O'DONNELL: If waterboarding keeps America say, why didn't they do it to more people?
CUOMO: You're both getting me yelled at now.
CHENEY: -limited instances where we had to protect the-
CUOMO: Liz, thank you very much. Lawrence O'Donnell, Liz Cheney, thank you very much to both of you. We'll have you back.
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It's terrible the way these poor neocons keep getting interrupted by dirty non-neocons. Why won't they let them finish their talking points?
and our democrats had upheld their oath they took to uphold our constitution and law,,,, and investigated , prosecuted , impeached and jailed these bunch of criminals , we would not be having these discussing about Cheney , Bush and their crimes today..
Obama is following in the footsteps of the democrat leaders with his illegal interference into the investigations and prosecution of Bush , Cheney , Rove , Rumsfeld and other criminals from the previous administration.
Just what is the problem with the elected (democrats???) in their all out defense and protection of Bush/Cheney and their criminal crimes..
By the way just who is supporting and voting for these republican blue dogs ,, called democrats which we have/are electing in place of real democrats..
Coumo:"But it's a great discussion for us to be having, the idea that we're having it all raises security issues. Should we be discussing it in public, having the President and former vice president"
The more disgusting question is why we are even debating, in 2009, whether water boarding is TORTURE or not. And the MOST Disgusting part of this debate is that we are discussing TORTURE, done by American citizens. Can any one on this board have predicted in 2000, that some schmucks would be defending TORTURE done by Americans in 2009? This is part of the slide into the moral morass Bush has led this country down to.
"and our democrats had upheld their oath they took to uphold our constitution and law,,,, and investigated , prosecuted , impeached and jailed these bunch of criminals , we would not be having these discussing about Cheney , Bush and their crimes today.."
For you Peter 2069, the question I would ask is: With our economy crushed, our foreign policy for the last 8 years making us the FOURTH most Feared nation according to world opinion, can you give Obama a little credit for trying to save our country's economy and foreign policy before going after the Bush Monarchy?
I agree with you that these bums have to be put on trial eventually, but there are More pressing issues today. My personal feeling is that we should wait till after the 2010 elections, and if the political tide goes as expected, the next Congress would be the time to prosecute; we will have More Reps, and more importantly. More Senators to stop any Repug fillibuster attempts, or as the Repugs love to say: CLOITURE Votes.
This next paragraph is SNARK. Obama has been in office for only 4 months. You make it sound, that Obama should be like the MESSIAH( a favorite Repug talking point) and be able to fix ALL America's problems within 6 days, and then he can rest for the rest of his Presidency!
What kind of a "man" makes his daughter go on TV and defend the indefensible position of torturing other human beings? I suppose he same kind who has a "few beers," shoots an old guy in the face, then sends a friend out to lie about it.
Ya, and it takes a special kind of daughter to go on TV to defend these heinous crimes too. Depravity begets depravity.
A coward thats who!
goes to the new red herring: we did it to our own guys. That's BECAUSE it's torture and we were TRAINING them for that.
That's what the Republicans are counting on.
It's time for honest people run things again. The cheeneys must go.
Is it just me or do so many of these pro-torture Republicans sound like 9th graders teasing other kids? It's like they're playing the, "Why are you hitting yourself?" game where they grab your arm and start beating you in the head with it. Sean Hannity does the same thing when he calls Pelosi "Princess Pelosi" and then says that he can't be insulting her because "princess" is a nice thing to say.
9th grade-level insults and logic. At least it's something their base can understand.
If you like torture so much, why don't you marry it?
9th grade proverb.
"If you like torture so much, why don't you marry it?"
I almost pissed myself... too funny. And perfectly analogous to the Republican State of Mind!
Liz Vader is worried about scoring phony talking points about torturing 400 captives. I don't think a single person swallowed that one, except the depraved followers of Daddy Vader and the Busch cabal.
...best for all of our dumb(?) asses. O'Donnell deals with these bastards exactly the way they deserve to be treated.
... why are we having this 'discussion' at all?
The media is perpetuating the nonsense that waterboarding is a legitimate and acceptable tool in national security policy.
That water boarding is not torture , just as the illegal spying is to protect U.S. citizens , people will agree with it after it is pounded into their heads day after day...
Bush / Cheney's administration was just as illegal and criminal as persons like Saddam and other criminals..
The argument is stupid and Obama is just as guilty as Bush and company for not prosecuting them and saying we should move on..
Bill Clinton was impeached for a lie about his private life... Nixon was impeached for a cover-up...
Yet Bush and Cheney are being giving immunity for their crimes , war crimes , total destruction to our constitution , democracy , jobs and economy.....
And now Obama is carrying Bush/Cheney's torch of crime and destruction , supervised by Emanuel and others in his administration..
Remember Emanuel and other democrats stated that they will to forget the progressive democrats and move to the republican right-center...
The democrats are also no longer worried about our constitution , laws , citizens or the destruction of our country.
The Global Empire rules today..
For an intelligent woman, she sure portrays herself as a fool. The legal arguments for torture are nuanced at best - we did it to our own soldiers, so it cannot be torture. As a soldier who was gone through a mini-SERE course, I can tell you that there is a humongous difference between torture you can stop and torture you cannot stop. When I was in the 'torture' stage of SERE, I knew that I could stop it any time. The prisoners that have been tortured under Bush/Cheney did not have that option.
And telling people how we did the tortures does not change anything for our enemies. Pain is still pain, and knowing that you are about to be put into extreme pain and fear for your life actually makes it harder, not easier.
What legal arguments. The legal opinions of the Justice Department? The DOJ under Bush gave him anything he wanted. A memo does not hold water in a court of law. Just like Cheney was arguing that he is not part of the Executive branch because someone wrote a memo in the 60s saying so. I can write memos all day long. Isn't this partly how authoritarians gain their power through false courts?
She's intelligent? She's buying into this crap. I don't think her or her father are very bright, they've just adopted this condescending manner that makes their base think they're smart.
... and I can not imagine feeding her to the wolves every day, just to try and cover my lilly-white, flabby, chicken-hawk @ss.
But then I'm not a "Dick".
what a dad that frickin' Dick Cheney is, huh?! has his "little girl" running interception for him and taking the proverbial bullets for him. He'll always be a fucktard in my mind. ALWAYS!
We really have to shift focus here - the Cheney family business is not now nor has it EVER been, keeping America safe.
The Cheney family business is to use the government as their personal slush fund through feeding at the public trough, and making money as war profiteers. What they say on TV is the equivelant of having a big breasted woman in a commercial that sells car wax - what is presented has NOTHING to do with the real product they sell. Their product is simply making and keeping themselves rich and powerful at our expense and war profiteering is how they do it.
If they REALLY thought this country was in danger from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, Cheney never would have destroyed 20 years of intelligence work on tracking WMD's by outing a covert CIA agent and destroying all the agent's work and contacts.
If they REALLY thought this country was in danger from more terrorist attacks, they would have focused on protecting our ports and borders instead of focusing only on invading and making money off of Iraq.
Or, Liz and her hubby might have enlisted. They were of age when we got hit on 9/11, they could have fought to protect us IF they really believed there was a threat and not just a business opportunity.
But the truth is that while Cheney was wrong about everything he claimed would happen, he was remarkably right about how to profit off of it. And he has never been held accountable for that or how much he has made, and Liz stands to inherit, from his war profiteering
Liz is daddy's girl, she and her husband have both made money off of invading Iraq. She has gotten jobs at State that she never would have gotten if not from daddy. I'm sure her stock portfolio is a testament to how to make money off of death, just like daddy's is.
That would stop if daddy were prosecuted and found guilty of war crimes. And what would she inherit of daddy's blood-soaked millions if daddy's ill-gotten gains were taken from him?
Liz is doing what Cheneys do when they believe they are being threatened: attack, attack, attack.
But no one seems willing to discuss the elephant in the room: how much has this war been worth to the Cheneys? And what are they willing to do, how many are they willing to see dead, to keep the money flowing into the family accounts?
Exactly what you would expect from a lilly livered coward who took 5 deferments to avoid Vietnam yet impune veterans who fought in a war as unpatriotic and making America less safe in an effort to save his sorry, corrupt, cowardly hide.
Though Liz is no innocent herself. Defending torture to save her dad's ass and does so with chilling coldness and calculation. Attacking, spinning and lying just like daddy. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
I just wonder when the scales will fall from our collective eyes and we will stop seeing them as they want to be seen and start seeing them for what they really are and what they have willingly done to all of us in service of their greed and lust for power.
If it was reported that some poor black kid, or some homeless illegal alien, killed someone for a pair of shoes, there would be shock, but no disbelief.
And yet, here we have people who are commiting unspeakble crimes and lying through their teeth about it, all to hang onto hundreds of millions of dollars and incredible political power, and nobody seems willing to confront the fact that there is no limit to the crimes these people will commit, the lives they will willingly waste, to keep their wealth and power, and to get even more.
A kid who killed for a pair of shoes will get the death penalty while the Cheneys will never see the inside of a jail cell, and all because we don't really want to believe what they really are, and what they have been happily willing to do to get and keep their money and power.
Shorter Mini Cheney: Torture is legal because the Bush Justice Dept said so. Nah Nah Nah. [Raspberries]
training manuals because they now know that all of those photos from Abu Ghraib were actually accurate? Guess now they will send masochists to go into battle against the Great Satan who tortures captured terrorists.
But if masochistic terrorists don't get tortured...
Waterboarding is torture. Confinement in a small box is torture. Prolonged stress positions are toture. Sleep deprivation is torture. Repeatedly slamming someone’s head against a wall is torture.
The focus on “water boarding” alone is equivocation. It’s just the most egregious example of torture currently documented.
Liz would have us believe we prosecuted others, not for water boarding, but because of the other things they did in addition to water boarding. Not so, but we did those other things as well. Cheney ordered it.
Liz also wants the American people to decide. That’s why she is making the PR rounds. I don’t want the American people to decide – I want a Criminal Court to decide.
Her argument hat the US prosecuted people for waterboarding, but they also were prosecuted for doing other things so the waterboarding was no biggie, is laughable. It is like saying we prosecuted people for rape and murder, but it was really just the murder charge that got them convicted, so rape isn't really a crime.
On the other side, why do the Democrats keep putting people on air to debate torture, that buy into all the Neocon talking points? Like the notion that they used torture to prevent a ticking time bomb instead of to manufacture evidence to support the Iraq war. She claims that waterboarding the one suspect 183 times over a couple of months was in response to a specific threat they knew he had information about. Well there must have been a pretty long fuse on that timebomb that they took so long..
should be deported back to hell.
I shudder to think what goes on at their family reunions.
These horrible people roam free and spout their evil while pot smokers go to prison.
EWE ESS AYE!
Get some automatic weapons, have a few drinks, and then slaughter captive animals by the hundreds until he's either too tired or too drunk to hold his weapon, or shoots someone in the face.
You know, Good Times for Psychopaths and Serial Killers.
but if she really thinks "that terrorists train to these techniques", couldn't they just get a copy of the Army Field Manual for details?
or, is she referring to the ILLEGAL techniques...?
and, by the way, when did patreus complile/write/release that manual?
around the same time that they quit using EIT/torture, '05?
Someone needs to remind her that US special forces also "train to these techniques."
Two people like this will argue all over the map. I get in these arguments plenty and try as I might, I can never keep them focused enough to thoroughly debunk some idiot talking point. And the strategy when you start losing is always to change the subject.
Listening to the BBC, I often hear the interviewer say, "Wait, we need to get back to" or "you made a statement that ..." and pulling the conversation back to the first wrong or controversial statement.
The problem is.. that's not good TV. And with the way our public figures refuse to admit what is plain for all of us to see, the whole show would be taken up with "Can't you see that ..." and "But But But.."
The idea that our public discourse is required to make interesting TV (to sell viagra for fucks sake!) is appalling.
Saw "Idiotocracy" again last night. I'm convinced it is more of a prophecy than a comedy.
.
but I fell out before it came on. I still haven't seen it. Yet.
who can follow deductive reasoning. Whereas our pisspoor excuse for "journalists" allow one logical fallacy after another to be used to build irrational excuses for arguements.
About the only shows here that bust the BS are Olbermann, Maddow, and the real master at it, Jon Stewart.
Are the issues of getting people to come on the show. They get their lunch eaten and they'll just go on another show. No big names = no ratings = no commercials = no show.
Our public TV needs to step in and produce more shows that get debate done between opposing viewpoints.
is too busy trying to BE like the networks. Take it from someone who worked for PBS for three years.
In the formal debates which I’ve participated, once you resort to a logical fallacy to defend a position – you lose. There is nothing wrong with good rhetorical skills, but resolutions must be defended by demonstrable facts and logical arguments.
Not the case when selling soap.
Television and “Cable News” have found that conflict sells. Truth is not secondary, it’s irrelevant. Were these shows to restrict their guests to sound logic, the audience would disappear. People don’t watch Judge Judy and Jerry Springer to be informed, they watch for the train wreck.
Our news networks are now train wrecks because of this.
but, I disagree that audiences would disappear if they were forced to stick to facts and logic.
If the truth started coming out, this episode of our history would surpass 24 for bloodthirstiness, Dallas for evil nepotism and lust, Jerry Springer for sheer idiocy, The L Word for Lynn's secret fantasy life, and the OJ trials for mockery of our judicial system.
This should be our reality TV. It would be mesmerizing, if for no other reason than to watch the Cheneys turn on each other when they feel the noose tightening. They would sell each other out faster than Dick can convene secret energy task forces with his oil buddies.
to them if they get caught doing evil deeds to Murika. Since apparently breaking the laws is not an obstacle, perhaps if the 'terrists' knew that Dick was gonna' electrify their nads or pour water
into noses/mouths or even hang them by their thumbs - maybe they'd stop terrorizin' us....... #:}
The fact that we've been saying we don't torture is crazy - those black ops and CIA guys have always been doing that - they just never got caught before - or, at least it wasn't made public.
We need to find someone to run this country who will actually follow the LAWS.
When did this term start? The torture technique dates back hundreds of years, but when did "water torture" become "waterboarding"? My spell check still doesn't recognize the term.
Just a wild guess, but I'm not sure "waterboarding" was even a recognized word before George W. Bush.
They could call it 'prom night,' and it would still be torture.
... from "water torture" to "waterboarding," it makes it pretty tough to deny that you knew it was torture in the first place.
I'm also curious to see which media outlets picked up on the relatively new term because that would show their complicity as well - especially if they had previously used the term "water torture" in past decades.
You don't shop around for 'moral clarity' unless you've chosen a course of action that is illegal/unethical/immoral and are looking for an excuse.
You don't come up with euphemisms like 'enhanced interrogation techniques' without understanding that they are torture and you need to pretty them up for public consumption and a healthy dose of CYA.
There is no plausible deniability.
Etymology
While the techniques involved in waterboarding have been used for centuries, the use of the phrase "waterboarding" to describe such techniques is a relatively recent phenomenon.
The first use of the term "water boarding" in the media was in a New York Times article of May 13, 2004:
In the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a high-level detainee who is believed to have helped plan the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, C.I.A. interrogators used graduated levels of force, including a technique known as 'water boarding', in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.[26][27][28]
The American attorney Alan Dershowitz is reported to have been responsible, two days later, for shortening the term to a single word – "waterboarding" – in a Boston Globe article where he stated: "After all, the administration did approve rough interrogation methods for some high valued detainees. These included waterboarding, in which a detainee is pushed under water and made to believe he will drown unless he provides information, as well as sensory deprivation, painful stress positions, and simulated dog attacks".[29] Dershowitz later stated to New York Times columnist William Safire that "when I first used the word, nobody knew what it meant".[28]
Prior to this use, techniques that involved forcible drownings to extract information were referred to as "water cure", "water treatment", "water torture", or simply "torture".[27][28] Notably, a UPI article in 1976 used the term "'water board' torture" to describe a training technique: "[U.S. Navy trainees] were strapped down and water poured into their mouths and noses until they lost consciousness… A Navy spokesman admitted use of the 'water board' torture… to 'convince each trainee that he won't be able to physically resist what an enemy would do to him'".[28]
Darius Rejali, a professor at Reed College and the author of the 2007 book Torture and Democracy, has speculated that the creation of the word "waterboarding" was probably the result of the need for a euphemism to describe the practice. Rejali stated that "there is a special vocabulary for torture. When people use tortures that are old, they rename them and alter them a wee bit. They invent slightly new words to mask the similarities. This creates an inside club, especially important in work where secrecy matters. Waterboarding is clearly a jailhouse joke. It refers to surfboarding" – a word found as early as 1929 – "they are attaching somebody to a board and helping them surf. Torturers create names that are funny to them".[28]
/
Well, the Times has been around for quite a while (including during the Post-WWII war crimes trials) and Dershowitz, as a law professor, should be assumed to have conducted at least a modicum of research.
A more than fair conclusion is that both wished to advocate the use of something they knew was torture, but also wanted to dupe as much of the public as possible into thinking it wasn't torture.
Neocons are slime.
it's what they call a "euphemism."
"Waterboarding" is the kind of think Frank Luntz would come up with...
On not prosecuting torture?
The laughing joke is everything happened on their watch...9-11 Iraq,Afghanistan,Katrina,the collapse of our economic structures,the collapse of the republican party, the collapse of the world market, the indebtedness of America into China, the loss of 9 billion dollars to Haliburton.The no-bid contracts. The continued hemoraging of our defense budgets. The massive bailout of AIG and Bank of America and more....Bernie Madoff.
EVERYTHING WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY IS BECAUSE OF BUSH/CHENEY....WHY ARE WE WAITING...? HANG 'EM AT A SUPERBOWL AND LET PAY PER VIEW SELL IT WORLDWIDE...FOR OUR KIDS...FOR OUR KIDS....FOR OUR KIDS.... I swear the world wide revenue earned would pay off the debt....NOTHING BUSH/CHENEY DID MADE US SAFE!....NOTHING! NOTHING! NOTHING! Liz, your dad's a thief,a scoundrel,and needs to hang....FOR TREASON! MURDER! FIXING ELECTIONS!
Bad To The Bone!
... the attempt to sell off the operation of our ports to Dubai.
... Jack Abramoff.
... Bush's refusal to sign SCHIP.
You guy's hit the nail right on the head.
I have to disagree--just a bit--that everything wrong with the country happened on Bush and Cheney's watch.
Deregulation--of the sort that led to the big financial deregulation of 1999 during Clinton's administration--actually began with Reagan. The telecommunications industry, the airline industry, the financial industry. The list goes on. This is an important starting point in our recent financial collapse.
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, the Bushes, have been a blight that has been growing since Watergate, (where Rove got his start as one of the "rat-fuckers).
Cheney has often said that Nixon's mistake was in not claiming a stronger unitary executive power and telling everyone to fuck off after Watergate.
So when he got back in the White House, he immediately started reinforcing Presidential - and Vice Presidential - power, to protect themselves from their crimes by raising themselves above the law.
If Nixon had been prosecuted and jailed, think of what we would have avoided since then? No Iran-Contra, no Iraq, no 285 dead Marines in Lebanon.
The list goes on and on and on....like bloody footprints through the history of my life, these people have been doing this as long as I can remember. And when they get caught, they get a smack on the hand and are free to do it again. Nobody even dismantles their power-structure.
Dick knows that if he doesn't get away with his crimes, it will be harder to do the next time.
And Liz may very well be setting herself up to do what Palin couldn't do - be the first real Republican woman to run for president. but she'll need daddy's power structure in place.
Ya. It's bad. the empire strikes back, and it may not end well, the way it does in the movies.
... forged documents
... domestic propaganda unit at the Pentagon
Yes I'd get pay for view for that.
It NEVER had anything to do with keeping us safe. It has always been about the money and power.
The Cheney's are global war profiteers.
They should never be allowed to make an arguement until their blood-soaked profits have been thoroughly scrutinized.
But don't hang them, that would be torture. Waterboard them to death.
"The fact that wingers are getting a lot of airtime to reargue their position is helpful to them because they play the word games very well. The Luntzification Effect has reaped huge rewards for them in the last decade."
i would argue the illegal talk radio monopoly, invisible to most thinking americans, gave luntz and rove the coordinated uncontested repetition needed to legitimize the absurd and irrational talking points and framing. and the rest of the corporate media with ownership is always ready to jump on that republican deregulation bandwagon.
600 stations with limbaugh on have been selling CLUB GITMO T Shirts for years. rove's political 2x4 has been operating practically unnoticed for 20 years since reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine, with hardly a peep or protest from progressives. - it's no wonder the bush admin thought they could get away with it and now have so many defenders on the tube- they know the talking points they repeat have already been prechewed from 1000 radio stations 24/7 for years.
and soon, if dems don't begin radio demonopolization, the RW blowhards will once again show how effective their giant soapbox is for getting compromises on supremes.
CHENEY: Lawrence, are you going to let me answer here? Waterboarding is not torture. And you ought- I would refer to you Attorney General Holder's testimony-
what testimony is she talking about?
and that last dig: CHENEY: And it should be noted that Lawrence thinks we should have waterboarded 500 people at Guantanamo.
yeow... credit due... saw it coming though...
i like odonnell's passion, but he lets it rule at the wrong times...
... isn't so much a dig as a slider. O'Donnell postulated that if the prisoners are as dangerous as CHENEY claims, then waterboarding all of them would make sense.
Liz successfully mangles that and uses it as her tagline, and that's probably something that will stick in the public consciousness.
Bottom line is, we continue trying to 'debate' these people on a point that shouldn't be subject to debate: the use of torture.
twist the words of an opponent because her argument is weak
He never leads, he always lets them define the arguement. What difference does it make if he refutes her bullshit but she's allowed to continue to drive the arguement?
Until we shift the focus and DEMAND scrutiny of the Cheney's finances, we will never get to the bottom of what their real motivations are.
Because she was a junior, political/propaganda appointee at State?
What the Fuck!
I agree with this observation and I think it needs to be aggressively pursued. Her comments strongly suggest that someone (hmmm, now WHO would that be??) has communicated classified information to Liz Cheney in clear violation of the law.
...nepotism.
why is she never busted for that or anything else?
No debate on prosecuting torture so they will cover it up.
When the new AG said we are a nation of laws and nobody is above the law, he was lying.
TORTURE IS ILLEGAL! And it endangers our troops and the nation. It is a serious threat to our nations very foundations. Hench it is and always has been considered one of the most serious of crimes carrying severe penalties.
Honoring troops and veterans this Memorial Day = Prosecuting torture and war crimes!
Seem to be the coldest family on the planet. And I wish someone would explain why releasing documents on how we interrogate makes the other side stronger. I imagine if I got caught during wartime, the other side would set me up in a nice little lakeside cottage for the duration. Or maybe that's if I win the lottery, and life would be more like Rambo 2. ugh. time for a cocktail.
Liz : "Mmmm, that turkey sure looks good!"
Dick: "That's not for dinner. That's for the family photo."
Liz : "We're not having turkey?"
Dick: "Uncle Alberto did some research. There's no express guarantee of turkey on Thanksgiving."
Liz : "Well, at least Uncle Jay didn't write a memo calling meatloaf the same as turkey."
Dick: "Well, it is, you know, if you were to grind up the turkey meat and combine it with the stuffing."
Liz : "I don't want to hear that."
Dick: "Is that how I raised you? You sound like one of those Democratic Socialists."
Cheeney bots.
lying, evil fucks
uh liz, i suggest you read the transcripts from the japanese war crime tribunals
water boarding is listed as torture...its status never changed
Right in her face that her father is a criminal, that her father should spend the rest of his life in jail, that her father is a bad person and a horrible human being, that her father is a traitor to this nation and it's values.
Man, this is one evil ass family! Darth Vader could take lessons from this clan.
Liz and Dad are souless, and Dick never served in the armed forces. He ran like the coward he is when he had his chance. He only fights from a fortified bunker. Is this female version of Dick on her way to politics? Why is she being trotted out on every show and given legitimacy as a pundit? I thought nepotism was frowned on in this country.
"CUOMO: You're both getting me yelled at now."
By whom?
1. The Cheneys do not care how many have died because of their lies.
2. The Cheneys believe they have the right to do these things.
3. The Cheneys believe that lying is acceptable if it works for them.
4. The Cheneys believe they are part of the global elite and are entitled to all the wealth and privelege they can get their hands on, at whatever the cost.
5. The Cheneys believe that other people should fight and die for the wars they decide are necessary.
6. The Cheneys believe that other, lessor people should take the fall for them if they are threatened.
There is never a reason to engage these people on their terms, as O'Donnell attempted to do. Because engaging them on their terms means accepting their positions about themselves, which inherently removes them from accountability for their acts.
Never discuss whether or not it was torture with Liz, only discuss why she believes laws do not apply to her family, and how much money her family has made from war.
I'm sure if you asked Liz about Cheney's war profiteering http://www.rawstory.com/news/2005/Cheneys_sto...
she would say you were making the country less safe by simply bringing it up.
is not the same one we live in.
We don't believe the US Treasury is our personal piggy bank.
We don't believe the little people are here to serve us.
We don't belive other people's children should fight and die in unnecessary wars started for our war profiteering.
We don't believe there should be one system of justice for the little people - that's us - and none for the rich and powerful - that's Liz and her daddy and their friends - except for what they agree to.
We also actually bought into that whole Constitution thing.
And, we don't believe the force of the US Government is here to safeguard our personal fortunes at the expense and to the exclusion of everyone else.
Whereas, if the US Gov doesn't safeguard the Cheneys in that manner, then Liz's country really is less safe. And anything and everything should be done to ensure that Liz's personal country is always safe, even if the rest of us go down in the process.
She lives in a different country, all right. In fact, I think she's in a whole different universe. And she thinks she's supposed to inherit the throne, or at least the power behind it.
Someone needs to ask the Cheneys if they think it's ok to use waterboarding on our troops.
they do it to our troops at SERE training. Didn't you know? That's why it isn't torture, because they do it to our troops, and our troops are all volunteers, therefore, (really, I watched a Cheney aide use this as a justification), since our troops volunteer, if we waterboard them, it is, ipso facto, not torture.
This is a myth that can be busted by asking any SERE graduate - the training procedure does not make a soldier proof against the procedure or any other form of coercion, just provide the grounding so that they understand what they are feeling/experiencing and how to cope with it.
True. The SERE program neither advocates nor disproves any torture technique. As you say, it is training on how to cope with what they may be subjected. The water torture is meant to demonstrate to those volunteers that they will be unable to physically resist this torture, and how to cope with this fact the best they can.
but it wasn't when my son went through it. He graduated from SERE not that long ago, during the height of Cheney's interference with our intelligence agencies and his insistence on instituting torture.
I will not discuss what my son told me, but I believe you are wrong.
I do think SERE, which has been around a long time, was once used as you describe it, but, as with so many other things, I believe at least part of the SERE program was perverted for other means.
There have been reports that two men in charge of at least one SERE school were using the troops who passed through to reverse engineer torture methods from Vietnam and other wars and who then became "military contractors" and took the methods devised to our prisons in Iraq and Gitmo and used them on detainees, killing some of them in the process.
And, you know what, I'm not buying that whole, "The water torture is meant to demonstrate to those volunteers that they will be unable to physically resist this torture, and how to cope with this fact the best they can" arguement.
That's like saying we should shoot our trainees to show them that they can't resist a bullet. What a load of sadistic crap. How is breaking someone supposed to make them strong? That is completely illogical.
We didn't torture our own troops in WWII before we sent them to Normandy, or Berlin, or the South Pacific, in spite of the fact that we knew what the Germans and Japanese were doing to prisoners. We reinforced our values and our laws to our troops, we taught them the basics of the Geneva Conventions, we treated our POW's better than they treated us, and we were stronger because of that.
Torturing our own doesn't make us strong. It encourages the most sadistic among us to stay where their sadistic urges can be satisfied, and it eventually turns our military into an organization that rewards and shelters them.
The orders to torture came from the top, from Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and they should be held accountable, but, how is it that we had enough "bad apples" in our troops that we had so many people willing to carry out those orders in so many places?
This is sick.
Liz "Let the American people be the judge (on my father)..."
They have judged him. Hence the 16% approval rating.
You want to run with that one, little piggy (Liz)?
A straw house is a straw house.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrBx6mAWYPU
What's to fucking debate? STFU already. You lost and dad's going to jail.
If you fuckers were black, you'dve been in prison ages ago.
So much sh*t in one six-minute clip--Cheney:"Waterboarding is NOT torture," the hosts: "...we shouldn't even be having this discussion...(???)"--WTF???
And I'm "trapped" at my motel by a Memorial Day parade going up DeSoto in Reseda. I think I'll go outside and watch the festivities that are outside my door.
Happy Memorial Day to all. Thanks you to those who have served this country so that I have the freedom to say, Fuck You Dick, and your miserable spawn!
Everybody knows that Dicky loves him some agony inflicted upon powerless people
as much as he likes shooting caged animals!
What a guy!
That twisted dick also believes that "other people should fight and die for the wars they decide are necessary" - [thanks roooth].
How did Liz have classified information that even a US senator didn't have access to?
Seems like Liz disseminated "Classified Information", and as such a dissemination is considered TREASON, some female might be cooking her own goose by going on TV daily, and making a case for TREASON that much easier
Coumo:"But it's a great discussion for us to be having, the idea that we're having it all raises security issues. Should we be discussing it in public, having the President and former vice president"
The more disgusting question is why we are even debating, in 2009, whether water boarding is TORTURE or not. And the MOST Disgusting part of this debate is that we are discussing TORTURE, done by American citizens. Can any one on this board have predicted in 2000, that some schmucks would be defending TORTURE done by Americans? This is part of the slide into the moral morass Bush has led this country down to.
"and our democrats had upheld their oath they took to uphold our constitution and law,,,, and investigated , prosecuted , impeached and jailed these bunch of criminals , we would not be having these discussing about Cheney , Bush and their crimes today.."
For you Peter 2069, the question I would ask is: With our economy crushed, our foreign policy for the last 8 years making us the FOURTH most Feared nation according to world opinion, can you give Obama a little credit for trying to save our country's economy and foreign policy before going after the Bush Monarchy?
I agree with you that these bums have to be put on trial eventually, but there are More pressing issues today. My personal feeling is that we should wait till after the 2010 elections, and if the political tide goes as expected, the next Congress would be the time to prosecute; we will have More Reps, and more importantly. More Senators to stop any Repug fillibuster attempts, or as the Repugs love to say: CLOITURE Votes.
This next paragraph is SNARK. Obama has been in office for only 4 months. You make it sound, that Obama should be like the MESSIAH( a favorite Repug talking point) and be able to fix ALL America's problems within 6 days, and then he can rest for the rest of his Presidency!
Bush just went ahead with 'resting on Day 7' and figured the labor of the first six days was implied.
From what I have been made to understand, isn't a lot of what the previous administration did have statutes of limitations....I realize there are no statutes of limitations for murder, but remember, supposedly the previous administration didn't 'commit that'...
(snark)
Only thing that video showed me was - more of the same. The neo-cons constantly interrupt others who have a different point to make, and make sure the conversation gets turned their way.
The moderators are really no help in the matter either. As soon as O'Donnell is able to make a salient point, Cheney is allowed to butt in and as good ol' St. Ronnie said, 'oh here we go again'.
And it definitely would be interesting to know JUST WHAT she knows, and if it IS 'classified' info...that should be brought up..wait, she's Cheney's daughter, after all.....so it must be okay. (Is Cheney himself - even though he is NO LONGER VP getting "Classified" info as well???? It doesn't matter if it is illegal, doncha know....)
gma IS a form of torture.
So which show is it anyway that that smarmy prig matt lauer is on?
My father ended up a brevetted General in the Texas Army National Guard. I have fun being the General's boy. But I would never expect to be interviewed about killing Germans. Is this a joke? Now if you go to trooperkeeton.com, click on the cavalry man over the gate cap, that is what is a joke. Should you go there and want to check out a more serious subject, click on the link for The Blog and evaluate the torture pictures I received via email the other day.
Yes Virginia, water boarding is torture. It is a form of Chinese water torture. Aside from busted blood vessels here and there the average moron sees no significant external damage to the captive. Unlike the army training drills the victim does not know if he or she will take in enough water to be suffocated or not. No Virginia slow drowning is not fun.Tk
It's only torture if you're the one it's being done to.
If you were being waterboarded, I would think you were being tortured. Of course I also believe that the person inflicting the technique is permanently damaged by their participation.
A coward that's who
He kicks ass whenever he debates right-wing hacks like Cheney.
Gotta love him!
Count how many times she calls that twisted dick 'my dad'. She should be asking for mercy, not arguing with everyone.
I wouldn't leave cheney with my children long enough to go to the store. If she wants sympathy she needs to stop endorsing waterboarding and torture.
Miss Cheney, I hope you're reading this very carefully:
WATERBOARDING IS TORTURE!!!
Once more, even more slowly so you can comprehend:
WA-TER-BOAR-DING IS TOR-TURE!!!!
the cheneys are nothing but greedy lying opportunists. Dick Cheney-after profiteering from haliburton on the blood of the U.S. troops, he's authoring a book deal with a two million dollar signing deal.
Liz probably want's to get into politics for the same reason....drain taxpayer dollars into the cheney family fortune. All while both of them trash the current leader of this country. True cheney patriotism!
they must think voters are stupid by calling torture "enhanced interogation" and then claiming the two are not equal.
Dick Cheney a cowardly, 5 deferment, warmonger, chickenhawk!
Liz Cheney: what are her credentials? None.
Dick Cheney: what are his credentials? EX-vp now out of office, shot his buddy in the face thinking he was a quail, advocates torture and Rush Limbaugh.
I don't normally use profanity but why on effing earth is Liz Cheney being given a platform to spew her ill-informed, unintelligent BULLSHIT? WTF? SHE IS A NOBODY with the (mis)fortune of being born a Cheney. Just like Bush jr. - a nobody born into royalty. Geesh.
Yes, COWARDICE lives, Yes classified information and what access did this one have?
Tortue does not work DUH! these unknowns of the Middle East Taught us do these Right Wing MORONS believe that they are the only ones with access to these methods of Torture.
The Traitors of America will not just will NOT accept the TRUTH.
Ask Mancow of Chicago if waterboarding TORTURE, how about Mr. Ventura a ex Navy Seal. DUH! the Cowards of America NO viable facts just LIES LIES and more LIES.
You must have missed the split-fork tongue that flicked whenever she opened her mouth. She's 100% in it of her own volition now. she should be prosecuted for dissembling and prevarication.
Greetings Comarades in Amerkika from Colonel Blodalisova!
Inspired by the glorious and free flowing propaganda of your courageous Vice President, Mr. Dick Cheney, we have decided here in Fkedupistan to begin a program we call, Enhanced Political Debate Technique.
Enhanced Political Debate Technique has been proven to effectively and successfully conclude all political debates.
By simply putting a bullet into the back of the head of our political opponents, we have succeeded in keeping Fkedupistan safe from all enemies, domestic and foreign for 8 long years!
Some opponents of Enhanced Political Debate Technique say it is murder and a crime. We say, we only apply this technique to individuals who want to harm us.
And our distinguished comrade in Fkedupistan's legal department, Mr. Oulaf, assures us that this techinique is completely legal.
Most importantly, Enhanced Political Debate Technique has a 100% record of success! We say to our opponents, "Why are you on the side of the enemies of the state?"
Thank you comardes Dick and Liz for showing Fkedupistan the path to true democracy. We eagerly await the new Haliburton gas pipeline that will bring peace and prosperity to Fkedupistan!
Courage Comrades!
Look at dear little cheeney daughter in her pretty pink dress, and her little girl voice. All she needs is bunny rabbit ears and then i could never let them prosecute her daddy for crimes against America.
Refuse to serve jury duty in protest of our lack of justice system. If we can't prosecute war criminals but will send drug addicts to privatized prisons that make money off body counts, forget it. Next time I'm called, I will say that I refuse to come up with a guilty verdict for anyone, regardless of crime or evidence.
Good one. there's a way to protest effectively and peacefully.
I agree that if cheeny and the Busch cabal are not prosecuted there is no justice system worth serving at that point, neither by paying taxes to support it, nor by serving jury duty for it.
At first, I thought this was a brilliant idea....but who would that leave to serve on a jury??? Probably the most authoritarian robotic sheeple on the planet.....you know, rethugs.
Hehehe. True. But a few protesters would get a lot of attention and make a valid point, without affecting the balance too bad.
If cheeney worms his way free of federal law and escapes prosecution the whole house of cards we call democracy will fall. That's not the time line we want to be on...
Waterboarding was done to way more than 3 people and both those pinheads know that. o'donnell is making inaccurate statements just like cheney. the bush regime DID NOT stop torture ... that bullshit ... there are reports that the torture still goes on. ... so they are both full of it ...
Liz is just another member of the Cheney crime family. She is out trying to cover her father's ass and keep him out of jail. Her shrill voice and brazenness and loudness add to her repulsiver presence. She is confused. I don't know why these loud mouthed know-it-alls who are really ignorant of the facts are given so much time to spread their propaganda and twisted version of the truth on tv.
Not only do the republicans embrace theocracy and water torture, but they reject democracy. Now that's scary.
Death to democracy comes wrapped in a pretty pink dress.
OK, i don't have to like it, but i can understand the fact that republicans favor unlawfulness, torture, preemptive assassination, preemptive annihilation, invasion and occupation, and they reject morality and common sense, but they also reject democracy, and that is unacceptable in any America and down right frightening.
Waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding is not torture.
kerplunk (as the floorboard pulled out from under his feet and Cheney is hung by his neck)
and claim that Cheney broke the law as an act of civil disobience!
SKANK. Torture lover.
Cheney just wrote a book and I think that's why he getting a lot of air time. His approval rating of 17% dropping, with many people telling him to shut up. The illusion that he is trying to create is all he has. It took 3 years after the war top prosecute all the Japanese and Germans for war crime because they were busy rebuilding the country.
There is no way anyone can defend Chinese water torture as not being torture and changing the word so that the torture part is remove doesn't make it any more legal. The Cheney have a very weak case when this goes to trial, and with his very low approval rating and admittance of torture, there is no way that this is not going to trial!!!
We did Cuomo get his questions the Drudge Report. Talk about framing a question from the right wing narrative
She truly sickens me. The reason being that her father is an indefensible villain but she seems like a relatively intelligent person who has simply sold her soul. I don't know whether it is just a weak and pathetic personality, or because she just doesn't want her father go to prison, but watching her makes me feel oddly hopeless.
Did Dick Cheney's spawn really have to be this sickeningly soul-less? Just empty, face-lifted versions of the scummish crony? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
She is a disgrace.
She looks like an unmade bed. She's falling apart. Her and the Dickster have nobody to back them up, now. She's on automatic pilot, and just phoning it in.
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