Dick Chen: "Non, je ne regrette rien"

Cheney is banking on there being no power in his lifetime that will bring him to account

'I'd do it again!' Cheney defends CIA torture, calls interrogators heroes

RT,

16 December, 2014

Former VP Dick Cheney expressed no regret over CIA torture techniques employed against detainees in the “war on terror,” even as a judge considers forcing the White House to release the remainder of the damning photos.

Cheney was apparently unfazed by the cruel accounts of torture techniques performed by the CIA at various foreign “black sites” as described in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s lengthy investigation.

"I'd do it again in a minute," Cheney told Meet the Press's Chuck Todd on Sunday.

READ MORE: CIA chief challenges torture report claims, defends Bush-era tactics

The former vice president, who critics say exerted a disproportionate amount of influence inside of the Bush administration, recalled those horrific moments on the morning of 9/11 to defend America’s use of“enhanced interrogation techniques” to get information from detainees.

"Torture to me…is an American citizen on his cell phone making a last call to his four young daughters, shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York," he said.

Far from suggesting punishment for the interrogators, Cheney believes they are worthy of praise for their controversial actions.

"I'm perfectly comfortable that they should be praised, they should be decorated," he declared.

At the same time, Cheney remained adamant when reminded that at least 26 of 119 detainees were cleared of any links to terrorist organizations.

"I'm more concerned with the bad guys that were released than the few that were, in fact, innocent," he said, while mentioning that the individual who went on to lead the Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL], Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was incarcerated by the US military in Iraq before being set free in 2004.

In addition to the torture technique known as water boarding, which creates the sensation of drowning, Todd pressed Cheney on other lesser-known practices, including the treatment of detainee Abu Zubaydah, who was placed in a coffin-size confinement box for a total of 266 hours (11 days, 2 hours) over a 20-day period, as well as forced to remain in a small confinement box (21 inches wide, 2.5 feet in length) for 29 hours.

Jeffrey Goldberg        ✔ @JeffreyGoldberg

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Torture is wrong, even if it "works," for the same reason that Mengele-style experiments are wrong, even if they yield useful medical data.

3:04 PM - 15 Dec 2014

Another detainee had one or both wrists handcuffed to an overhead bar that would not allow him to lower his arm for 22 hours each day for two consecutive days in order to “break his resistance.”

When questioned about so-called rectal feeding, which at least five detainees were purportedly subjected to, Cheney said it was part of the approved program and probably administered for "medical reasons."Todd challenged Cheney on that account, saying his explanation contradicts the Senate report findings, which says there was no medical need for rectal hydration in the detainees.

Max Keiser @maxkeiser

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Cheney forgets that decades of CIA torture led to 9/11, not the other way around.

8:55 AM - 15 Dec 2014

Despite the harsh public backlash over the program, the number two man in the Bush administration remains convinced that the CIA interrogation program helped the United States to protect itself from future terrorist attacks on the homeland. "It worked, it absolutely worked," Cheney said, while going on to slam the report, saying it was “seriously flawed.”

“They didn’t talk to anybody who knew anything about the program; they didn’t talk to anybody who was in the program.”

Cheney defended the CIA’s approved methods of interrogation, saying US soldiers could expect far worse in the event they are taken prisoner.

Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

"He's not likely to be waterboarded, he's likely to have his head cut off," Cheney said, adding that the technique "produced phenomenal results for us."

Cheney also hit back at the report's finding that former President George W. Bush was unaware of the program’s details, saying the Republican leader "knew what we were doing, he authorized it, he approved it."

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is said to be sitting on many more photographs detailing detainee abuse at the hands of the United States military.

READ MORE: Romania agreed to host CIA 'black sites' to be accepted into NATO - ex spy chief

Some photographs show US troops “posing with corpses; others depict US forces holding guns to people’s heads or simulating forced sodomization,” the Daily Beast reported.

The White House faces a Friday deadline to submit to a federal court its argument as to why more photographs of detainees being tortured should be prevented from being released into the public realm.

Drilling for oil in the Golan Heights

This is why wars are fought

Israel Grants First Golan Heights Oil Drilling licence To Dick Cheney-Linked Company

Israel has granted a U.S. company the first licence to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights, John Reed of the Financial Times reports.

There are about 20,000 Israeli settlers in the Golan Heights. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

BusinessInsider,

July, 2014

A local subsidiary of the New York-listed company Genie Energy — which is advised by former vice president Dick Cheney and whose shareholders include Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch — will now have exclusive rights to a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights.

That geographic location will likely prove controversial. Israel seized the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War in 1967 and annexed the territory in 1981. Its administration of the area — which is not recognised by international law — has been mostly peaceful until the Syrian civil war broke out 23 months ago.

“This action is mostly political – it’s an attempt to deepen Israeli commitment to the occupied Golan Heights,” Israeli political analyst Yaron Ezrahi told FT. “The timing is directly related to the fact that the Syrian government is dealing with violence and chaos and is not free to deal with this problem.”

Earlier this month we reported that Israel is considering creating a buffer zone reaching up to 10 miles from Golan into Syria to secure the 47-mile border against the threat of Islamic radicals in the area. 

The move would overtake the UN Disengagement Observer Force Zone that was established in 1973 to end the Yom Kippur War and to provide a buffer zone between the two countries.

Reed notes that recent natural gas finds off Israel’s coast in the Mediterranean have made Israel’s offshore gas reserve is one of the largest of its kind in the world and will make the Jewish state a significant energy exporter in its region.

Bush- Cheney to be exempted from trail

To misquote – there is a greater chance of a camel passing through the eye of the needle than that these criminals ever being brought to justice. To avoid unwarranted attention from our minders I will abstain from further comment.

DOJ wants Bush, senior cabinet members exempt from Iraq War trial

The United States Department of Justice has requested that former President George W. Bush and the highest figures in his administration receive full exemption from being tried for the Iraq War, which the DoJ says was in line with international law.

RT,

22 August, 2013

Apart from Bush, the names listed in the paper the DoJ filed on Tuesday are former Vice President Richard Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, retired four-star General Colin Powell, former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice and former Deputy Secretary of Defense and President of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz.

Sundus Saleh, an Iraqi single mother of three who became a refugee, filed a complaint in March in the San Francisco federal court, claiming that the war in her country can be judged as a ‘crime of aggression’, according to the same legal standards that the Nuremberg Tribunal used for convicting Nazi war criminals of World War II.

Saleh is the lead plaintiff in this class action lawsuit.

The reason for the decision is connected with the ‘Westfall Act’ certification. The 1988 law gives the Attorney General the power to personally decide whether the United States is actually a defendant in the case. This in turn allows the granting of absolute immunity to politicians for actions carried out while in the government’s employ.

Inder Comar of Comar Law has agreed to take the case. The San-Francisco-based firm normally specializes in support to private companies, particularly those in the tech industry. Comar met with Saleh at her home in Jordan to discuss the case.

Chief counsel Comar wrote on the War Is a Crime website explaining that, "The DoJ claims that in planning and waging the Iraq War, ex-President Bush and key members of his Administration were acting within the legitimate scope of their employment and are thus immune from suit.”

The lawsuit filed by Saleh says that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz orchestrated the Iraq War in 1998 as part of their involvement with the ‘Project for the New American Century’, a Washington DC-based non-profit organization that pushed for the overthrow of Iraq’s former leader, Saddam Hussein.

In this U.S. Marine handout picture, which was released on November 23, 2004, Iraqi Special Forces and U.S. Marines from the 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon, L Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division, conduct a security patrol towards the palm grove and clear buildings along the way in the war-torn city of Falluja. (Reuters/HO/USM/Lance Corporal James J. Vooris HH/JV)In this U.S. Marine handout picture, which was released on November 23, 2004, Iraqi Special Forces and U.S. Marines from the 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon, L Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division, conduct a security patrol towards the palm grove and clear buildings along the way in the war-torn city of Falluja. (Reuters/HO/USM/Lance Corporal James J. Vooris HH/JV)

Salleh then alleges that the tragedy of September 11, 2001, was pitched to other members of the Bush cabinet as the perfect excuse to scare the American public into supporting the war in Iraq. The lawsuit also claims that the United States failed to obtain United Nations approval for the invasion, making it an illegal and aggressive act of war.

According to Corey Hill, who is a member and outreach coordinator for Global Exchange, an international human rights organization, Comar Law is invoking something called the Alien Tort Statute, which is a 1789 law that permits a foreign national to sue the US federal court for injuries “committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” Hill explained this in his article for YES! Magazine, for which he also writes.

All the defendants in the case have been summoned to appear in accordance with the usual legal proceedings. The trial is expected to start in early 2014.

There are, however, several problems that could arise with the allegations. As Paul Stephen, who teaches law at the University of Virginia and is former international law consultant for the Department of State told YES! Magazine, that it would be difficult to sue a government employee for acting “under the scope of employment” in this case, because of the modified nature of the Westfall Act, giving officials more scope for action.

The second problem may arise from the fact that their actions did not take place on US soil, making it difficult to validate the accusation.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (Mark Wilson/Getty Images/AFP)Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (Mark Wilson/Getty Images/AFP)

And lastly, “courts aren’t open to ruling on matters of a political nature”, Hill said in reference to a doctrine in US Constitutional Law that separates clear-cut court cases with those better left to the legislative and executive branches of the government. This doctrine then means that the invasion of Iraq is a political case – not a legal one.

“If the expectation is that a federal court will declare that the invasion, although duly authorized by Congress, violated international law and thus violates U.S. law, I would respond that we walked up and down that hill with respect to Vietnam... No federal court ever has recognized such a claim,” Hill explained.

But Comar is optimistic in so far that in order for the Westfall Act to work in this case, the US government would have to prove that the act of preparing the invasion through a non-profit organization took place within office. But since that was not the case, the law cannot be invoked here. He further explained to Hill that separating a political matter from a purely legal one will also not be easy for the US government, as it may often be a very blurry line. Comar expanded on this position to the ‘War Is a Crime’ website.

“The good news is that while we were disappointed with the certification, we were prepared for it,” he said. “We do not see how a Westfall Act certification is appropriate given that Ms. Saleh alleges that the conduct at issue began prior to these defendants even entering into office. I think the Nuremberg prosecutors, particularly American Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson, would be surprised to learn that planning a war of aggression at a private non-profit, misleading a fearful public, and foregoing proper legal authorization somehow constitute lawful employment duties for the American president and his or her cabinet.”