Last weekend Elizabeth Cheney, former Assistant Secretary of State in the Bush Administration (and, far from incidentally, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney), held the line on MSNBC against any criticism of the Bush-Cheney "extreme interrogation" policies: "It wasn't torture....Everything that was done in this program...are tactics that our own people go through in SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape] training."
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AF9rV0tw6A[/youtube]
Cheney's appearance is part of the public-relations, Bush/Cheney legacy fightback against the confirmation of torture.She repeats the disinformation that waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Abu Zubaydah provided "incredible important and useful information that saved American lives". She echoes the warning that "national security" is endangered by the revelation of "enhanced interrogation", referring viewers to other parts of the propaganda effort, such as
the opinion piece by former Director of the CIA Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in
The Wall Street Journal.
(As for Cheney's explanation of "it's not torture": SERE training was developed for US troops in preparation for the torture that they might undergo if captured. The techniques and punishments they endured were adapated by Bush officials for use upon detainees.)
So why focus on this particular interview? Well, in 2002 Elizabeth Cheney was put forth as the State Department's official to lead public diplomacy's engagement with the Middle East. Press and web releases heralded her leadership of
the Middle East Partnership Institute to "strengthen civil society and the rule of law": "
We all – every one of us-- want to live in freedom. Not because we are American or Iraqi or Afghan or Egyptian or Saudi or Kuwaiti or Iranian."
Thus, when MSNBC interviewer Norah O'Donnell quotes the comment of current Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, "The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image in the world," it speaks directly to Cheney's supposed mission in the Bush White House.
Cheney's response? She merely recycles talking points about "the effectiveness of these programs". There is not a single word responding to the wider (and perhaps more important) challenge about how "the programs" affected the view that the rest of the world has of the US Government and its policies.
How was American partnership with other countries and peoples advanced by the breaking of international law and the exposure of US values as disposable, if not hypocritical? And how are current US efforts in and beyond the Middle East advanced by the wilful denial that there was any improper, let alone illegal, activity in the Bush War on Terror? How do Cheney's words dispel the suspicion that torture has not been put outside the boundaries of American politics and society but merely hidden away?
No doubt Elizabeth Cheney got a Thank You card from her father for her personal diplomacy on his behalf. I'm not so sure that the present State Department, putting in a great deal of effort to raise its public diplomacy profile with social media to complement high-profile initiatives by Hillary Clinton and other officials, pubt one in the mail.
Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 6:56 