Dick Cheney Calls Torture Report "a Bunch of Crap"

Former VICE President Dick Cheney, described by one politician who knew him well as “the master of the silent kill,” recently characterized the torture report released by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein as “a bunch of crap” to a Fox News reporter. Sen. Feinstein, soon to be the former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee due to the Republican sweep of the U.S. Senate in the 2014 midterms, knew that the Republican majority wouldn’t release the torture report and felt that if she didn’t release it, the report would never see the light of day. Her point is that the United States is not afraid to admit its mistakes when it takes the wrong fork in the road and correct its path, something China or Russia would be unlikely to do.

In my opinion, the torturers-in-chief, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, should be arrested and charged with crimes against humanity. It’s possible that Cheney could be arrested in Europe, although Politifact gives the notion scant credence.

However, not only is torture a violation of the Geneva Convention, which the U.S. is a signatory to, but 26 of the 119 prisoners who were subjected to torture at black-site prisons or Guantanamo Bay (“Gitmo”) were detained by accident. One had passport problems of some kind, which cast suspicion on him. When the CIA placed a bounty on al Qaeda suspects in Pakistan, real terrorists picked up innocents and turned them over to the CIA for money. And how did the CIA know the difference? They didn’t. It was the ultimate irony.

For the CIA, it’s hard to just say, “Whoops! We’re sorry,” after they’ve detained and tortured an innocent for 19 months.

Do we know how to make friends everywhere we go? Sure we do!

I read a New Yorker piece once about how the FBI gains access to valuable intelligence from terrorists. One terrorist stole over $100,000 from Osama bin Laden in Kenya or the Sudan or one of the African countries that bin Laden hung out in for a while as he was contemplating which country he could make his own. Bin Laden’s thief had a lot to gain from staying in America and staying far, far away from bin Laden and al Qaeda. His FBI interrogator took him out to dinner and acted as a kind of marriage counselor. He gained much valuable intelligence from the thief. He did not torture him. The FBI agent said that torture doesn’t work.

Dick Cheney thinks torture works, but how much did Harry M. Whittington, the elderly lawyer, tell him after Cheney shot him with lead shot in the face, neck, and torso on a hunting expedition? The man still has 30 pieces of lead in him and speaks with a warble now. Whittington was inspired to apologize to Cheney for embarrassing him, but he didn’t reveal any state secrets. Cheney admitted to shooting Whittington, but didn’t offer an apology. Apparently, he never apologizes for anything because he’s never wrong, not even when he shoots a friend in the face.

The good news is, Cheney didn’t shoot former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Gates, in his book Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, disclosed that Cheney had originally invited him on his hunting trip, but Gates had a conflict and couldn’t go. Cheney selected Whittington to take Gates’ place.