Just a Reminder on Torture: Dick Cheney is a Liar

It's one thing, from your office of Vice President, to make an unprecedented grab for Executive Power. It's another to lie blatantly about your efforts.



Dick Cheney to ABC News, 15 December 2008:

On the question of so-called "torture", we don't do torture, we never have. It's not something that this administration subscribes to. Again, we proceeded very cautiously; we checked, we had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross. The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful, wouldn't do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal. And any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong.

Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in US Custody, December 2008:

The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) interrogation program included at least one SERE* training technique, waterboarding. Senior Administration lawyers, including Alberto Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and David Addington, Counsel to the Vice President, were consulted on the development of legal analysis of CIA interrogation techniques. Legal opinions subsequently issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) interpreted legal obligations under U.S. anti-torture laws and determined the legality of CIA interrogation techniques. Those OLC opinions distorted the meaning and intent of anti-torture laws, rationalized the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody and influenced Department of Defense determinations as to what interrogation techniques were legal for use during interrogations conducted by U.S. military personnel.

*SERE stands for Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape training, exposing US forces to techniques “based on illegal exploitation (under the rules listed in the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War) of prisoners over the last 50 years”.