Video/Transcript: "Will Israel Attack Iran?"

Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Obama Backs Himself into a Corner
The Latest from Iran (30 September): Confusion

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On Monday, Michael Rubin, resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, and Bob Baer, a former CIA officer and intelligence columnist for Time magazine, were the guests on MSNBC's Hardball. Both guests were pessimistic on the success of diplomatic engagement with Tehran, and both agreed that Israel would sooner or later attack Iran. They asserted that, while Israel can carry out the operation on its own, the US should discourage this since Washington cannot afford chaos in the region.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCic7ZL2efA[/youtube]
Unsurprisingly, Rubin and Baer portrayed Iran as a country ruled by "irrational" people who can even "commit suicide" by blocking the energy corridor through the Straits of Hormuz after an Israeli operation, just to ensure "the destruction of the Zionist regime". Iran's only motive for  obtaining a nuclear weapon is to attack rather than deter or balance Israel.

Transcript:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Michael Rubin, is it plausible that within the next year or so, Israel will strike at those nuclear facilities in Iran?

MICHAEL RUBIN, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: Absolutely plausible. It is. They view Iran and the Iranian nuclear threat as an existential threat, meaning they don‘t feel that if diplomacy fails, that they can live with a nuclear Iran. Their assessment is different than ours on this.

MATTHEWS: The odds are?

RUBIN: The odds are greater than 50/50.

MATTHEWS: OK, let me go to Bob Baer. Is it plausible—same question to you—that Israel will strike at Iran?

BOB BAER, FORMER CIA OFFICER: I think it‘s 50/50 or better. I agree with Michael. They look at the—the complete picture on this. They look at Lebanon. They look at the fact that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard corps has the missiles. And they have to do something now. I don‘t think sanctions are going to work.

MATTHEWS: Do they—bigger question to you because it‘s about the United States. Does the United States have to give them its compliance, its help, its OK, or can Israel strike on its own? Do we have to be party to this, or won‘t they do it?

RUBIN: Israel can strike on its own, but they can‘t finish the job on their own. It would take over a thousand sorties to do it right. The worst possible scenario for us would be that Israel starts something, and then the region becomes so messy that we feel that we have to finish it.

MATTHEWS: So you think we should help them.

RUBIN: I think that the idea is, if you‘re—if the worst-case scenario is military action, then we‘ve really got to ratchet up the other forms of coercion right now. And we certainly have to be prepared. We‘ve got to have sanctions alongside...

MATTHEWS: OK...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I‘m just trying to get to a question. Does Israel need our help to do the job?

RUBIN: No.

MATTHEWS: OK. Let me go to Bob Baer. Do they need our OK to give them, for example, to push Iraq to give them airspace and that sort of thing, to get to the target in Iran?

BAER: If you‘re sitting on the ground in Iraq and you‘re an American air controller and you see Israeli airplanes coming your way, how many minutes is the White House going to say yes or no? And the chances of saying no are zero. I don‘t think they need our help, but we will be drawn into a war, as a consequence.

MATTHEWS: So you both say that, technically, they could carry out the mission.

BAER: They could certainly start the mission.

MATTHEWS: OK, let‘s go to the question, Should we help them? If they decide—if Bibi Netanyahu makes the decision as prime minister of Israel, facing what you—what you believe he sees as an existential threat to the future of Israel and he decides to make the attack, should we help him?

RUBIN: The calculation has got to be on our interests. If the region is going to get messy, we‘ve got to do what we need to do to protect the United States‘ interests once Iran retaliates and should Iran retaliate.

MATTHEWS: If you were asked right now by the president, Should we help them, would you say yes or no?

RUBIN: I don‘t think now is yet the time.

MATTHEWS: OK. You wouldn‘t say yes now.

RUBIN: No.

MATTHEWS: OK. What do you think, Bob? should we say yes to the Israeli attack and say we‘ll help them?

BAER: We‘d say absolutely not.

MATTHEWS: Because I understand it‘s much more difficult for them to do it by themselves. But your thought is not to help them.

BAER: Not—we can‘t help them. We don‘t have enough troops. We‘d need a million troops in the Gulf. We would have to do something about the oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, to protect them.

MATTHEWS: OK.

BAER: Right now, we can‘t. Can we afford oil at $400 a barrel? Can we afford the mischief-making they would do in Iraq? And the answer is no.

MATTHEWS: OK, let‘s get to that point now. You both agree that Israel might do it. You both agree that it‘s more difficult for them to do it without us, but they could do it, right?

RUBIN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: And third question is, both of you think right now, the answer is we shouldn‘t encourage them to do it.

BAER: We should not.

MATTHEWS: OK, now the fourth question. If they attack the Israeli (SIC) nuclear facilities, as Netanyahu threatens to do, by the way, sometime next year at this point, because he‘s only giving our government up to the end of this year, what would be the consequences in order of importance, the consequences of an attack, because I‘m going to get the consequences of not attacking later. What are the consequences of an attack by Israel on the Iranian facilities?

RUBIN: The most important consequence of an attack would be that it would delay Iran‘s nuclear program, and it could delay it enough. That‘s what Israel‘s calculation is.

MATTHEWS: “Enough” meaning?

RUBIN: Enough to outlast the Iranian regime.

MATTHEWS: So the first instance, it would have a good effect.

RUBIN: The first instance, it would have a good effect.

MATTHEWS: What are the bad effects?

RUBIN: The bad effect is nothing like a military strike would rally the Iranian people around the flag more. The best thing that ever happened to...

MATTHEWS: I just talked to an Iranian emigre today, lives in this country. He‘s an American now. He believes it would give a 20-year life span to that faction running the country, the Ahmadinejad crowd.

RUBIN: I think that‘s possible, yes.

MATTHEWS: If Israel attacks.

RUBIN: People rally around the flag.

MATTHEWS: OK, so the first thing is good. It gets rid of—it puts them off maybe for a long time. Number two, they rally behind Ahmadinejad. The first two worst—or scenarios that you see, Bob, if they attack the facilities?

BAER: I think, again, it‘s the Gulf. It‘s the security of our oil.

I harp on this, but that‘s what the Iranians have said they‘re going to do. If they‘re attacked, no matter how minor the attack is, they‘re going to respond against oil. There‘s nothing we can do about it, and that‘s what worries me. In Iraq, as well.

MATTHEWS: The Straits of Hormuz. They shut off all oil shipments through the Straits, right?

BAER: They hit—they hit up (ph) cake (ph). It takes six million barrels off instantaneously, and we can‘t defend it. You know, secondly...

MATTHEWS: But doesn‘t that—doesn‘t that—doesn‘t that—that stranglehold, that chokehold, have a life span of itself? Can they keep doing that without committing suicide economically?

BAER: They‘re prepared...

MATTHEWS: I mean, how long can they...

BAER: ... to commit suicide.

MATTHEWS: ... raise the price that high?

RUBIN: They are.

BAER: They can. And they‘re ready to.

RUBIN: I absolutely agree. Iran‘s not a democracy. It doesn‘t matter what the ordinary people think, in the government‘s calculation. They will look at it—this—the leadership of Iran is the leadership that grew up in the Iran/Iraq war. They look at this and say, The vegetables are expensive? Well, when I was your age, I was fighting mustard gas on the front with Iraq.

MATTHEWS: OK, the way—the look of you right now—and I know you‘re emotional—passionate on this, not emotional. Is it possible, Michael, that the attack by Israel, which Bibi Netanyahu has threatened to carry out if we don‘t do something in stopping this weapons program by Iran, could be the beginning of a horrendous amount of action in the world, not just the end, but the beginning of spiking prices for oil, of Hezbollah attacks all over the place, not just Israel? What do you see happening?

RUBIN: Absolutely. And you‘ve got to balance that with, if Iran does go nuclear, you‘re going to have an end of the nuclear nonproliferation regime and a cascade of proliferation throughout the world. That‘s the choice.

MATTHEWS: OK. Let me ask you the final question tonight, and then I want to get to some of these quotes by people here. Bob Baer, what happens if we let Israel—we discourage Israel successfully and even (INAUDIBLE) maybe Netanyahu with a right-wing faction running the country there, with Lieberman, he decides not to move because we say, We don‘t want you to move?

If he doesn‘t move, what happens to the world if Israel is faced with a neighbor that hates it, wants to destroy it? Does that basically kill the notion of Israel as a safe haven for world Jewry in the long run? In other words, young people in their young 20s, young engineers, biotechnicians and all, would no longer want to live in that country because it‘s under a nuclear threat? Don‘t you—do you think that‘s a real prospect?

BAER: I think it‘s—Israel is under existential threat. I think if that Iran continues to grow, is a superpower or is a hegemon in the Gulf, that it ultimately it will affect Israel‘s survivability. There‘s no question about it. The Israelis have a point.

MATTHEWS: Michael? And that point is strong enough that it means their life. Do you buy that argument, that their life‘s at stake? And not over the year or two, but eventually, you cannot have an Israeli Jewish state, if you will, succeed if it‘s under the nuclear threat of a country that hates it.

RUBIN: There is a psychological threat, and with Iran‘s nuclear program...

MATTHEWS: By the way, it‘s a real psychological threat.

RUBIN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: It‘s not in the head.

RUBIN: But just as important is the uncertainty over who would control a nuclear bomb should Iran achieve that capability. Ordinary...

MATTHEWS: Who‘s got the button?

RUBIN: Who has the button, and under what circumstances would it be used? And that‘s what...

MATTHEWS: Who do you think is in charge in Iran right now? I want to get back to you. Who is making the decision to fire off these rockets? Who‘s making the decision to proceed in a way that looks like they‘re going towards weaponization? Who‘s calling that shot? Is it Khamenei, the boss, the supreme leader? Is it Ahmadinejad? Is a faction in the back room of old men, religious people? Who‘s making the call, Bob Baer, to go to war with us, basically, on this?

BAER: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And the new defense minister‘s from the IRGC. And don‘t forget that he blew up the Israeli embassy in Argentina. These guys have blood on their hands, and we really can‘t predict what they‘re going to do.

MATTHEWS: Michael?

RUBIN: Absolutely correct. The supreme leader still has ultimate control with the Revolutionary Guard. But the problem is, no one really knows about the factions inside the Revolutionary Guard Corps. It‘s still relatively a black box. Politics—we talk about reformers, we talk about hard liners, but the real decision making is inside that Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

MATTHEWS: OK. A fellow I know out in Hollywood, a guy who‘s pretty smart otherwise, said to me that the only smart Israeli action is to not just to go in and blow up the facilities, but to take out the leadership. Is that a feasible Israeli Entebbe-style possibility? Bob Baer, you first. Could they go in and take out the leadership faction, kill them? Could they do that?

BAER: No, the country...

MATTHEWS: Decapitate this government?

BAER: The country‘s too big. Israel‘s air force is too small. It‘s too big. You can‘t do it. It‘s 71 million people. We‘re talking about—the result would be a conventional war. It would look like World War III.

RUBIN: I would agree with that. You go after the leadership if it can prevent a war. In this case, it can‘t...

MATTHEWS: But you see it written along those lines in terms of knocking out, like, say, one person, killing one person, like, a really bad guy out there. But is it feasible for Israel to do an Entebbe-style assault, where they go in and find six or seven guys in this faction behind Ahmadinejad and kill them?

RUBIN: What‘s much more feasible...

MATTHEWS: Because they‘ve done stuff like this on the West Bank.

RUBIN: Yes. What‘s much more feasible, if Iran has buried nuclear facilities under mountains, they don‘t have to destroy the facilities, they just need to destroy the entrances to them.

MATTHEWS: And how long do they keep those sealed by blowing them up?

RUBIN: They set the program back a year or two and hope that the international community actually—actually becomes active.

MATTHEWS: Yes, the trouble is, the international community, from an Israeli point of view, goes the other way.

RUBIN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: What‘s your thought, Bob...

(CROSSTALK)

BAER: ... the intelligence isn‘t good enough.

MATTHEWS: Yes. Yes. What I‘ve heard as a scenario is they blow up, in the short run. They do the best they can and say, More coming if you keep going. Have you heard that argument?

RUBIN: I have heard that argument. And what‘s interesting, it‘s the same argument that was made when the Israelis went over after the Iraqi reactor in 1981. Critics said...

MATTHEWS: OK. How much longer do we both have—you both have, not me. I‘m watching you guys. You‘re the experts. How longer (ph), Michael, and how longer, Bob, do we have to keep Netanyahu from acting?

RUBIN: I‘d say it‘s in weeks—months, if not weeks.

MATTHEWS: Bob, how long has the United States got leverage over Netanyahu, the head of Israel, not to attack Iran?

BAER: I think Netanyahu...

MATTHEWS: Have we got a year?

BAER: He‘s given three months. He‘s got to see something happening in three months or he‘s going to start his planning. They‘ve already started their planning.

MATTHEWS: I think we‘re all on the same page on this. It‘s pretty scary. Thank you Michael Rubin from AEI, and thank you, Bob Baer, who knows his stuff.

Afghanistan: Obama v. Petraeus (Part 379)

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At the start of the year we closely tracked the political battle between the White House and military commanders, notably General David Petraeus, over the deployment of additional US troops to Afghanistan. This was nominally resolved at the end of March by a "compromise" agreement (even though the military got almost all of the troop request) in which Obama announced a new strategy of military measures supporting non-military measures to build up the country.

The situation was not resolved, either inside Washington or in Afghanistan, and we are back in another cycle of reports, spin, and power moves over another escalation in the US military commitment. One curious absentee, however, is Petraeus, who has not been far from media-shy in the past. Tom Englehardt digs beneath the surface for the story:

How Top Generals May Trap Obama in a Losing War

Front and center in the debate over the Afghan War these days are General Stanley "Stan" McChrystal, Afghan war commander, whose "classified, pre-decisional" and devastating report -- almost eight years and at least $220 billion later, the war is a complete disaster -- was conveniently, not to say suspiciously, leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post by we-know-not-who at a particularly embarrassing moment for Barack Obama; Admiral Michael "Mike" Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has been increasingly vocal about a "deteriorating" war and the need for more American boots on the ground; and the president himself, who blitzed every TV show in sight last Sunday and Monday for his health reform program, but spent significant time expressing doubts about sending more American troops to Afghanistan. ("I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan... or sending a message that America is here for the duration.")

On the other hand, here's someone you haven't seen front and center for a while: General David Petraeus.

He was, of course, George W. Bush's pick to lead the president's last-ditch effort in Iraq. He was the poster boy for Bush's military policies in his last two years. He was the highly praised architect and symbol of "the surge." He appeared repeatedly, his chest a mass of medals and ribbons, for heavily publicized, widely televised congressional testimony, complete with charts and graphs, that was meant, at least in part, for the American public. He was the man who, to use an image from that period which has recently resurfaced, managed to synchronize the American and Baghdad "clocks," pacifying for a time both the home and war fronts.

He never met a journalist, as far as we can tell, he didn't want to woo. (And he clearly won over the influential Tom Ricks, then of the Washington Post, who wrote The Gamble, a bestselling paean to him and his sub-commanders.) From the look of it, he's the most political general to come down the pike since, in 1951 in the midst of the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur said his goodbyes to Congress after being cashiered by President Truman for insubordination -- for, in effect, wanting to run his own war and the foreign policy that went with it. It was Petraeus who brought Vietnam-era counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) back from the crypt, overseeing the writing of a new Army counterinsurgency manual that would make it central to both the ongoing wars and what are already being referred to as the "next" ones.

Before he left office, Bush advanced his favorite general to the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the former president's Global War on Terror across the energy heartlands of the planet from Egypt to Pakistan. The command is, of course, especially focused on Bush's two full-scale wars: the Iraq War, now being pursued under Petraeus's former subordinate, General Ray Odierno, and the Afghan War, for which Petraeus seems to have personally handpicked a new commanding general, Stan McChrystal. From the military's dark side world of special ops and targeted assassinations, McChrystal had operated in Iraq and was also part of an Army promotion board headed by Petraeus that advanced the careers of officers committed to counterinsurgency. To install McChrystal in May, Obama abruptly sacked the then-Afghan war commander, General David McKiernan, in what was then considered, with some exaggeration, a new MacArthur moment.

On taking over, McChrystal, who had previously been a counterterrorism guy (and isn't about to give that up, either), swore fealty to counterinsurgency doctrine (that is, to Petraeus) by proclaiming that the American goal in Afghanistan must not be primarily to hunt down and kill Taliban insurgents, but to "protect the population." He also turned to a "team" of civilian experts, largely gathered from Washington think-tanks, a number of whom had been involved in planning out Petraeus's Iraq surge of 2007, to make an assessment of the state of the war and what needed to be done. Think of them as the Surgettes.

As in many official reassessments, the cast of characters essentially guaranteed the results before a single meeting was held. Based on past history and opinions, this team could only provide one Petraeus-approved answer to the war: more -- more troops, up to 40,000-45,000 of them, and other resources for an American counterinsurgency operation without end.

Hence, even if McChrystal's name is on it, the report slipped to Bob Woodward which just sandbagged the president has a distinctly Petraeusian shape to it. In a piece linked to Woodward's bombshell in the Washington Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung wrote of unnamed officials in Washington who claimed "the military has been trying to push Obama into a corner." The language in the coverage elsewhere has been similar.

There is, wrote DeYoung a day later, now a "rupture" between the military "pushing for an early decision to send more troops" and civilian policymakers "increasingly doubtful of an escalating nation-building effort." Nancy Youssef of McClatchy News wrote about how "mixed signals" from Washington were causing "increasing ire from U.S. commanders in Afghanistan"; a group of McClatchy reporters talked of military advocates of escalation feeling "frustration" over "White House dithering." David Sanger of the New York Times described "a split between an American military that says it needs more troops now and an American president clearly reluctant to leap into that abyss." "Impatient" is about the calmest word you'll see for the attitude of the military top command right now.

Buyer's Remorse, the Afghan War, and the President

In the midst of all this, between Admiral Mullen and General McChrystal is, it seems, a missing man. The most photogenic general in our recent history, the man who created the doctrine and oversees the war, the man who is now shaping the U.S. Army (and its future plans and career patterns), is somehow, at this crucial moment, out of the Washington spotlight. This last week General Petraeus was, in fact, in England, giving a speech and writing an article for the (London) Times laying out his basic "protect the population" version of counterinsurgency and praising our British allies by quoting one of their great imperial plunderers. ("If Cecil Rhodes was correct in his wonderful observation that 'being an Englishman is the greatest prize in the lottery of life,' and I'm inclined to think that he was, then the second greatest prize in the lottery of life must be to be a friend of an Englishman, and based on that, the more than 230,000 men and women in uniform who work with your country's finest day by day are very lucky indeed, as am I.")

Only at mid-week, with Washington aboil, did he arrive in the capital for a counterinsurgency conference at the National Press Club and quietly "endorse" "General McChrystal's assessment." Whatever the look of things, however, it's unlikely that Petraeus is actually on the sidelines at this moment of heightened tension. He is undoubtedly still The Man.

So much is, of course, happening just beyond the sightlines of those of us who are mere citizens of this country, which is why inference and guesswork are, unfortunately, the order of the day. Read any account in a major newspaper right now and it's guaranteed to be chock-a-block full of senior officials and top military officers who are never "authorized to speak," but nonetheless yak away from behind a scrim of anonymity. Petraeus may or may not be one of them, but the odds are reasonable that this is still a Petraeus Moment.

If so, Obama has only himself to blame. He took up Afghanistan ("the right war") in the presidential campaign as proof that, despite wanting to end the war in Iraq, he was tough. (Why is it that a Democratic candidate needs a war or threat of war to trash-talk about in order to prove his "strength," when doing so is obviously a sign of weakness?)

Once in office, Obama compounded the damage by doubling down his bet on the war. In March, he introduced a "comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan" in his first significant public statement on the subject, which had expansion written all over it. He also agreed to send in 21,000 more troops (which, by the way, Petraeus reportedly convinced him to do). In August, in another sign of weakness masquerading as strength, before an unenthusiastic audience at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, he unnecessarily declared: "This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity." All of this he will now pay for at the hands of Petraeus, or if not him, then a coterie of military men behind the latest push for a new kind of Afghan War.

As it happens, this was never Obama's "war of necessity." It was always Petraeus's. And the new report from McChrystal and the Surgettes is undoubtedly Petraeus's progeny as well. It seems, in fact, cleverly put together to catch a cautious president, who wasn't cautious enough about his war of choice, in a potentially devastating trap. The military insistence on quick action on a troop decision sets up a devastating choice for the president: "Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure." Go against your chosen general and the failure that follows is yours alone. (Unnamed figures supposedly close to McChrystal are already launching test balloons, passed on by others, suggesting that the general might resign in protest if the president doesn't deliver -- a possibility he has denied even considering.) On the other hand, offer him somewhere between 15,000 and 45,000 more American troops as well as other resources, and the failure that follows will still be yours.

It's a basic lose-lose proposition and, as journalist Eric Schmitt wrote in a New York Times assessment of the situation, "it will be very hard to say no to General McChrystal." No wonder the president and some of his men are dragging their feet and looking elsewhere. As one typically anonymous "defense analyst" quoted in the Los Angeles Times said, the administration is suffering "buyer's remorse for this war... They never really thought about what was required, and now they have sticker shock."

Admittedly, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 51% of Americans are against sending in more troops. (Who knows how they would react to a president who went on TV to announce that he had genuinely reconsidered?) Official Washington is another matter. For General Petraeus, who claims to have no political ambitions but is periodically mentioned as the Eisenhower of 2012, how potentially peachy to launch your campaign against the president who lost you the war.

A Petraeus Moment?

In the present context, the media language being used to describe this military-civilian conflict of wills -- frustration, impatience, split, rupture, ire -- may fall short of capturing the import of a moment which has been brewing, institutionally speaking, for a long time. There have been increasing numbers of generals' "revolts" of various sorts in our recent past. Of course, George W. Bush was insistent on turning planning over to his generals (though only when he liked them), something Barack Obama criticized him for during the election campaign. ("The job of the commander in chief is to listen to the best counsel available and to listen even to people you don't agree with and then ultimately you make the final decision and you take responsibility for those actions.")

Now, it looks as if we are about to have a civilian-military encounter of the first order in which Obama will indeed need to take responsibility for difficult actions (or the lack thereof). If a genuine clash heats up, expect more discussion of "MacArthur moments," but this will not be Truman versus MacArthur redux, and not just because Petraeus seems to be a subtler political player than MacArthur ever was.

Over the nearly six decades that separate us from Truman's great moment, the Pentagon has become a far more overwhelming institution. In Afghanistan, as in Washington, it has swallowed up much of what once was intelligence, as it is swallowing up much of what once was diplomacy. It is linked to one of the two businesses, the Pentagon-subsidized weapons industry, which has proven an American success story even in the worst of economic times (the other remains Hollywood). It now holds a far different position in a society that seems to feed on war.

It's one thing for the leaders of a country to say that war should be left to the generals when suddenly embroiled in conflict, quite another when that country is eternally in a state of war. In such a case, if you turn crucial war decisions over to the military, you functionally turn foreign policy over to them as well. All of this is made more complicated, because the cast of "civilians" theoretically pitted against the military right now includes Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general who is the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Douglas Lute, a lieutenant general who is the president's special advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan (dubbed the "war czar" when he held the same position in the Bush administration), and James Jones, a retired Marine Corps general, who is national security advisor, not to speak of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The question is: will an already heavily militarized foreign policy geared to endless global war be surrendered to the generals? Depending on what Obama does, the answer to that question may not be fully, or even largely, clarified this time around. He may quietly give way, or they may, or compromises may be reached behind the scenes. After all, careers and political futures are at stake.

But consider us warned. This is a question that is not likely to go away and that may determine what this country becomes.

We know what a MacArthur moment was; we may find out soon enough what a Petraeus moment is.

Obama's Sunday Media Blitz: The CNN Transcript

The Obama Sunday Media Blitz: The CBS Video/Transcript
Obama’s Sunday Media Blitz: The Meet the Press Video/Transcript

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KING: Mr. President, thank you for joining us.

OBAMA: Great to see you.

KING: I want to begin with the economy. I get out of Washington every week for the show, and we’re in Connecticut and Rhode Island this week. And I knew I was going to be seeing you, so I asked 20 people: “What would you ask if you had the privilege that I have at this moment?” Eighteen of the twenty, eighteen, asked a variation of...

OBAMA: Jobs.

KING: ... where are the jobs? When are they coming back?

OBAMA: Yes. Well, look, the -- this is something that I ask every single one of my economic advisers every single day, because I know that ultimately the measure of an economy is, is it producing jobs that help people support families, send their kids to college? That’s the single most important thing we can do. What we’ve done, I think, in the first eight months is to stop the bleeding. We’ve...

KING: Is the recession over?

OBAMA: Well, you know, I’ll leave that up to the Fed chairman to pronounce whether it’s officially over or not. I think what’s absolutely clear is that -- that the financial markets are working again, that we even saw manufacturing tick up, in terms of production, last month. So all of the signs are that the economy is going to start growing again.

But here’s -- here’s the challenge, that not only are usually jobs figures the last to catch up, they’re the lagging indicator, but the other problem is, we lost so many jobs that making up for those that have already been lost is going to require really high growth rates.

And so what we’re focused right now on is, how can we make sure that businesses are investing again? How can we make sure that certain industries that were really important, like housing, are stabilized? How can we expand our export markets? And that’s part of what the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh is going to be about, making sure that there’s a more balanced economy.

We can’t go back to the era where the Chinese or the Germans or other countries just are selling everything to us, we’re taking out a bunch of credit card debt or home equity loans, but we’re not selling anything to them.

So that’s how all this is going to fit together. But I want to be clear that probably the jobs picture is not going to improve considerably -- and it could even get a little bit worse -- over the next couple of months. And we’re probably not going to start seeing enough job creation to deal with the -- a rising population until some time next year.

KING: Do you think jobs will not grow, you will not be adding jobs until some time next year, or maybe...

(CROSSTALK)

OBAMA: No, I think -- I think we’ll be adding jobs, but you need 150,000 additional jobs each month just to keep pace with a growing population. So if we’re only adding 50,000 jobs, that’s a great reversal from losing 700,000 jobs early this year, but, you know, it means that we’ve still got a ways to go.

KING: Let’s talk health care. The Senate Finance Committee finally has a proposal before it by the chairman, Max Baucus . It’s getting some criticism from the left, some criticism from the right. I want to get to the details of it in a minute. It’s also getting some important praise from the middle. I want to break down some of the details in a minute. But if the Baucus bill made it to your desk as is, would you sign it? Does it meet your goals?

OBAMA: Well, that’s such a hypothetical, since it won’t get there as is, that I’m not going to answer that question. But can I say that it does meet some broad goals that all the bills that have been introduced meet.

KING: Is it better than the others?

OBAMA: It provides health insurance to people who don’t have it at affordable prices. I’d like to make sure that we’ve got that affordability really buttoned down, because I think that’s one of the most important things, is that if we’re offering people health insurance and we’re saying that people have to get health insurance if it’s affordable, we’ve got to make sure it’s affordable.

We’re helping people who have health insurance with the -- with knowing that, if they’re paying their premiums, they’re actually getting what they pay for, and that has been a huge problem, the people not able to get insurance because of pre-existing conditions, being surprised because some fine print says that they’ve got to pay huge out-of-pocket expenses or they hit a lifetime cap. All of those reforms are in there, and that’s really important.

Deficit neutrality, very important. Bending the cost curve, reducing health care inflation over time, part of the reason that’s so important, there was just a report that came out last week. Kaiser Family Foundation said, if you’ve got health insurance, last year, your premiums went up 5.5 percent, 5.5 percent. This is despite the fact that inflation was negative on everything else.

And that has been true almost every year. Premiums have doubled, gone up over 130 percent over the last 10 years. That’s the direction we’re heading. More and more people are finding that their employers are dropping their coverage, because it’s getting too expensive, so making sure that we’re controlling the long-term costs by improving the delivery systems, all of that’s in the bill.

Now, there are a whole bunch of details that still have to get worked out. I suspect you’ll have one or two questions about them. But what I’ll say is, is that right now I’m pleased that, basically, we’ve got 80 percent agreement, we’ve got to really work on that next 20 percent over the last few weeks.

KING: One of the issues is how to pay for it. And one of the things Chairman Baucus does -- and you have endorsed, at least in concept -- is putting a fee, slapping a fee on these so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans. And the fee would go on the insurance company, not on the individual.

OBAMA: That’s right.

KING: But as you know, many of your allies, Senator Rockefeller, other Democrats, and many union presidents who have helped you in this fight, say, you know what? That insurance company will pass that on to the consumer, and they think it’s a backdoor way potentially of violating your promise during the campaign to not raise taxes, not hurt middle-class Americans, because that will be passed back on through the back door.

OBAMA: Keep in mind that the average insurance plan, I think, is about $13,000, a little -- maybe a little more than that, because of health care inflation. Even the health care plan that members of Congress get is, you know, in that range of the teens. And so people would be, for the most part, completely unaffected by this.

You do have some Cadillac plans -- I mean, you know, the CEOs of Goldman, I think, published what their plans were worth. They were worth $40,000 or something like that. That’s probably leading to...

KING: Would you make sure...

OBAMA: ... some waste...

KING: I hate to interrupt, but would you make sure that -- some of these unions have negotiated pretty good plans, too. Would you...

OBAMA: Oh, absolutely.

KING: ... make sure theirs are carved out, or should some of them be subject to that?

OBAMA: This is a very important issue. I’ve been talking to the unions about it. I’ve been honest with them about it. What I’ve said is, is that the -- we want to make sure that guys are protected, guys and gals who have got a good benefit, that they are protected, but we also want to make sure that we’re using our health dollars wisely.

And I -- I do think that giving a disincentive to insurance companies to offer Cadillac plans that don’t make people healthier is part of the way that we’re going to bring down health care costs for everybody over the long term.

KING: It is not one of the central issues, but it has become one of the emotional flashpoints, and that is coverage of illegal immigrants. The Finance Committee plan is the only one in Congress right now that has specific language that says an illegal immigrant cannot go to one of these new health insurance exchanges. It requires documentation. Would you sign a bill without that documentation? Or is that an adamant red line for you?

OBAMA: Let me be clear. I think that, if I’m not mistaken, almost all of the plans had specific language saying that illegal immigrants would not be covered. The question really was, was the enforcement mechanism strong enough?

Here’s what I’ve said, and I will repeat: I don’t think that illegal immigrants should be covered under this health care plan. There should be a verification mechanism in place. We do that for a whole range of existing social programs. And I think that’s a pretty straightforward principle that will be met.

KING: Mitch McConnell told a conservative group: “We’re winning the health care debate.” What do you think of that?

OBAMA: Well, you know, they -- they were saying they were winning during the election, too.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Up next, we turn to global challenges, wrestling with sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, and a headline from former President Bill Clinton’s trip to North Korea. Much more with President Obama, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Afghanistan is now often referred to as Obama’s war and the strategy and decisions he faces in the coming weeks could well define his presidency. The American people have deep doubts about the mission and some of the president’s fellow Democrats see eerily parallels to Iraq in Afghanistan’s failure to build a more capable army and its government corruption and dysfunction. Defining the mission is perhaps the president’s biggest challenge.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Let me move on to the world stage. You face a very tough decision in the weeks ahead about Afghanistan. Our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr, says she has been told that General McChrystal has finished his report and his recommendation to you, but he has been told, “Don’t call us; we’ll call you. Hold it.”

Are you or someone working for you asking him to sit on that at the moment because of the dicey politics of this?

OBAMA: No, no, no, no. Let -- let me describe the process from start to where we are now. When we came in, I think everybody understood that our Afghanistan strategy was somewhat adrift, despite the extraordinary valor of the young women -- men and women who are -- who are fighting there.

So what we said was, let’s do a soup-to-nuts re-evaluation, focusing on what our original goal was, which was to get Al Qaida, the people who killed 3,000 Americans.

To the extent that our strategy in Afghanistan is serving that goal, then we’re on the right track. If it starts drifting away from that goal, then we may have a problem.

What I also said was, we’ve got an election coming up. I ordered 21,000 troops in to secure that election. But I said, after the election’s over, we’ve got to review it, because we’ve got to figure out, what kind of partner do we have in Afghanistan? Are they willing to make the commitment to build their capacity to secure their own country?

We are in the process of working through that strategy. The only thing I’ve said to my folks is, A, I want an unvarnished assessment, but, B, I don’t want to put the resource question before the strategy question. You know, the -- because there is a natural inclination to say, if I get more, then I can do more. But right now, the question is, the first question is, are we doing the right thing? Are we pursuing the right strategy?

And -- and once I have that clarity from the commanders on the ground, Secretary Gates, my national security adviser, Jim Jones, and others, when we have clarity on that, then the question is, OK, how do we resource it? And that’s -- what I will say to the American public is not going to be driven by the politics of the moment. It’s going to be driven by the fact that, A, my most important job is to keep us safe -- and Al Qaida’s still trying to do us harm -- but, B, every time I sign an order, you know, I’m answerable to the parents of those young men and women who I’m sending over there, and I want to make sure that it’s for the right reason.

KING: On that point, about a month before the election, you promised a re-focused national security strategy. And you said, quote, “We will kill bin Laden. We will crush Al Qaida.” As president, commander-in-chief, are you finding it’s harder to find him than you thought it might have been as a candidate?

OBAMA: Oh, I think as a candidate I knew I was -- it was going to be hard. I don’t doubt the interest and the desire of the previous administration to find him and kill him. But I do think that, if we have a overarching strategy that reminds us every day that that’s our focus, that we have a better chance of capturing and killing him and certainly keeping Al Qaida on the run than if we start drifting into a whole bunch of other missions that really aren’t related to what is our essential strategic problem and rationale for being there.

KING: It is a small number, but a growing number of Democrats in the Congress who say they want a timeline, they want a time limit on U.S. troop commitments in Afghanistan. You thought that was a good idea when it came to Iraq. Is it a good idea for Afghanistan?

OBAMA: You know, I think that what we have to do is get the right strategy, and then I think we’ve got to have some clear benchmarks, matrix of progress. That’s part of the reason why I said, even after six months, I wanted us to re-evaluate. You know...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: What would you say to the American who says you’ve been president for eight months, why are you still looking for a strategy?

OBAMA: Well, no, no, no. Keep in mind that we have a -- we put a strategy in place, clarified our goals, but what the election has shown, as well as changing circumstances in Pakistan, is that, you know, this is going to be a very difficult operation, and we’ve got to make sure that we’re constantly refining it to keep our focus on what our primary goals are.

KING: Do you think President Karzai stole the election?

OBAMA: You know, I don’t think that, you know, I’m going to make comments on the election until after everything has been certified. I think there is no doubt that there were reports of fraud out there that at first glance look pretty serious. They’re being investigated. They’re going through the -- the normal processes.

How much fraud took place and whether that had a substantial effect on the results of the election, I think that is something that we’re going to have to wait and see in the next few weeks.

KING: A couple other quick security questions, and then I want to bring it back home. You recently had lunch with President Clinton. He went to North Korea to help facilitate the release of those American journalists. What is the most interesting thing he told you about Kim Jong-il?

OBAMA: You know, I think President Clinton’s assessment was that he’s -- he’s pretty healthy and in control. And that’s important to know, because we don’t have a lot of interaction with the North Koreans. And, you know, President Clinton had a chance to see him close up and have conversations with him.

I won’t go into any more details than that. But there’s no doubt that this is somebody who, you know, I think for a while people thought was slipping away. He’s reasserted himself. It does appear that he’s concerned about -- he was more concerned about succession when he was -- succession when he was sick, maybe less so now that he’s well.

But our -- but our main focus on North Korea -- and I’m very -- actually, this is a success story so far, and that is that we have been able to hold together a coalition that includes the Chinese and the Russians to really apply some of the toughest sanctions we’ve seen, and it’s having an impact.

OBAMA: And I think that North Korea is saying to itself, you know, we can’t just bang our spoon on the table and somehow think that the world is going to react positively. We’ve got to start behaving responsibly. So hopefully, we’ll start seeing some progress on that front.

KING: Seven former directors of central intelligence have sent you a letter saying, please invoke your authority to stop the attorney general’s investigation of the Bush-era interrogation tactics. Will you do that?

OBAMA: You know, first of all, I respect all seven of them. And as importantly or more importantly, I have absolute respect and have reliance upon a robust CIA.

And I’ve said before, I want to look forward and not backwards on this issue. On the other hand, I’ve also said nobody is above the law. And I don’t want to start getting into the business of squelching, you know, investigations that are being conducted.

Now, it’s not a criminal investigation as yet, my understanding. I trust career prosecutors to be judicious. I’ve made clear both publicly and privately that I have no interest in witch hunts. But, ultimately, the law is the law, and we don’t go around sort of picking and choosing how we approach it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Ahead, angry outbursts and disturbing images in recent weeks have some on the left suggesting racism motivates some Obama critics. Does the president see race as the issue? I’ll ask him next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: How much, if at all, does our first African-American president believe race motivates his critics? Back to our conversation in the Roosevelt Room.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING: It’s a tough business, as you know. But in recent weeks, people have raised some pretty serious questions, the big rally in town, signs talking about Afro-socialism (ph), swastikas with your name and your picture on them, “you lie” shouted at you during a nationally televised addressed, and former President Carter says he sees racism in some of this. Do you?

OBAMA: You know, as I’ve said in the past, you know, are there people out there who don’t like me because of race? I’m sure there are. That’s not the overriding issue here. I think there are people who are anti-government.

I think that there are -- there has been a longstanding debate in this country that is usually that much more fierce during times of transition or when presidents are trying to bring about big changes.

I mean, the things that were said about FDR are pretty similar to the things that were said about me, that he was a communist, he was a socialist. Things that were said about Ronald Reagan when he was trying to reverse some of the New Deal programs, you know, were -- were pretty vicious, as well.

The only thing I’d just hope is, is that people -- you know, I think we can have a strong disagreement, passionate disagreements about issues without -- without resorting to name-calling. We can maintain civility. We can give other people the benefit of the doubt that -- that they want what is best for this country.

KING: But the speaker says it reminds her of the hateful anti- gay language in San Francisco that led to deadly violence. Jim Clyburn, who’s the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, says he thinks people are trying to de-legitimize you. Did you see it as that worrisome?

OBAMA: You know, I’ve got to tell you that, as I said before, you know, yelling at politicians is as American as apple pie. I mean, that’s -- that’s in our DNA. We -- I said this in the speech to the joint session, that we have a long tradition of being skeptical of government.

I do think that it’s important for us, again, to remind ourselves that all of us are Americans who love this country. I think it’s important not to exaggerate or provide just rank misinformation about each other.

You know, I’m amused. I can’t tell you how many foreign leaders who are heads of center-right governments say to me, I don’t understand why people would call you socialist, in my country, you’d be considered a conservative.

You know, and the other thing I’ve got to say is, is that I think it’s important for the media -- you know, not to do any media-bashing here -- to recognize that right now, in this 24-hour news cycle, the easiest way to get on CNN or FOX or any of the other stations -- MSNBC -- is to just say something rude and outrageous.

If you’re civil, and polite, and you’re sensible, and you don’t exaggerate the -- the bad things about your opponent, and, you know, you might maybe get on one of the Sunday morning shows, but -- but you’re not going to -- you’re not going to be on the loop.

And, you know, part of what I’d like to see is -- is all of us reward decency and civility in our political discourse. That doesn’t mean you can’t be passionate, and that doesn’t mean that you can’t speak your mind. But I think we can all sort of take a step back here and remind ourselves who we are as a people.

KING: I’m over my time. If I can, I want to ask you one question as a parent, not as a president. I was on a college campus this week and at a lab where they’re trying to make an H1N1 vaccine. As a parent with two daughters in school, how are you dealing with this? And does the Obama family plan include a vaccine for you?

OBAMA: Well, the -- here’s the Obama family plan, is to call up my HHS secretary, Kathleen Sebelius , and my CDC director and just ask them, what’s your recommendation? And whatever they tell me to do, I will do.

My understanding at this point is that the high-risk populations are going to be first with the vaccine, and that means not only health care workers, but particularly children with underlying neurological vulnerabilities. And so we’ve got to make sure that those vaccines go to them first.

OBAMA: I’m assuming -- and pregnant women, by the way -- after that, I think you’re looking at kids, and so Malia and Sasha would fall into that category. I suspect that I may come fairly far down the line, so we’re not going to -- here’s what I guarantee you. We want to get vaccinated. We think it’s the right thing to do. We will stand in line like everybody else. And when folks say it’s our turn, that’s when we’ll get it.

KING: Mr. President, thank you for your time.

OBAMA: Thank you so much.

KING: Thank you.

OBAMA: Appreciated it.

Torture and Lies: Confronting Cheney --- 7 More Points to Note

Torture and Lies: Confronting Cheney

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We've already vented frustration and anger this morning in our introduction to the excellent piece by Dan Froomkin on Dick Cheney's public-relations campaign to sweep away torture. So we'll just add this article from the investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill:

Seven Points About Dick Cheney and Torture

First of all, Dick Cheney has all sorts of nerve purporting to speak in defense of the CIA. His administration outed a senior CIA operative, Valerie Plame, in retaliation for her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, exercising his freedom of speech (because he exercised it to criticize the Bush administration’s lie-filled, one-way propaganda train to the Iraq war).

Second, CIA interrogators themselves have said that they believed that Cheney’s torture policy put individual CIA personnel in legal jeopardy. As Greg Sargent has pointed out, on page 94 of the recently released Inspector General’s report, we learn the following:

“During the course of this Review, a number of Agency officers expressed unsolicited concern about the possibility of recrimination or legal action resulting from their participation in the CTC program….One officer expressed concern that one day, Agency officers will wind up on some “wanted list” to appear before the World Court for war crimes…”

This is not even to mention, in a broader sense, the risk to any US personnel that possibly ended up in “enemy” hands where captors of US prisoners could justify their own acts of torture by pointing to US tactics.

Third, Dick Cheney showed utter contempt for the CIA when he went not once, not twice, but more than a dozen times to Langley to pressure analysts to fit intelligence to his political agenda. He and his top aide Scooter Libby were “attempting to pressure analysts on the subject of weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, according to Vincent Cannistraro, a former counterterrorism chief at the CIA. So when Cheney talks about being “offended as hell,” let’s remember how much faith Cheney had in the CIA in the lead up to the Iraq invasion. I’m sure the CIA analysts who he tried to manipulate were “offended as hell” by Cheney’s actions. “The visits were, in fact, unprecedented,” wrote Ray McGovern, who was vice president George HW Bush’s national security briefer. “During my 27-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, no vice president ever came to us for a working visit.” Those personal visits were in addition to the ones Cheney received at home. “I enjoyed having the CIA show up on my doorstep every morning, six days a week, with the latest intelligence,” Cheney said on Fox News Sunday.

Fourth, the tactics Cheney apparently loves were a violation of US law, international law and conventions that the US has ratified—including the Convention Against Torture ratified under the militant leftist regime of Ronald Reagan. That dovish draft-dodger who wouldn’t know torture if he endured it for several years, John McCain, pointed out the lawless aspects of Cheney’s torture program on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan,” said McCain. “I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq… I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And I believe that information, according go the FBI and others, could have been gained through other members.”

Fifth, there is no evidence—none—to suggest any of this torture produced any actionable intelligence. “I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country,” Cheney told Sean Hannity back in April on Fox News. “I’ve now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was.”

Well, those documents were released last week. Cheney, clearly knowing that many “journalists” apparently wouldn’t bother reading them, was all over the media claiming the documents absolve him and that torture worked. The problem is, they showed nothing of the sort and actually—upon a close read—indicate that techniques that did not involve torture produced better results. Some portions “actually suggest the opposite of Cheney’s contention: that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information the documents cite in defending the value of the CIA’s interrogations,” as Spencer Ackerman observed in the Washington Independent.

Let’s remember: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a blowhard braggart long before he was taken prisoner by the US in March 2003, as Jane Mayer has pointed out. Al Jazeera did not need to waterboard him or put a drill to his head or threaten to rape his wife before he bragged about being the mastermind of 9/11 on the network before being captured. “[T]here’s no evidence that I see in [the declassified documents] that these things were necessary,” observed Mayer. “I spoke to someone at the CIA who was an adviser to them who conceded to me that ‘We could have gotten the same information from tea and crumpets.’”

Also, Mohammed told the International Committee of the Red Cross that he gave misinformation to US interrogators as well. “During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop,” Mohammed told the ICRC. “I later told the interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I’m sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order tomake the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts being placed in the US.” This raises an unanswerable question: Who knows how many US lives were put at risk because of bad intelligence obtained from torture?

One of the few people that had actually seen the documents to which Cheney was referring before they were released and had the courage to speak up was Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold. In May, he said: “I am a member of the Intelligence Committee, and I can tell you that nothing I have seen, including the two documents to which [Cheney] has repeatedly referred, indicates that the torture techniques authorized by the last administration were necessary or that they were the best way to get information out of detainees.” Now that the public has had access to these documents, it is clear, as Feingold said months ago, that Cheney was “misleading the American people.” And, with the cooperation of a lazy and pliant media, Cheney continues to run his own televised miseducation camp. And let’s be honest: It ain’t just Fox News. The Washington Post now appears to be a private little Pravda for Cheney and his tiny group of minions formerly employed by the CIA. “The Post management, it seems, is determined to return to its past practice of acting as stenographers for the CIA’s PR machine,” McGovern, the former CIA analyst, recently wrote.

The role that the media should actually play in all of this was summed up well by Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who rightly points out that the tactics were not limited to waterboarding, but included “threats of rape, of killing children, of blowing cigar smoke into detainee’s faces until they retch, in addition to the power drills and mock executions:”

“We’ve long said that if you televise an execution that will be the end of public support for the death penalty. In a similar way, one hopes that the more the reality of torture is put before the American public, the less support there will be for it. When the issue is presented — as in the earliest leaked torture memos — as a legal abstraction, it’s easier for the public to rationalize the idea that nothing wrong is taking place.”

Sixth, at the end of the day, as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, the debate about whether torture actually worked is not the central point here:

The debate over whether torture extracted valuable information is, in my view, a total sideshow, both because (a) it inherently begs the question of whether legal interrogation means would have extracted the same information as efficiently if not more so (exactly the same way that claims that warrantless eavesdropping uncovered valuable intelligence begs the question of whether legal eavesdropping would have done so); and (b) torture is a felony and a war crime, and we don’t actually have a country (at least we’re not supposed to) where political leaders are free to commit serious crimes and then claim afterwards that it produced good outcomes.  If we want to be a country that uses torture, then we should repeal our laws which criminalize it, withdraw from treaties which ban it, and announce to the world (not that they don’t already know) that, as a country, we believe torture is justifiable and just.  Let’s at least be honest about what we are.  Let’s explicitly repudiate Ronald Reagan’s affirmation that ”[n]o exceptional circumstances whatsoever … may be invoked as a justification of torture” and that “[e]ach State Party is required [] to prosecute torturers.”

Seventh, one last point about Dick Cheney and his little toadie Chris Wallace when they talk about how there hasn’t been another attack since 9-11. Remember toadie’s sarcastic words: “I just want to point out to the audience that it is purely coincidental that this country has not been attacked since 9/11.” How about the more than 4,300 US troops that have been killed in Iraq as a result of the Bush-Cheney lie factory? That is more American dead than perished on 9/11. Those young men and women would not have died in Iraq had it not been for the policies of Bush and Cheney.

Torture and Lies: Confronting Cheney

Torture and Lies: Confronting Cheney — 7 More Points to Note
Defending Torture, Bombing Iran (Video): Dick Cheney on Fox News Sunday (30 August)

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It has been thoroughly depressing to watch the spiralling descent of public discussion of the Bush Administration's policies and operations that put torture into practice from 2002. My fear is that the mounting evidence (much of which we had known years ago, before the advent of the Obama Administration opened up a space for revelation) of a systematic use of "enhanced interrogation" is being swept away by a hyper-active campaign of distortions, excuses, and pretexts.

The debate is now being framed as to whether the US Government going to cripple the dedicated personnel of the Central Intelligence Agency. That is a deliberate screen to hide a bigger goal: to keep Bush Administration officials from facing a reckoning, in public opinion if not criminal court, for their actions.

Thank goodness, therefore, for Dan Froomkin, who has fought diligently for years to keep the story of torture before readers. Pushed out the door by The Washington Post in  part because of this effort, he is now writing for The Huffington Postin:

Cheney Still Manipulating People -- Now In Public

When he was vice president, Dick Cheney got his way by secretly wielding the instruments of power. Now that he's no longer in government, Cheney is still pulling levers and pushing buttons - he's just doing it in plain view. And it's the media that he's manipulating.

After years of speaking in whispers, operating by proxy, and leaving as few fingerprints as possible, Cheney has figured out that he can say pretty much anything he wants, the networks will show it on TV, and the newspapers will dutifully print it. And best of all, they will fail to put it in any context whatsoever.

The first bit of context for any Cheney comment, of course, is that he is a monstrous liar. News articles about Cheney should routinely reminded readers of some of the things he said in the run-up to war in Iraq. Like, for instance: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." By any reasonable standard, this man's credibility was shot a long time ago.

Cheney's latest coup is to get the media to obediently recount what Rachel L. Swarns of The New York Times so naively and euphemistically called his "forceful defense of the full range of interrogation techniques used by intelligence officers."

In an interview with beyond-obsequious Fox News anchor Chris Wallace that aired on Sunday, Cheney once again alleged that what he calls "enhanced interrogation tactics" saved "thousands of lives and let us defeat all further attacks against the United States."

It wouldn't have been hard for reporters to put that particular claim in its proper context. Just last week, the CIA released two documents that Cheney had been huffing and puffing (and bluffing) about for months, insisting that they would once and for all definitively prove that torture had, as he put it, "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."

But just as us critics expected, when those reports were released, they included no such proof -- just a lot of cover-your-ass language from the CIA, vaguely describing intelligence findings gained from the overall interrogation of "high value detainees" generally speaking. There was no evidence that a single American life was saved, or of any valuable intelligence that couldn't have been gathered using traditional methods.

In fact, after all these years, and despite a slew of selective leaks while Cheney was still in power, there remains not one iota of proof that torture accomplished much of anything -- not that it would be OK if it had.

Read rest of article....