Liz Cheney has another bone to pick with President Obama and she promptly embarrassed herself on Fox News to whine about it.
During an interview on Hannity with fill-in host Monica Crowley to discuss President Obama’s recent remarks about torture being used by the Bush Administration in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Cheney accused Obama of “slandering” people like her war criminal daddy Dick Cheney. She also claimed that what “patriots” like her father did to Guantanamo prisoners wasn’t torture and that the activities kept America safe. “You know Monica, this president is an utter disgrace,” Cheney said.
He’s got a situation where, as your last two reports showed, you’ve got crises erupting around the world. And he is expending more time, more energy, more passion, more aggressive activity in targeting and going after patriots, heroes. CIA officers and others who kept is safe after 9/11. He’s lying about what they did, he’s slandering them, he went to Cairo and did it in 2009. Today he did it from the podium of the Oval Office. It’s a disgrace. It’s despicable.
Here’s the video via Raw Story.
President Obama delivered the remarks that Cheney is angrily referring to during a White House press conference. “We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks,” Obama said in advance of a US Senate report on CIA torture tactics that is due for release soon. “We did some things that were contrary to our values.”
As we all remember, President Bush and Vice President Cheney signed off on using so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, waterbording is described as a “method of torture in which water is poured into the nose and mouth of a victim who lies on his back on an inclined platform, with his feet above his head.”
As the victim’s sinus cavities and mouth fill with water, his gag reflex causes him to expel air from his lungs, leaving him unable to exhale and unable to inhale without aspirating water. Although water usually enters the lungs, it does not immediately fill them, owing to their elevated position with respect to the head and neck. In this way the victim can be made to drown for short periods without suffering asphyxiation. The victim’s mouth and nose are often covered with a cloth, which allows water to enter but prevents it from being expelled; alternatively, his mouth may be covered with cellophane or held shut for this purpose. The torture is eventually halted and the victim put in an upright position to allow him to cough and vomit (water usually enters the esophagus and stomach) or to revive him if he has become unconscious, after which the torture may be resumed. Waterboarding produces extreme physical suffering and an uncontrollable feeling of panic and terror, usually within seconds.
We’re talking about a torture method that was used against Americans by the Japanese during World War II. Dozens of Japanese soldiers and officials who used waterboarding were convicted of war crimes following the surrender of Japan. The United States decried the use of the torture method and prosecuted and executing Japanese war criminals for their crimes. And by using it, Bush Administration officials blackened America’s reputation and moral standing among the international community. In addition, the Khmer Rouge also used waterboarding and it was also used during the Spanish Inquisition.
Despite being a torture method banned by the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Conventions, both of which includes the United States as a signatory nation, the Bush Administration authorized its use in 2002. Other torture methods used during the Bush years include “sleep deprivation, isolation, exposure to extreme temperatures, enclosure in tiny spaces, bombardment with agonizing sounds at extremely damaging decibel levels, and religious and sexual humiliation.”
Furthermore, Republican Senator John McCain, himself a victim of torture during the Vietnam War, has said on multiple occasions that waterboarding is torture.
The only real complaint that can be leveled against Obama on this issue is that he has not prosecuted any Bush Administration officials who authorized, had knowledge of, or carried out the torture methods used against prisoners of war. To this day, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and many others continue to breathe free air when they should rightfully be rotting in a federal maximum security prison for committing war crimes. They are NOT “patriots” as Liz Cheney pretends them to be. They are war criminals, and every day they aren’t prosecuted is another day in which justice isn’t served and America looks like a hypocrite in the eyes of the world.
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