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Former Vice President Dick Cheney has gone too far with his latest attack against President Barack Obama, according to Sen. Carl Levin. "The comments of the former vice president were totally out of bounds. I don't think he has any credibility left with the American people," Levin told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

Cheney accused Obama of "dithering" on making a decision to send more troops to Afghanistan during a speech in D.C. Wednesday. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs rejected that criticism Thursday.

"What Vice President Cheney calls dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform and to the American public," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "I think we've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously."

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Sen. Carl Levin isn't calling for a withdrawal out of Afghanistan, but he is the head of the Armed Services Committee, and what he's saying is that the Afghani people should protect themselves and that there should be a surge in Afghan forces.

Levin, D-Mich., urged the Obama administration to expand Afghan forces to 240,000 troops and Afghan police to 160,000 officers by 2013.

Key Congressional Democratic leaders told the administration this week that they want to see detailed plans for the war before agreeing to bolster U.S. forces in Afghanistan. A request for more troops could come within weeks from the top American commander.

Levin first warned of his reservations about more U.S. troops last week after a visit to the region.

Here's what Levin said in a presser.

Levin: The best way to achieve that goal in my judgment is that we increase and accelerate dramatically our efforts to support the Afghan security forces in their efforts to become self sufficient in delivering security to their own nation before we consider whether to send more US combat forces above the levels already planned for the next few months.

Andrea Mitchell questions Levin on his opinion and he states that since the Afghanistan people already hate the Taliban this should be an easier task and he knows that our "footprint" in the region is only used as a recruiting tool for terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.

It gets old hearing that we have to train their troops, because that's what Bush said his entire presidency. And the training in Iraq never lived up to what Bush and Cheney wanted us to believe, but this isn't that administration and Levin's proposal is better than us sending another 20,000 US troops over there.

Counting Crows – Mr. Jones

It appears that National Security Advisor James Jones is hitting the trifecta of bobblehead shows, appearing on Face the Nation, Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday. I’m guessing that he’ll be discussing North Korea and running defense over the insane GOP talking points.

Of course, the rest of the shows look like nothing more than partisan navel-gazing. My Deaniac heart thumps loudly that Howard Dean will be on This Week, only to sink at the thought of Dean being forced to appear next to Newt Gingrich. Ugh. Carl Levin will be on Face the Nation, but with the perennial Republican guest Lindsey Graham. Maybe Bob Schieffer will ask Huckleberry how he feels about being the only GOP vote for Sonia Sotomayor. I'd like to think that Fareed Zakaria will have a good interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but given that one of the topics on the table is the non-existence of Chelsea Clinton's engagement, I'm not too optimistic.

ABC's "This Week" - Former national Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - National Security Adviser James Jones; Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Jones; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J.

NBC’s “The Chris Matthews Show” – Panel: Rick Stengel, Trish Regan, John Heilemann, Kathleen Parker. Topics: Who is responsible for the heated rhetoric over President Obama's ethnicity? How has Nixon's reputation recovered? Is Clinton seeing the same resurgence? Meter Questions: Will outspoken fringe players dominate GOP for the rest of Obama's term? YES: 9 NO: 3; If unemployment is still high next year, will Obama revise his tax proposals? YES: 11 No: 1.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and John Cornyn, R-Texas; Republican pollster Bill McInturff; Democratic pollster Peter Hart; Linda Douglass, communications director for the White House's Health Reform Office; Ed Gillespie, former Bush White House counselor.

CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” - Fareed Zakaria sits down with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Kenya for her most exclusive interview yet. How did former President Bill Clinton end up on the mission to secure the two journalists' freedom in North Korea? Plus her views on Iran, Afghanistan, health care, and Chelsea's hand in marriage.

"Fox News Sunday" - Jones; Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Maj. Gen. Carla Hawley-Bowland, commanding general of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the U.S. Army's North Atlantic Regional Medical Command.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

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Dick Cheney and his daughter have been on a literal media blitz calling for the release of memos they claim would prove torturing prisoners prevented future attacks on America. Former C&L'er Steve Benen joined Rachel Maddow to weigh in on Carl Levin's debunking of the tag team's talking points. As Steve notes in his blog at Washington Monthly:

But perhaps Levin's most newsworthy remarks referenced the classified materials Cheney believes document the alleged terror attacks prevented by torture.

"Mr. Cheney has also claimed that the release of classified documents would prove his view that the techniques worked. But those classified documents say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of the abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified so that people can judge for themselves what is fact and what is fiction."

It's worth emphasizing that Levin is, of course, privy to the same materials Cheney has been talking about.

His remarks are hardly surprising, but it's nevertheless helpful to hear Levin reject the most common claim Cheney has pushed for months now -- the documents in question don't say what Cheney thinks they say.

As Steve points out during the interview, if this is going to come down to who has more credibility with the public, it ain't gonna' be Dick Cheney.

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From The Rachel Maddow Show May 14, 2009. Rachel lays out the time line for how torture was used in the run up to the invasion of Iraq and to justify the invasion after the U.S. had already gone in.

MADDOW: But we begin with a major development in what we know about former Vice President Dick Cheney and his role in authorizing torture. Over the past three months, there has been a steady stream of new information released about the Bush administration‘s torture program. Today, the dots started to connect—all the way up to the office of the former vice president of the United States.

Within three months after the attacks on 9/11, the Bush administration began making the case for invading Iraq, because Iraq, they said, was connected to al Qaeda. Vice President Cheney went on “Meet the Press” and said that Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, met with Iraqi officials before the attack.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD CHENEY, FMR. U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Well, what we now have that‘s developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that—which has been pretty well confirmed, that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: It‘s been pretty well confirmed, said the vice president. In fact, that report turned out to be false.

But we now know that something else was going on in secret—inside government—while Dick Cheney was making those public pronouncements, like that one that you just saw from December 2001. According to the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, Carl Levin, as far as back as December 2001, the Pentagon was seeking information from the agency that runs the SERE program. The SERE program trains U.S. troops to resist the kinds of torture that were used by communist forces to get false confessions from American troops for use in propaganda.

Continue reading »

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Carl Levin shoots down Kit Bond over the Republicans Johnny-come-lately dissent to the Senate Armed Services Committee report and the release of more pictures of abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bond: First Carl I would say that there's a very strong dissent from five members of your committee who said that your report was fallacious, it's counter productive and your report itself was the one that offers the greatest opportunity for negative publicity and the high level abusive techniques that you talk about.

[.....]

Levin: I've got to answer that one thing because I'm chairman of the committee. There was no objection to this report. Seven Republicans were there when we voted on it. Not one dissented. We had months and months of opportunity for any dissenting views. That's the report. It's a unanimous report of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. McCain, Sen. Lindsey Graham and other Republicans specifically were there when this approved. Had every opportunity to file a dissent. Did not do that and it seems to me that it is clearly the action of a bi-partisan Senate Armed Services Committee.

So they now a few Republicans to say they disagree. They've got a right to do so but they had an opportunity which they didn't use.

John Amato:

Carl Levin draws the torture line from Gitmo to Abu Ghraib and blames Bush administration officials including Donald Rumsfeld, who authorized torture and passed it around.

Levin: and so the threat to our troops came when these techniques, these abuse and coercive techniques were authorized by top level administration officials, Rumsfeld specifically authorized these kinds of techniques; nudity, use of dog handlers. In Guantanamo, they went directly to Abu Ghraib. Our bi-partisan report, 200 page report directly connects the authorization for the use of these techniques in Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib. That is what endangers our troops.

And a typical practice by Bush apologists to to attack the messenger which is Carl Levin and the SASC report. It passed in committee without any dissents with all Republicans signing off on it, but now we have the disgraceful Kit Bonds of the right lying about the report openly. And when Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others embraced torture---they brought all this negative publicity on themselves and shame to our country.

Just a heads up, Chris Anders, Senior Legislative Counsel for the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office will be joining us at 1PM/4PM today to discuss what was revealed in the CIA torture memos, the SASC report and what are the next steps to take now that we have these important memos---accountability efforts on the Hill, both for a select committee and an independent prosecutor.
Carl Levin said about the new report:

In a statement, SASC chairman Senator Carl Levin said the report "represents a condemnation of both the Bush Administration's interrogation policies and of senior Administration officials who attempted to shift the blame for abuse - such as that seen at Abu Ghraib, GuantÁnamo Bay and Afghanistan - to low-ranking soldiers.

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Keith talks to John Dean about whether we might ever see prosecutions for war crimes after Cheney's public admissions and the findings from the Senate Armed Services Committee. He rightfully notes that a commission to determine if there were any crimes committed is just a way to kick the can down the road and make sure no one is prosecuted for anything before the statute of limitations runs out. It's a sad state of affairs when we have to be wondering yet again if this country is going to allow crimes to go unpunished for political reasons rather than caring about the rule of law. We still have a two tiered system of justice in America. One for the rich and politically connected and another one for everyone else.

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Maddow: One of the things I think has been so I guess challenging to the American debate about this is that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have essentially argued that they have legalized waterboarding. That they have legalized torture. They think that the actions of their Justice Department made things like waterboarding not war crimes any more. Are they right?

Levin: You can't just suddenly change something that's illegal into something that is legal by having a lawyer write an opinion saying that it's legal. Things can't work that way or else someone could get a lawyer to say a crime is not a crime and then that would be a defense. That is not a defense and I just, I was astounded frankly when I heard the Vice President of the United States sort of just blandly, blithely saying that oh he thought that was an appropriate thing and yes he was involved in the discussions about it.

Senator Levin, why are you shocked about this when no one who has been paying any attention to what this administration has done is shocked? And can we get a straight answer that there should be prosecutions and not hedging?

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As Heather wrote earlier, Shelby is threatening a filibuster if there is an Auto rescue plan. At least Carl Levin calls him out over his obvious conflict of interest with the big three American automakers since his state went out of its way to bring foreign auto makers to Alabama. I've been calling for someone to call him out on this publicly since he has been given plenty of air time to attack Detroit while never revealing that the companies in his home state would stand to profit the most out of the bankruptcy is is pushing for.

Wallace: Sen Levin, you said the other day that southern lawmakers like Senator Shelby and you have mentioned his name. have an agenda because they have foreign, non union car companies in their states who will benefit if Detroit goes down, do you really believe that"

Levin: I think there would be some companies that would benefit if Detroit goes down I'm sure. They're competitors. A number of them have opened up plants in the south which they have a right to do, but there will be winners and losers and the big losers will be the American people here

Wallace: Do you have as Sen Levin has an agenda to help your local foreign auto makers?

Shelby: I don't have an agenda, but I'll tell you this, in the south, from South Carolina to Kentucky, Geprgia, Tennesse, Mississippi, Texas, we have about 124,000 people employed in the automible industry. They are competing. They are competing. GM, Ford, Chrysler can compete, but not under the model that they have now.

Notice he never tells the audience what car companies that are in his own state. He just brings up the number of people being employed.

UPDATE: He does remind me of Herbert Hoover too.

Download | play    Download | play   (h/t Bill W)

Bless my soul, they actually talked about the Georgian/Russian conflict on Late Edition this morning!  ** Nobody can claim that CNN is not on top of the issues of the day.  As Jerome a Paris, who wrote this great article, put it in an email to me:

Neocons are people that see danger everywhere and seem to crave military solutions in all cases. They endlessly blather about how we need to stand firm against bullies or other threats (Russia being near the top of the list), and protect our brave allies on the front lines, and along with them, democracy, freedom and our honor. They mock cowardly Europeans who think appeasement (read - any diplomacy) might have a chance. They fuel conflicts and perpetually tout military options.

And yet, whenever given the opportunity to stand up to their words (and sent other people to fight, of course, they don't do that themselves), the results are surprisingly poor.

Case in point, Sen John Cornyn, who had to wrestle with some serious pretzel logic on McCain's position to kick Russia out of the G8.

BLITZER: Do you agree with Sen. McCain, Sen. Cornyn, that Russia should be kicked out of the G8?

CORNYN: Well, I think, you know, we're not at that point, uh, yet. I think certainly - not over this incident, but I do think we need to recognize Russia for what it is and of course it was the Soviet Union that invaded Afghanistan back in the late 70s that has created so much hardship for the Afghan people, so much lack of stability in that area, so I think, you know, Russia is a superpower. They have the responsibilities of a superpower and they cannot claim that they are on any kind of equal basis or really legitimately threatened by Georgia from a military standpoint. But we do need to...we do need a resolution here, and lest this thing spin out of control.

Um, Sen. Cornyn? Have you heard of Iraq?   I hate to be pedantic about this, but by your standards, the US should be kicked out of the G8.   You really want to go down this road?

For more about the Georgian/Russian conflict, see this article: The warmongers have lost yet another war.

** Correction: I initially lambasted CNN for their coverage of the conflict, but it has been brought to my attention that they did spend a significant portion of their program on it this morning.  My apologies to CNN for the incorrect characterization.

Full transcript:

Sen. John Warner, (R-Va.), Chairman, Armed Services Committee:

"The problem as I see it right now is that we put our whole case, resting our case, on the ability to bring in the Iraqi people and train them in police, national guard, army duties and security forces. And there we're doing an all-out battle. We visited, Senator--I mean--excuse me. Senator Levin and I, Petraeus, saw his team being put together. But, Tim, the raw material is lacking in the willpower and commitment after they receive this training to really shoulder the heavy responsibilities."

This is one of the fundamental problems with the Iraq occupation. If the Iraq people are too scared to secure their own country, then how is it possible to ever have our troops withdraw? The security needed to protect the election process is tenous at best even if it does go off as planned. The administration has not been able to train Iraqi's adequately enough:

Sen. Joe Biden, (D-Del.), Ranking Member, Foreign Relations Committee:

"The training program--I came back with Lindsey Graham, appeared on your show about eight months ago, and said it was a joke. There was no training program."

Ziaspace Video not currently available.

The insurgency, which are primarily Iraqi's themselves, seems to have struck enough fear into the general population to make sure that they will not police their own country. It's just another failing of Rumsfeld. Should he be fired? Of course not. It seems it's better to stick with a losing hand than go in a different direction.

Senator Levin:

"If I thought a change at the top of the Pentagon would change the policy of this administration, I'd be all for it."

Senator Warner:

"We're at war. And you're right, Dick, we should not at this point in time entertain any idea of changing those responsibilities in the Pentagon."

Senator Lugar:

"He should be held accountable, and he should stay in office."