On May 21, Anderson Cooper interviewed Liz Cheney (YouTube link (10:00)) regarding her father's outspoken support for torture and ongoing attacks on President Obama's policies. While Cooper tried several times to challenge the assertions Ms. Cheney was making, she consistently hewed to the propagandistic duplicity her father has been spouting.


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The transcript of the full program is available at this link from CNN. The Cheney interview starts about 1/3 of the way down the page. I will be excerpting from that transcript below.

Liz Cheney: But I think that, in fact, what's happened is, my dad has stood up and said: Wait a minute. If you're going to be the transparency president, and if you're going to libel the brave men and women who conducted this program...

And then later in the interview regarding the torture that occurred at Abu Ghraib she states: "I do know what happened at Abu Ghraib was a crime and that the people there have been prosecuted."

So where does she, and her father, stand? Are these valiant interrogators "brave men and women," or are they criminals? Surely they cannot be both.

The interview continues with Cooper trying to get acknowledgment on the link between the atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison and the methods being used at other facilities.

COOPER: Your father said today -- and you have said it in the past -- and your father repeated it today -- he's said it a lot -- that -- that, basically, what happened in Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident. He -- he termed them sadistic prison guards.

Isn't that -- goes against the evidence, that, basically, there was a line between what happened in Guantanamo Bay and what happened in Bagram Air Base and what happened later on in Abu Ghraib?

L. CHENEY: No, I think that's just absolutely wrong, Anderson.

I mean, I think, first of all, the enhanced interrogation program, which the president has now stopped, was a program that was run by the Central Intelligence Agency, designed by the CIA, approved by everybody in the administration. And...

COOPER: So, you're saying there's no connection between all these?

L. CHENEY: No, absolutely. There's no connection.

So Ms. Cheney confirms that "everybody" in the administration approved of the use of abuse and torture in interrogation. Further, that those methods which came to light in Abu Ghraib were not the same methods being used elsewhere.

Cooper raises the issue of the Schlesinger report which discusses the transfer of General Miller who had  implemented "enhanced interrogation" at Guantánamo to Abu Ghraib for the purpose of instituting the same procedures there. Ms. Cheney just flatly claims "Anderson, you are completely rewriting history to say that there was a connection... " After another challenge by Cooper she charges that he is "misinterpreting" the report.

However, it is not just the Schlesinger report that stated that the interrogation "techniques" implemented at Guantánamo were transported to Abu Ghraib. So did the Taguba Report, the Fay Report, and others.

What is clear from the reports and investigations that we have known about for over four years now, is that the atrocities that came to light from Abu Ghraib were not isolated incidents. They were part of a systematized policy implemented within the highest levels of the White House, and through the Pentagon. Now with the initial release of the "torture memos" it becomes ever clearer how high and how far that approval went.

So Liz Cheney goes on to reassert her father's call for the release of all of the memos and reports to "prove" that the use of torture protected the people of the United States from another terrorist attack.

L. CHENEY: ... without saying, you know -- you know, you assert this, and I assert this, and the president asserts something.

But the president won't let the American people see. He was in the National Archives today, which is the building where these memos are housed. He could have walked up the stairs to the second floor of that building, and, with his pen, signed a declassification order, and those memos would be here tonight, so you and I could actually have a discussion about what we learned from the program.

But we're prevented from doing that because he is suppressing those memos.

I have found this demand for transparency from the Cheney duo particularly galling. The man who spearheaded the movement for the Unitary Executive, who marshaled one of the most opaque administrations in known history, who defied court orders to release information even before 9/11 is calling for complete transparency from the Obama administration. The whole stance reads as pure posturing on the part of the Cheneys.

And people were not only tortured, people died.

COOPER: But more than 100 people are known to have died in U.S. custody. I think about 20 of those have been ruled a homicide.

I mean, if -- if these were just tightly-controlled things, how come so many people are being murdered in U.S. custody?

L. CHENEY: Well, Anderson, I think that your question is highly irresponsible. And I think that you're...

COOPER: Why?

L. CHENEY: Because you are conflating things that aren't conflated.

And then continues...

COOPER: Do you personally have any reservations about what may have gone on with these enhanced interrogation techniques, as you call them, under CIA control, or in Abu Ghraib, or in Bagram, or in Guantanamo? I mean, do you have -- do you have any doubts at all? Because your father seems, very clearly, to have no doubts.

L. CHENEY: Look, of course -- of course, as my father made clear today, what happened at Abu Ghraib shouldn't have happened. Nobody is defending what happened at Abu Ghraib.

I have no doubts at all, no reservations and no regrets. And, in fact, I feel that we all owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women at the CIA who carried out this program. I think there are American lives alive today because of that program.

And here we have the lies within lies within lies. Because it was not the "brave men and women" in the CIA and military who were directing the torture. It was PRIVATE CONTRACTORS who were hired to supervise, direct, and sometimes participate in interrogation. This was pointed out in the Taguba report and others. The Bush administration not only legitimated and approved torture, but they outsourced torture.

One might wonder why this is the case. Why outsource torture? Why remove the United States from the International War Crimes Tribunal? Why create an legal no man's land in Iraq where private contractors were not subject to U.S. law, Iraqi law, and U.S. Military Justice?

Why? For this time when they are out of power. Why? To muddy the trail and make legal prosecution a rat's nest of conflict. Why? To drag the process out past the U.S. statute of limitations.

According to John Dean, the U.S. statute of limitations on war crimes and torture is five years. That clock is already almost down to zero on some of what has happened. The longer it can be drug out - and Obama is doing his best to deep six the whole thing - the more likely that absolutely no action will be taken. There will be no consequences for those within the Bush administration for violations of national and international law.

Further, the fact that a President of the United States can approve and implement a policy of denial of human rights, abuse, and torture will stand as a precedent for any administration that wants to do the same thing.

Right now, the two most urgent things that need to happen are to extend the statute of limitations on war crimes and torture, and to continue to press our elected representatives for multi-pronged investigations (House, Senate, Special Prosecutor).


Resources
Article archive of abuse of prisoners and detainees by U.S. Forces
The Fay Report
8/21/02 Memo from Alberto Gonzales
The Taguba Report
The ICRC Report
Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism: Assessment of Legal, Historical, Policy, and Operational Considerations 3/06/2003
The Schlesinger Report
Torture resources and memos
King Bush - The Unitary Executive
A Slow Motion Coup