Dismal and possibly illegal legacy of Cheney and Bush is apparent in quest to revise history

June 3, 1:46 PMLiberal ExaminerRaymond Gellner

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     In an attempt to boost the legacy of the Bush/Cheney Administration, Former Vice-President Richard B. Cheney has had a very active retirement, especially in the past month. In interviews and speeches throughout airwaves and across the land, Cheney has been revising the events which occurred during his tenure as Vice-President. However, due to the constant documentation all around us within this digital age, Cheney may find that the old tactics he learned in his time in the Nixon administration may not work in the era of the video clip and, as Bush would say, “the internets.”

     There have been many examples of this revisionist tactic adopted by Cheney. He has admitted that he does not follow polls or public opinion. Yet, the fact that he is out of office and going to such lengths to win the war of public opinion over various events, policies, and decisions of the Bush administration is a testament to his own concern that what was done on his watch was illegal and may land him in prison.

     The use of torture, or, as Cheney calls it “enhanced interrogation techniques” has been deemed unacceptable in the tradition of our country with precedents supporting this view all of the way back to General George Washington in the Revolutionary War. At that time we were fighting a war for freedom against truly impossible odds, however Washington made a deliberate decision not to use torture to our advantage, even though it possibly could have gleaned valuable and vital information.

     Yet, during the Bush and Cheney era such techniques were used with the justification that it was necessary in order to save lives (I will not go into the philosophical debate on this reasoning here, as that is a different subject for a different day). Cheney further stated that there are CIA memos which have not been released which support this conclusion and that no other methods of interrogation could give us the required information.

     As it now turns out Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee states that his committee investigated the charges of abuse as well as all of the CIA memos and the finding, and I quote Levin, “gives the lie to Mr. Cheney’s claims.” Levin affirms that the memos contained nothing to indicate that worthy information was garnered due to these interrogation tactics. Furthermore, it is also being reported that other less harsh techniques have proven to be extremely successful and that the “extreme” techniques only proved to shut down the whole intelligence gathering process.

     Further historical revision can be found in connection to the Bush/Cheney justification for the Iraq War. Earlier this week Cheney claimed that there was no link whatsoever between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Iraq, whose ruler at the time was Saddam Hussein. At an appearance at the National Press Club Cheney said “I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that he (Hussein) was involved in 9/11.” He further stated that he never communicated a connection between 9/11 and Iraq. This is simply not truthful as he stated previously a link between the hijackers and an Iraqi official and was confronted with this discrepancy on “Meet the Press” in 2003.

     However, the most reptilian of his historical revisions came yesterday as Cheney declared that it was Richard Clarke’s fault that 9/11 occurred. While it is one thing to rewrite history, it is another to blame an atrocity on a person who did all he could in an attempt to prevent an attack on our soil. In truth, Richard Clarke, who at the time worked in the executive branch as the National Security Council’s counter-terrorism director, attempted to warn the Bush administration multiple times from May 2001 through July 2001 of the threat that Osama Bin Laden posed, but was met with silence. These were not vague reports and they stated that an attack was imminent. In addition, as Clinton was leaving office, he warned Bush that there was increased activity on this front. Bush even received a daily briefing in August of 2001 that there was an attack being planned by Al-Qaeda, one which may involve the hijacking of an airplane. Unfortunately all of these warnings fell on deaf ears.

     This morning, it was released by the “Washington Post” that Cheney personally worked to convince Congress of the necessity of the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in order to obtain vital information from terrorist suspects. Such a revelation points to the most likely truth behind Cheney’s historical rewrite. Although the legacy of the Bush/Cheney administration may be of secondary importance to Cheney, his primary concern is to muddy the waters of the nation’s collective memory. For, if there is an investigation and prosecution of criminal activities of the Bush administration, Cheney will surely be at the top of the list.