What a Dick! Cheney lies to defend his policies of torture

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

It is lucky for Dick Cheney that George Washington is not alive today. Ol' George would have kicked Cheney's ass for spitting upon America's time-honored values, including George Washington's policy that Americans do not torture.

Dr. Strangelove, er, Dick Cheney was full-blown delusional while delivering his speech today to the far-right zealots at the American Enterpise Institute (AEI). His speech was intended to be a defense of the Bush-Cheney record on torture.

Cheney's speech was so chock full of factual inaccuracies, misrepresentations, half-truths and lies that it may take fact checkers several days to identify them all. That is, if the media villagers even bother to fact check this web of deceit.

As Steve Benen noted at the Political Animal blog The Washington Monthly:

It'd take too long to fact check the entire address, but the deliberate deceptions were constant and unavoidable. While the president went out of his way to be principled and candid, Cheney argued that to disagree with him is to fail to take 9/11 seriously. To come to different conclusions on these controversial questions is to think we're permanently free of a terrorist threat.

He even rolled out the old canard: the very debate over torture gives terrorists "just what they were hoping for."

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It's too late, but if the media insists on characterizing this as some kind of face-off between competitors of equal stature, the least news outlets could do is to point out that Cheney was simply outclassed today. As tempting as it may be to compare the substance of the president's speech with the former vice president's, that's just not possible. Obama treated the nation like adults; Cheney treated us like the target of a con.

The instant reaction to Cheney's speech from MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell mirrored my own reaction (h/t talkingpointsmemo.com):

Taegan Goddard's Political Wire correctly notes, "while the speech was probably effective for Bush administration loyalists, it's not likely to impact the current debate. The speech was almost entirely about defending the historical record and Cheney's own legacy." (Link to full text of Cheney's prepared remarks)

In other words, the speech was designed for consumption by the rabid conservative base (like Pat Buchanan), not for the American public as a whole — most of whom have come to despise Dick Cheney.

It would be fair to characterize Cheney's speech by paraphrasing Joe Biden: it was mostly "a noun, a verb and 9/11." Cheney played the 9/11 card at least 25 times — but not once did he mention his role in pushing bogus intelligence as a justification for an unnecessary war with Iraq. He barely mentioned Iraq at all.

But what I found most disturbing was the part where Cheney cast blame on a few "bad apples." i.e., the prison guards at Abu Ghraib, for the public outrage over the Bush torture policy that he and White House attorney's concocted and executed. The "bad apples" were those at the top of the chain of command who ordered torture — a serious aberration from America's time-honored tradition and value that Americans do not torture. Those guards were just following orders (albeit not a defense to torture).

Save your speech for your closing argument at your trial, Mr. Cheney. Like Colonel Jessep in A Few Good Men, your attempted "You can't handle the truth!' defense of your unlawful actions is not a defense.