Yesterday Dick Cheney restated his claim that “Obama has made us less safe”. Today we have seen the right defending Cheney’s comments.
This morning while watching Morning Joe, Scarborough kept defending the comments by saying “well Clinton was out bashing Bush right after Bush took office”. As usual with Joe he is in another attempt to rewrite history. I still remember the first time Clinton publically spoke out against Bush. It was back in 2004 after the Iraq war was into the disaster stages. It was big news and everyone was going on “wow former Presidents never attack their processors”.
That may be true, but how much of an attack was their on Clinton from the Bush White House? Easy – a lot. If you would go back and listen to the Bush administration back in their early years you would be lead to believe that Bill Clinton gave the 9/11 hijackers their boarding passes and his administration was the flight crew. You would also think that Clinton left Bush with an economy that was garbage, or in other words – the kind of economy Bush left Obama.
Both parties are guilty when it comes to playing the blame game, with the only difference being the fact that Republicans cry the loudest.
But that might change.
Cheney has been going on about getting documents declassified to “show torture worked”. Well it looks like the Obama administration is going to bite and go through with it. Not only will they declassify those documents, but open up the whole can of worms:
Government officials familiar with the CIA’s early interrogations say the most powerful evidence of apparent excesses is contained in the “top secret” May 7, 2004, inspector general report, based on more than 100 interviews, a review of the videotapes and 38,000 pages of documents. The full report remains closely held, although White House officials have told political allies that they intend to declassify it for public release when the debate quiets over last month’s release of the Justice Department’s interrogation memos.
According to excerpts included in those memos, the inspector general’s report concluded that interrogators initially used harsh techniques against some detainees who were not withholding information. Officials familiar with its contents said it also concluded that some of the techniques appeared to violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the United States in 1994.
Although some useful information was produced, the report concluded that “it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks,” according to the Justice Department’s declassified summary of it. The threat of such an imminent attack was cited by the department as an element in its 2002 and later written authorization for using harsh techniques.
(emphasis added)
This is very interesting and something that really gives you pause to think of how the Bush administration ran. There might have been some small information that could have possible helped stop a future attack, so Cheney decides that is a gospel defense of torture, despite a massive majority of the report saying it didn’t help. Now let’s put that into some different perspectives to show how the Bush administration rolled with things.
A report comes out from some fringe group saying climate change is not man made. Despite that 95+ percent of actual scientists that concur with the findings that climate change is man made, this fringe report is considered the holy grail of science in the White House.
Or how about this.
Some fringe report says that Saddam Hussein is trying to obtain the materials for weapons of mass destruction from Nigeria. Despite hundreds of actual investigators disputing that claim, that one little piece of the puzzle becomes the only piece to lead our nation into war.
The Bush administration, as well as Republicans in general, cling onto such far out there beliefs that one little thing can somehow trump every other piece of evidence that discredits it. Sure all kinds of medical professionals said Terri Schiavo was brain dead and wouldn’t recover, but Bill Frist watching her on a television screen hundreds of miles away was supposed to trump all that first hand knowledge.
It’s simple – Republicans hate facts. Joe Scarborough was ignoring the facts of history this morning to defend his party. Dick Cheney is ignoring the facts of an actual report and only wants the one part that could make him look good released. The list goes on, but it does emphasize the very reason the Republican party is now in the minority and have become nothing but a punch line to a vast majority of this country.