DICK CHENEY ... A LIAR AND A COWARD

In yesterday's program I made it clear, once again, that former VP Dick Cheney is a liar and a coward. Cheny's five deferments during the Vietnam War and his constant whining about being scared are proof of his cowardice. I should have carried the discussion through to chronicle Dick Cheney's lies and distortions, but we were running out of time. I'm fixing that now.

In this McClatchy News article ("Cheney's speech ignored some inconvenient truths") Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel outline ten lies that Dick Cheney made during his "national security" presentation. Here's their take on one of them:

[Cheney] quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."

In a statement April 21, however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

More specifically, Cheney was trying to conflate torture with saving lives from imminent attack by saying that the current Director of National Intelligence (who oversees the CIA, the FBI, and the other 14 intelligence gathering agencies we have) agrees with him on the effectiveness of torture.

Landay and Strobel point out that Cheney ignored that a "top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any 'specific imminent attacks' ... ". Cheney also ignored that in December FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair magazine that he didn't think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.

There's more lies and distortions so I encourage you to read the Landay and Strobel piece. Why anyone would want to listen to this coward is beyond me. I also encourage you to read Frank Rich's, "Who Is to Blame for the Next Attack." Rich makes it abundantly clear that it won't be President Obama.

- Mark