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Dick Cheney keeps repeating his claims that “enhanced interrogation techniques” including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and others were effective in that they provided vital information, kept Americans safe, and saved many thousands of lives. He does this even while he continues to ignore the prior question of whether using EITs violates the Geneva Convention, and US law. Cheney also seems to think that he knows things about the use of these techniques that perhaps President Obama doesn’t. And the MSM and cable news networks seem to never tire of giving him a free platform to express his views, as though they are reasonable, credible and worthy of consideration, even if the MSM (except, perhaps, for Fox News, of course), doesn’t assert their truth.
Not too long ago, I posted a blog that posed three questions about torture. My third question bears repeating.
”And third, the history of the Bush Administration and its servants such as Alberto Gonzalez, Michael Hayden, Michael Mukasey, Donald Rumsfeld, Porter Goss, Condoleeza Rice, and Vice President Cheney has been a history of secrecy, half-truths, misdirection, and outright lies. So it’s very relevant to ask the simple question: Given that you’ve lied and dissembled to the public over a period of many years, when you tell us that waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques have worked and saved lives, why should we believe you now?”
Is there really any more to be said? Except perhaps to ask whether those who are licensed to use the public air waves should ask themselves, at some point, whether it is really newsworthy to provide a costless platform to someone whose track record for truth-telling has been so lacking, over so long a period of time? Political shading and packaging is one thing. Bare-faced lying is another, and seems not to merit repeated gifts of air time.
I dare say that former Vice President Cheney will have plenty of chance to tell his side of the story in front of a court convened (hopefully here in the United States, but, if not, certainly in some other civilized nation) to decide whether he and other high officials in the US Government committed war crimes. When that event comes to pass, there will be plenty of time for the MSM to cover, in detail, Mr. Cheney’s views that “torture” was effective, saved lives, and therefore ought to be excused by the Court. Until then, I think they need not waste everyone’s time on the views of someone who is obviously so self-interested in whether or not his own views are accepted by others, and, who, in addition, lacks any credibility for truth-telling.