Lynn Cheney does the Torture Tango

In the wake of this weeks inadvertant admissions by Dick Cheney that the U.S. has engaged in Water-boarding of terrorist detainees, his wife Lynn Cheney went on CNN to dance around the corpse of Democracy in our front yard defend her husband and the administration. In the process she yet again broke the emergency glass on that old Conservative Canard - Liberal Media Bias...

CHENEY: Well, you know, right there, Wolf, "BROKEN GOVERNMENT." Now, what kind of stance is that? Here we are. We're a country where we have been mightily challenged over the past six years. We've been through 9/11. We've been through Katrina. The president and the vice president inherited a recession. We're a country where the economy is healthy. That's not broken. This government has acted very well.

The ridiculousness of Cheney's performance can not be understated. She proclaimed, in response to the recent Jimm Webb Novel controversy that her novel "Sisters" did not contain lesbian love scenes.

BLITZER: Here's what the Democratic Party put out today, the Democratic Congressional -- Senatorial Campaign Committee: "Lynne Cheney's book featured brothels and attempted rape. In 1981, Vice

President Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne, wrote a book called "Sisters", which featured a lesbian love affair, brothels and attempted rapes."

CHENEY: No.

BLITZER: "In 1988, Lynn Cheney wrote about a Republican vice president who dies of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress." Is that true?

CHENEY: Nothing explicit. And actually, that was full of lies. It's not -- it's just -- it's absolutely not a...

BLITZER: Did you write a book entitled "Sisters"?

CHENEY: I did write a book entitled "Sisters."

BLITZER: It did have lesbian characters.

CHENEY: This -- no, not necessarily. This description is a lie. I'll stand on that.

See, there you go - it's all a pack of lies from the Liberal Left. Nothing to see here - move along.

Except maybe this from the New York Daily News:

Choice scenes adapted from "Sisters" included one in which two female characters write to each other: "Let us go away together, away from the anger and the imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement."

One of Cheney's characters swoons to a Sapphic love letter: "How well her words describe our love - or the way it would be if we could remove all impediments, leave this place, and join together ... Then our union would be complete. Our lives would flow together, twin streams merging into a single river."

Now, let me be clear - I don't have any issue with Lesbian Love Scenes - I have a problem with people, like Cheney, who think everyone else is so dumb that they'll let them get away with such a blatant lie.

But then again, the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy must be to blame for it. Yeah, it's all the fault of those crazed liberals and their media front men like Blitzer.

Cheney, in response to CNN daring to tell the story of a former detainee who had been apprehended in England, rended to Pakistan, Afghanistan, then Gitmo and finally - stated:

CHENEY: You know, I think that you might be a little careful before you declare this as a person with clean hands.

BLITZER: You're referring to the CNN "BROKEN GOVERNMENT" special.

CHENEY: I certainly am.

BLITZER: This was the one that John King reported on last night.

Here's the detainees story from "Broken Government":

Meet Moazzam Begg from Birmingham, England. He vividly remembers when he was taken into custody: A midnight knock at the door soon after he had relocated from Afghanistan to Islamabad, Pakistan.

"I opened the door to be faced with people, several of them, pointing guns and electric stun guns. None of them said anything," Begg said. "They didn't ask me any questions, they didn't identify themselves. ... I was made to kneel, my hands were shackled behind my back. My legs were shackled. And the last thing I saw -- they put a hood over my head -- was them walking towards the room where my children were."

During a tense van ride, he would come face to face with his captors -- and the reach of Bush's executive powers in the post-9/11 world.

"Somebody lifted the hood off my head," Begg told CNN. "And I heard an American voice speak to me. And I saw him, and he produced a pair of handcuffs. And he said, 'These handcuffs were from a widow of a September 11 victim' -- given to him in order for him to capture the perpetrators."

Begg spent nearly three years in U.S. custody -- in Pakistan, Afghanistan and then the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. To this day, the CIA and FBI consider him a threat to the United States, but he was released from custody after appeals from British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He now lives back in his hometown.

Three Years. Held that entire time without charges, without explaination, without access to counsel.

Under the just signed Military Commissions Act alien detainees such as Begg no longer have any access to Habeas Corpus. Yes, this means British Citizens too - although they have a perfectly working police force of their own and extradition treaty with the US - we apparently didn't have time for such niceties - we geez only had three years or so to figure out if this guy was really dangerous or not, where you expecting swift justice or something? That's Pre-9/11 Thinking there pal, so you can just stop that right now.

For years the Administration has been running an international kidnapping ring through the CIA, secretly rounding up terrorist suspects - not Actual Terrorists, just Suspects - and shipping them off to Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to be held in hidden prisons outside the view of the international red cross where they have been torture - the kind of facilities that were highlighted in the first season of Keiefer Sutherland's "24". (Remember when they found Dennis Hopper's character in the underground bunker somewhere in LA Country?)

And just for the record, more then a few times - they've gotten the wrong target.

But to Lynn Cheney and her ilk, the concept of Habeas Corpus and the presumption of innocence is something we should be "careful" of? Yeah, something is serously "Broken" in that thinking all right.

The truly frightening part is how desperately the Cheney's of the world will cling to the information forcibly coereced from these "suspects". Particularly Ibn al Shakh al-Libi.

LONDON (AFP) - An Al-Qaeda terror suspect captured by the United States, who gave evidence of links between Iraq and the terror network, confessed after being tortured, a journalist told the BBC.

Ibn al Shakh al Libby told intelligence agents that he was close to Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and "understood an awful lot about the inner workings of Al-Qaeda," former FBI agent Jack Clonan told the broadcaster.

Libby was tortured in an Egyptian prison, according to Stephen Grey, the author of the newly-released book "Ghost Plane" who investigated the secret US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prisons that housed terror suspects around the world.

US President George W. Bush confirmed the existence of the network of CIA holding facilities overseas during a September 6 speech defending controversial US interrogation practices.

Libby was apparently taken to Cairo, Clonan told the broadcaster, after being captured in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

"He (Libby) claims he was tortured in jail and that would be routine in Egyptian prisons," Grey said.

"What he claimed most significantly was a connection between ... Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. This intelligence report made it all the way to the top, and was used by (former US secretary of state) Colin Powell as a key piece of justification ... for invading Iraq," he told the broadcaster.

Powell watched a video tape of al-Libbi confession prior to his inclusion of allegations that Saddam Hussein had been working with Al-Qaeda and might pass on chemical/biological weapons technology and training to them. He was key linchpin in the "Don't wait for the mushroom could" strategy.

Unfortunately, al-Libby was a liar.

And his lies, prompted on by his treatment, have led us into an irresponsible War and devastating occupation of an Unarmed Nation.

Yet to this very day, the Adminstration refuses to admit they were wrong about Saddam and Al Qeada.

They refuse to even admit that we employ torture.

Vice President Cheney said yesterday that he was not referring to an interrogation technique known as "waterboarding" when he told an interviewer this week that dunking terrorism suspects in water was a "no-brainer."

Cheney told reporters aboard Air Force Two last night that he did not talk about any specific interrogation technique during his interview Tuesday with a conservative radio host.

"I didn't say anything about waterboarding. . . . He didn't even use that phrase," Cheney said on a flight to Washington from South Carolina.

Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters that the vice president was talking literally about "a dunk in the water," though neither Snow nor Cheney explained what that meant or whether such a tactic had been used against U.S. detainees.

"A dunk in the water is a dunk in the water," Snow said.

Why exactly would you "dunk someone in water" during an interrogation - if not to make them think they're about to drown?

What else could it be? The guy was really thirsty - so we gave him the entire bucket all at once? Is this supposed to be like a carnival ride or something? Is anyone on earth buying this bullshit anymore?

The United States Tried and Convicted Japanese Soldiers for the War Crime of WaterBoarding in 1947.

Now our Government employs those - and likely even worse - techniques. Even if they're guilty we can't legally even TRY THESE PEOPLE, because if they've been tortured any guilty statements are inadmissable (except the that MCA also created some loopholes around that little snag). But to people like Lynn Cheney, it's all just 'lies and distortions".

Keep thinking that Mrs. Cheney - right until Election Day and you get a serious wake up call because you know what?

"Reality has a Liberal Bias" - Steven Colbert.

Amen.

Update Wolf Blitzer has further responded to Lynn Cheney's >attack on his patriotism - when she asked Blitzer "Don't you want us to win?"

Today on CNN’s Late Edition, Blitzer said he was “surprised” at Cheney’s “sniping at my patriotism,” and pointed out that CNN had specifically labeled the tape of a U.S. soldier under fire as terrorist “propaganda.” He also said that CNN had made clear to Cheney’s staff “only hours before the interview” that she would be asked questions about politics during her appearance, not just about her children’s book.

It's the kind of attack that is now common place among Conservatives who think only they have the correct answers to terrorism and al-Qaeda. To them it's inapproprate for CNN to broadcast terrorist propaganda (with caveats) - but the RNC can use it to attack Democrats and stir up fear all they like.

Vyan