8 YEARS ON THE DARK SIDE.

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Published on Saturday, December 20, 2008 by the Boston Globe
8 Years on the Dark Side
by Derrick Z. Jackson
VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney said this week that he directly approved waterboarding to torture terror suspects. "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared," Cheney told "ABC News." Asked if he believes the simulating of drowning is an appropriate technique, he said, "I do."

Last week, a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report concluded that the 2003 Abu Ghraib detainee abuse was not just the result of a few rogue soldiers. It said: "Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in US military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely."

Those items help cement this White House as among the most cancerous in American history. Cheney told us after 9/11 that the administration would protect us by working on "the dark side . . . in the shadows in the intelligence world." Cheney, Rumsfeld, and President Bush turned the dark side into a blind eye, the shadows into a shroud, and obliterated intelligent discourse on terrorism with raw fear. That was only the warm-up for twisting intelligence to invade Iraq for weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

For eight years the administration never feared trampling truth and justice, even as Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2004 about Abu Ghraib, "Anyone who recommended that kind of behavior that I have seen depicted in those photos needs to be brought to justice." At the moment, the administration faces no serious repercussions for decisions that resulted in many times more deaths in Iraq than here on Sept. 11, 2001. Rumsfeld went from disgrace to a visiting fellowship at the Hoover Institution. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz went from miscalculating the need for hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq as "wildly off the mark" to counting the planet's dollars at the World Bank - until corruption ended his presidency there.

Bush is sure to regale us about compassionate conservatism in his sugar-coated presidential library and Cheney will mumble from some undisclosed bunker about being the great liberator. All they currently face is the judgment of history.

It was something of a consolation for history that President-elect Barack Obama named Eric Shinseki to be the next secretary of Veterans Affairs. Shinseki was the general who made the Iraq troop estimate that Wolfowitz criticized.

And at least we have some facts to go with the fiction. The Senate report released jointly by Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan and John McCain of Arizona said Rumsfeld's authorization of techniques "was a direct cause of detainee abuse." It also said that Bush's presidential order saying the Geneva Convention for humane treatment of prisoners of war did not apply to al Qaeda "impacted the treatment of detainees."

Cheney and the report give us fresh clarity on their obfuscations. For instance, two years ago, Cheney was asked on a conservative radio talk show, "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" Cheney responded, "Well it's a no-brainer for me." The White House immediately trotted out the late White House spokesman Tony Snow and vice-presidential spokeswoman Lee Anne McBride to convince the press that Cheney was not referring to waterboarding.

McBride said, "The vice president does not discuss any techniques or methods that may or may not have been used in questioning." Snow was challenged by reporters that it defied common sense to deny that a "dunk in water" was waterboarding. Snow still asserted, "he wasn't referring to waterboarding. He was referring to using a program of questioning, not talking about waterboarding." Pummeled by the press over this parsing, an exasperated Snow said, "I'm telling you what the vice president's view is, which is it wasn't about waterboarding. Period."

The not-so-funny thing is that Cheney's "no-brainer" remark was an honest window into his brain. True to the eight years of this administration, even the truth must be covered with a lie.

© 2008 Boston Globe
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jack December 22nd, 2008 4:03 am
You're overdoing it. Could you do me a favor?MB7-514 | 250-365 | 000-208 |

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NateW December 21st, 2008 5:05 pm
What is all the more obscene about the Cardinal Richelieu of American politics is that he amongst the worst of the Republican chicken hawks: five draft deferments during the Vietnam War, mostly thanks to his Wyoming political connections. Cheney is not even worthy of being compared to Darth Vader, as that fictional character at least engaged in combat. Instead, Cheney is the worst sort of hypocrite who will send others to die, but not get within spitting distance of getting his hands dirty.

www.wunderman-comics.com

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Dave Dubya December 21st, 2008 9:39 am
Americans, and justice, are kept in the dark by its media. Politicians and corporate shills lie at will, and are rarely checked by the press.

Corporate media almost never call out political and financial leaders on their lies and crimes. Investigative journalism has been replaced with infotainment and propaganda. With the nation's information industry merely an extension of the ruling corporatocracy, democracy is crippled, and power players are largely immune to justice.

The criminals of the Bush Administration were appeased and abetted by the Democratic leadership. The politicians in turn reward the inept and crooked financial sector with our tax dollars.

It is obvious that the new American Way is profit over people, and power over principle.

If Obama is an honest man who wants to change Babylon on the Potomac, it will take a near superhuman effort to get anywhere with a system so corrupted. His noble intentions will be meaningless until he presses for criminal investigations and indictments for the Bush/Cheney syndicate.

I fear his efforts will be obstructed by both parties.

http://davedubya.com

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RSJ December 21st, 2008 6:59 pm
That's true, Dave Dubya December 21st, 2008 9:39 am, but the Big Media are, along with the entire global corporatist structure, gradually withering of its own hubris, stupidity, cruelty and inherent incompetence. Historian Barbara Tuchman in her book "The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam" (1984) gives several examples of large organizations that grow so enormous and complex that they work against their own best interests. That's what we're seeing now as Corporate America collapses on all fronts. Have you noticed? These days corporations exist not to serve the customer but to serve their own convenience (I give you 'voicemail hell' and the consumer hanging on the line for hours to get an answer to a simple question as prima facie evidence of this phenomenon at work). Customer satisfaction is treated as a distasteful afterthought as corporations vie to pay lobbyists to limit competition and increase tax breaks. Supposedly hardheaded business types are fond of saying that if you 'have them by the balls their minds will follow,' forgetting that it's already been repeatedly proven that paying workers a decent wage results in a better economy for all concerned than sentencing them to slavery with a paycheck.

As Tuchman points out in her book, King George III could have easily avoided the American Revolution and the loss of the colonies by exercising more flexibility and not treating the American colonists as second-class citizens; the popes of the era could have ended the Protestant Reformation if they had been less aggressively stupid; and the US could have learned from the failure of the French in Vietnam and steered clear of that quagmire, if it had not been committed to the prolongation of the Military-Industrial Complex and the symbolic appearance of standing up to a Communist Soviet Union that was imploding from within and a poverty-stricken Communist China that was in the throes of internal disarray -- the 'Domino Theory' was discredited even back then.

In the case of the Trojans they, like the Bush Administration, had convinced themselves of their self-created myth of moral and intellectual superiority, and that their military strength could never be defeated. As Tuchman, who died in 1989, said, "The power to command frequently causes failure to think." Isn't this obvious from the Bush-Cheney-Pentagon debacle in Iraq of the past five years?

Now we have the so-called global free market capitalist economy falling to pieces in a blizzard of distrust, bad paper and feckless greed. All of the uber-capitalist 'Smartest Guys in the Room' are lining up for bailouts from taxpayers who are already deeply in debt; the irony is as thick as a wooden head -- Gordon Gecko now needs government cheese to survive. The megaphone for this confederacy of dunces and thieves, the Big Corporate Media, are less and less trusted as well, and alternative points of view, via the Internet, are now available to challenge the increasingly insipid and obvious corporatist propaganda. (We are engaging in that right here at CD.) Even the less observant among us are noticing that you can't cut 20,000 good-paying jobs a week and still sustain a healthy economy, just as you can't entrust your physical and mental health to a company that exists solely to maximize its own profit.

As Barbara Tuchman wrote in another of her great histories, "The Guns of August": "[T]he sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again."

In the case of our present virulent form of inhumane global corporate capitalism, though, it's more like the moon of the old world is dying in a river of avaricious acid that eventually consumed the vessel that contained it.

The same physical principles are at work on these massive overgrown corporations as affect a person who grows too large to be supported by their own bones and organs. Evenually, they collapse of their own weight and must become smaller or die. Too big to fail really means too big to exist.

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Siouxrose December 21st, 2008 7:12 pm
Sioux Rose

RSJ: Very wise and astute post, also extremely well-stated. Gracias.

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RSJ December 22nd, 2008 6:15 am
Thanks, Sioux Rose, you're way too kind but I appreciate it. ;)

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RSJ December 21st, 2008 6:02 am
At this point, with a month to go until Obama's inauguration, Cheney is in a unique position, more unique than any vice president in our history -- simply put, he could shoot a man in public just to watch him die and never suffer the consequences. ("Hey, where's Harry Whittington?")

Certainly torture expert Michael Mukasey's DoJ would never arrest him, and all other law enforcement agencies would turn a blind eye, or defer to the FBI. On January 21st, Dick and Lynne will be on Air Force Two, no doubt at the taxpayers' expense, jetting to the multi-million dollar Cheney fortress in Dubai, which I understand has all of the latest security gimmicks, a heavily-armed private police force, a fleet of armored personnel carriers, and even an anti-aircraft missile battery. All of the best that a man estimated to be worth between $100 and $500 million can afford. Naturally, Dick will never be extradited for prosecution by his oil sheik friends and Halliburton colleagues who run the tiny Arab nation, so any trials or convictions in this country or elsewhere will be enacted with the defendant in absentia, laughing up his sleeve.

No wonder he doesn't care what he admits to -- Deadeye Dick's above the law and he's thumbing his nose at the world as his 'parting shot.'

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orcan December 20th, 2008 11:24 pm
Over 200 years on the dark side might be more like it.

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advocate December 21st, 2008 5:14 am
orcan wrote:

Over 200 years on the dark side might be more like it.

COMMENT:
In the 19th century in California, government offices paid a bounty to anyone who brought in the ears of a "Indian." To get the bounty at least one government office insisted on the entire head.

The official Thanksgiving holiday Americans celebrate every year is the celebration of the slaughter by fire, sword, and rapier of 700 Pequot men, women and children.

On the dark side for over 200 years? 'fraid so.

The American people who have a "government of, by, and for the people" call themselves "good people." Do good people kill people for their ears? Do good people sit back and watch "their government" lay siege to other countries, rain napalm, phosphorous, explosives on people's homes, burning and blowing limbs off and blinding innocent people?

Millions of people.

Laying blame on someone else seems very American, very Christian. Democrats blame Republicans while feel they feel they are good people. Republicans blame Democrats while they feel they are good people. The god believers claim their god is all knowing and all powerful and all good, and praise "him" for all good. But when bad things happen to good people, the blame falls on some other mythical spirit, not the all-powerful god who can't or won't stop the bad.

The history of the US is about as dark and vile as there is. That's amazing considering Americans are such "good people" according to Americans.

When the American people recognize that they, the American people, are the government, then perhaps the country will move away from the dark side, but not until.

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Nietzsche December 20th, 2008 8:54 pm
Cheney obviously has no fear of prosecution, but that does not mean he cannot be prosecuted.

We have seen his kind before: Nixon, John Gotti, Nero.

They dare anybody to enforce laws they have broken.

We cannot afford to allow them to go unpunished. The world could never respect the US again.
We could never again respect ourselves. We would always remember how we were cowed by the swagger of scum.

IT'S ALL SHOW. We have the power, the lawful means, and if we cannot summon the will, everyone will pity our weakness, but never again respect us.

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ezeflyer December 20th, 2008 8:10 pm
Bolstered by conservative jingoism and fear, the only way a 9/11 conspiracy coverup could function is if each conspirator made millions and/or he and his family were threatened life and limb if he became an informer.

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RSJ December 21st, 2008 6:44 am
ezeflyer December 20th, 2008 8:10 pm, I believe you may have hit the nail directly on, or into, the head, an ancient torture techique, BTW, I'm sure Dick would heartily endorse. I have no doubt that Emperor Cheney and political Proconsul Rove kept secret files on the opposition, just like J. Edgar Hoover in his heydey, and used them to quell dissent and potential prosecution or impeachment. (How do you think the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts were passed?) The others were simply bribed to shut up or obfuscate, such as Libby and the top Republicans in Congress, et al.

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Siouxrose December 21st, 2008 12:24 pm
Sioux Rose

RSJ: It was like Nixon's getting hold of the psychiatric records of an opponent, only this time, the entire "Homeland security" apparatus via illegal (later made legal AFTER th fact) wiretapping gave them PLENTY of data, like what was used on Elliot Spitzer.

AS for Cheney's security in Dubai, history and literature have countless examples of the death knell coming through a member of the trusted inside-circle. There may be honor among thieves, but sooner or later, those with dark hearts let their darkness towards one another show in blatant (generally red/blood) color.

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RSJ December 21st, 2008 7:03 pm
Sioux Rose, now we have to find out if Cheney is more like Caligula or Tiberius.

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Siouxrose December 21st, 2008 7:14 pm
Sioux Rose

I wouldn't want to do the autopsy. His remains are probably radioactive, and I am doubtful that red blood runs through his veins.

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RSJ December 22nd, 2008 6:09 am
Siouxrose December 21st, 2008 7:14 pm, LOL -- and then there's that whole 'reptile hide' thing...

Cheney might live for a 150-200 years, the product of cloning organs -- legal in Dubai for rich folks, just like everything else -- and the latest innovations in prosthetics. Imagine, Dick could be the first $6 million -- or $600 million, more likely -- dollar man.

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blutodog December 20th, 2008 8:04 pm
I don't expect this criminal admin. too ever ever face justice. We no longer live in State ruled by law. Instead, we live in an Empire where depending on the Emperor we either have torture or we don't. It's back to the Roman style of rule.

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JasonF December 20th, 2008 8:38 pm
I agree with you here - there will be no justice for what Bush/Cheney have done.

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joehope December 20th, 2008 7:11 pm
8 years in darkness.

Now - light.

A light of hope.
A light of faith.
A light of prosperity.

Hope is dawning.
The world is changing.

Love is a flowering blossoming.
Let a thousand flowers blossom.

Our love,
Obama's love,
is a vision of peace.

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Nietzsche December 20th, 2008 9:17 pm
Nice sentiment joe. Sorry I yelled at you a few days ago.

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DCBeltway1 December 21st, 2008 1:33 pm
That's nice Joe but I refuse to drink the Obama KoolAid.

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odoco December 20th, 2008 6:11 pm
So much has been said, so little done. We are nearing a state of psychological and physical slavery if we do not hold accountable those who stole the country from the people. There is motive; there is opportunity; but sadly, as of yet, the masses have not noticed the theft.

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Mordechai Shiblikov December 20th, 2008 5:39 pm
I doubt Cheney gives a fig about the judgment of history and he has enough money to hire the finest shyster lawyer in the United States in the unlikely event he is ever charged with war crimes in a USA court. His soul has always been in an undisclosed location and he himself is no different from the man-sized safe he has in his office. He will probably use it as his coffin.

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