Cheney: Waterboarding Saved Thousands Of American Lives

By Jonathan Bronstein, Talk Radio News Service

Former VP Dick Cheney

Rushed to a secret White House bunker on September 11, 2001, former Vice President Dick Cheney watched coordinated terrorist attacks unfold before his eyes.

“I’ll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities,” said Cheney today at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

In the days following 9-11, Congress passed a Joint Resolution that gave the President and other high ranking officials the power to act with “all necessary and appropriate force” to protect America, according to Cheney.

This meant the Bush Administration would use all tactics at their disposal to ensure the country’s safety, including the allowance of waterboarding against suspected terrorists and an offensive war to disrupt terrorist activities.

Cheney bluntly stated that the use of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques were “legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do.”

Cheney defended the 183 instances of waterboarding employed by the CIA on Kaled Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks.

“American personnel were not there to commence an elaborate legal proceeding, but to extract information from him before al-Qaeda could strike again and kill more of our people,” said Cheney.

Waterboarding was not used against every enemy combatant, but “only those terrorists of the highest intelligence value,” said Cheney.

However, Cheney asserted that high-ranking members of Congress were briefed on the CIA’s use of these techniques, including the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D Calif.). He criticized those members of Congress who demanded to be briefed saying that “they support them in private, and then head for the hills at the first sign of controversy.”

In response to Pelosi’s assertion that the CIA lied to her, Cheney stated that “people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about ‘values.’”

Pelosi has been one of the harshest critics of the Bush Administration and a leading advocate for a ‘Truth Commission.’

“It’s hard to imagine a worse precedent, filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse, than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors,” said Cheney in regards to such a commission.

Cheney wants the government to release all torture documents, and he mocked the Obama Administration’s choice to only partially release these documents when he said that “the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.”

“Every senior official who has been briefed on these classified matters knows of the specific attacks that were in the planning stages and were stopped by the programs we put in place,” said Cheney.

Additionally, Cheney asserted that no matter what actions the Obama Administration takes, like the closing Guantanamo Bay or disallowing the use of enhanced interrogation, the terrorists will continue to hate America.

“The terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by,” said Cheney.

Pelosi: The CIA Misled Me And The American People

By Jonathan Bronstein, Talk Radio News Service

The slow revelation of the use of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency can be likened to a child slowly pulling off a band-aid and crying louder and louder with each hair pulled out of the follicle.

With each removed hair, or revelation in the news, the groans of the American people are only amplified as they want the truth about the CIA’s use of waterboarding and which U.S government officials knew but remained silent.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who was briefed by the CIA on interrogation techniques during September 2002, virulently denied that she knew the CIA employed water boarding.

In fact during a press conference this afternoon, she repeatedly answered numerous questions regarding her knowledge of when the CIA employed enhanced interrogation techniques, like waterboarding. She did this after her press secretary yelled out “last question.” Pelosi even answered as she was walked out of the room.

“I am speaking from my own experience, and we were told that it (waterboarding) was not being used,” said Pelosi emphatically.

Admitting that she was briefed by the CIA in September 2002, Pelosi said that the unnamed agent did not tell her that they used waterboarding, and promised her that the CIA would notify her if waterboarding was ever employed.

Pelosi said that the briefing in 2002 was “ incomplete and inaccurate,” as the waterboarding of terrorist and Bin Laden confidant, Abu Zubaydah, had occurred a month earlier.

After trying to clear her own name, Pelosi attempted to shift the blame to the CIA because it had not been forthright with information regarding the agency’s true actions.

“They (the CIA) misrepresented every step of the way, and they don’t want that focus on them, and they have tried to shift the focus on us (Congress),” said Pelosi.

At the same time of her briefing, Pelosi stated that “The Bush Adminstration was misleading the American people about the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

As a result, Pelosi has been a leading advocate in the need for an independent “Truth Commission” that would work “to determine how intelligence was misused, and how controversial and possibly illegal activities, like torture, were authorized within the executive branch.”

However, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) called the “Truth Commission” a “politically motivated investigation into our intelligence agency.”

Boehner feels that such an investigation is “dangerous and wrong.

But if this investigation does occur, he wants to see all the information presented, including what Pelosi knew, when she knew it and what she did about it.

Additionally, Boehner believes that Pelois’s numerous stories have led to “more questions than answers,” and bluntly questioned if the Democrats were not being truthful themselves.

“When you look at the number of briefings that the Speaker was in and other Democratic members of the House and Senate its pretty clear that they were well aware of what these enhanced interrogation techniques were, they were well aware that they have been used,” said Boehner.

Pelosi’s statements have only stoked the flames of suspicion, and her calls for a “Truth Commission,” at least according to Boehner, may lead to some unintended and unwanted discoveries.