On the Contrary

We all have seen the news about the Administration calling Fox News what it is, a political arm of the Republican Party.  Last week the Administration put their new executive pay czar out for interviews, and because they didn’t recognize Fox as a news organization anymore, did not invite them.  The other networks objected and the Administration relented.  I guess their thinking was that if you can ostracize one news organization based upon its reporting, then you can control the media.  It is flawed logic and like when they totally failed us on WMD, they are making a very similar error here.

Now as the arguments go, the thought is that all the networks have their opinion shows and so what is the big deal, other than Fox is more anti-Administration than the rest.  If this were true, then the other media outlets that supported Fox in this tiff with the Administration would be correct in their stand against the Administration.  But that is not how Fox operates.  Fox has taken a page from Dick Cheney when he manipulated the press so successfully on WMD.

What Dick did was to leak a piece of intelligence that was false (yellow cake uranium) to the press, and then in interviews cite the source, say the New York Times, to say that reliable sources have identified this threat.  In effect he was creating a false rumor and then using it to manipulate the media into echoing this falsehood.  This is exactly how Fox operates.  Their nut-jobs like Beck or Limbaugh make some outrageous claim and then it is a running story on the real “news” shows all day on Fox.  This along with the documented instances where the news was a direct quote from Republican talking points, and the fact the network actively engages in fund raising and organizing to remove this administration certainly pushes them out of the category of a news organization and into the category of a propaganda arm for a political organization.

As I have chronicled in the past, most of the news media out there is deplorable with their failure to fact check their guest’s claims and allowing their statements to stand unchallenged.  But that is simply bad journalism.  But when a news organization takes a false statement and then heavily biases it with making it a running theme for the news day, interviewing only those that support these outrageous statements, it becomes propaganda.  So what the other news media outlets did in supporting Fox against the administration was not to defend access to the Administration, but for a media outlet to become a propaganda tool for a political party.  You think they would understand the difference between news and propaganda and how damaging it could be to the whole news business if this kind of propaganda passes as journalism.

You probably don’t remember when the Bush Administration ostracized Richard Engel of CNN after an interview with President Bush where he challenged many of President Bush’s statements about Iraq.  This was cited as an example of how the media must support reporters and their media owners who ask hard questions and challenge the Administration.  But there is a big difference.  Richard’s questions and challenges were based upon fact.  Much of Fox News stories turn out to be bogus or exaggerated.  So there is a big difference between taking an ethical stand where a media stands up to power with truth, and where a media continuously promulgates false information as propaganda and then is offended when access is denied.

The Administration needs to find its backbone and the rest of the news media needs to re-examine their logic and values if they don’t want to become just entertainers instead of journalists.  The Administration’s real fear is that if Fox is allowed to set the agenda on what is covered in the news, and the rest of the media follow them, real news is dead.  I agree with them.  Our country depends upon objective news to give us the facts about an issue.  If the news media becomes more and more a creature of the outlandish without real fact checking, then our media will be know as those guys who get the latest rumor to you first.  Maybe that is what they are now.

If you doubt we aren’t headed down this road think about how the balloon story that dominated the news last week.  This whole story was a hoax by a person who wanted more media coverage and the media, like deprived addicts needing a fix, fell right in line to maximize coverage.  Sooner or later they are going to have to step back and decide whether they are journalists with an extremely important role in our society, or they are part of our declining ability to think critically.  There latest stand with Fox News says to me we are headed for a train wreck.

I am a big fan of the Bourne movies with Jason Bourne trying to stay alive and solve the riddle of who he is.  They have fast moving plots and the locations are so much fun to watch to see places you have traveled to.  But I never thought of these movies as much more than action adventures, and certainly not real political commentary.  Well if you read the newspapers then you understand that these movies were right on the mark in identifying how our secret intelligence agencies develop their own agenda, justify gross violations of our constitution and judicial systems, and wrap it in a cloak of patriotism.

You will recall that the bad guy in these movies is the CIA, Jason’s own organization, that cannot have him bumbling around and quite possibly expose their illegal activities.  Except they are the bumblers and Jason is the nimble one who is just reacting to their, or other’s, evil deeds.  But let’s not forget what the agency did and see if this sounds familiar.

First, they took the law into their own hands in the name of patriotism and dangerous times.  Sound familiar?  Remember, “The gloves are coming off”?  Then they created a group of trained killers to carry out assassinations around the globe.  We would never really do that would we?  Oops, there was the story of the Cheney created CIA assassination force in the paper this morning (CIA had plan to assassinate Qaeda Leaders).  Note also in the fictional Bourne and in real life, there seems to be little concern for collateral damage.  Think Predator Done strikes that kill everyone at a wedding party.  Oh and let’s not forget the agencies hiding this whole program from Congress.  We know that would never happen in real life, wxcept now we know they did.  Anybody at this point doubt that the CIA would leave out important facts in a Congressional briefing if it suited their needs?

The Bourne movies, while being action adventures, are also a commentary on how secrecy allows rogue programs, how rogue programs give people too much power, and how that power absolutely corrupts.  It is also about what it does to individuals when you dehumanize them.  Least we forget Jason’s torment on realizing that just saying your sorry is not enough.  Oh yeah, and maybe the ends do not justify the means.  Who would have thought those great Jason Bourne movies were a cautionary tale about where we were headed?

One other thought on this slippery slow of predator drones and assassinations:  On a battlefield killing is what it is all about.  But where does the battlefield end and civilized society begin?  How much “collateral damage” is acceptable?  Do the ends justify the means?  The problem with sanctified killings is that law and order no longer matter and the power of life and death that you give to these individuals should be very limited.  I don’t think any of us has a problem with a sniper or a predator drone used on a battlefield.  But what about in a city, where others could be hurt, and you could use normal means to apprehend and charge these individuals?

From my simple little vantage point, it is clear.  Where you can, you must never be judge, jury, and executioner unless war is declared and the fight is on the battlefield.  If we allow ourselves to assume this power anywhere else, then we are out of control, just like Jason Bourne’s antagonists were, and anyone could be deemed a threat.  It is the very definition of barbarianism and tyranny.  Amazingly, it appears we have gone down this road.  Along with torture it appears we tried to sanction murders off the battlefield.  This is a great country isn’t it?

Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Ex-Vice President Cheney was finally interviewed by a competent interviewer and the results were revealing if not kind of shocking.  The man lives in his own world only informed by his own views.  So without further ado, here are his lunatic views or in other words, his answers to Bob Schieffer’s questions with my commentary:

TORTURE IS JUSTIFIED:

SCHIEFFER:   You say that the (new) administration has made this country more vulnerable to attacks here in the homeland.

CHENEY: That’s my belief, based upon the fact, Bob, that we put in place those policies after 9/11. On the morning of 9/12, if you will, there was a great deal we didn’t know about Al Qaida. There was the need to embark upon a new strategy with respect to treating this as a strategic threat to the United States. There was the possibility of Al Qaida terrorists in the midst of one of our own cities with a nuclear weapon or a biological agent.

It was a time of great concern, and we put in place some very good policies, and they worked, for eight years. Now we have an administration that’s come to power that has been critical of the programs, but not only that, there’s been talk about prosecuting the lawyers in the Justice Department who gave us the opinions that we operated in accordance with, or referring them to the Bar Association for disbarment or sanctions of some kind, or possibly cooperating with foreign governments that are interested in trying to prosecute American officials, those same officials who were responsible for defending this nation for the last eight years.

STEVE:  What he is saying here is that we put torture in place and it saved us and now you are trying to have these fine honorable American patriots who justified this thrown to the wolves.  There of course was no intelligence to support any of this and he ran totally scared.  If he could have he would have rounded up every American Muslim and torture them until they told him what he wanted to hear. Note there is a big difference between what you want to hear and what is true.  I also want to focus on his words, “the lawyers in the Justice Department who gave us the opinions that we operated in accordance with…”  “Gave” is the operative word here because as we now know they were legally deeply flawed and it was only through multiple iterations that Cheney and his lawyer, Addington, got the language the wanted in deeply flawed and later revoked memos.

CHENEY: Well, at the heart of what we did with the terrorist surveillance program and the enhanced interrogation techniques for Al Qaida terrorists and so forth was collect information. It was about intelligence. It was about finding out what Al Qaida was going to do, what their capabilities and plans were. It was discovering all those things we needed in order to be able to go defeat Al Qaida.  And in effect, what’s happening here, when you get rid of enhanced interrogation techniques, for example, or the terrorist surveillance program, you reduce the intelligence flow to the intelligence community upon which we based those policies that were so successful.

STEVE:  His argument here is that the only way you gather reliable quick intelligence is through torture.  This has been debunked by just about everyone who is a trained interrogator.  If you take his logic, torture should be the norm, not some aberration.

THE MEMOS:

SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you about that, because some people in the administration — believe the attorney general says he does not know of such memos. Other people in the administration say, as a matter of fact, what we found out using these methods — and I mean, let’s call things what they are — waterboarding was one of the techniques that were used — that they really didn’t get all that much from that. You say they did.

CHENEY: I say they did. Four former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency say they did, bipartisan basis.

Release the memos. And we can look and see for yourself what was produced.

The memos do exist. I have seen them. I had them in my files at one time. Now everything is part of the National Archives. I’m sure the agency has copies of those materials, and there’s a formal way you go through, once you’re a former official, a formal way you go through requesting declassification of something, and I started that process, as I say, six weeks ago. I haven’t heard anything from it yet. I assume…

STEVE:  There is no doubt in my mind that Cheney got the memos he requested purporting to lay out all of the good information they got and the attacks that were prevented.  The reason they will probably never see the light of day is because they were written for Cheney, at his bequest, and sadly like the intelligence to support weapons of mass destruction, were careful fabrications and stretching of truth.  If these memos every do see the light of day, they will be debunked for the nonsense that fed Cheney what he wanted to hear.

AMERICAN LIVES:

SCHIEFFER: What do you say to those, Mr. Vice President, who say that when we employ these kinds of tactics, which are after all the tactics that the other side uses, that when we adopt their methods, that we’re weakening security, not enhancing security, because it sort of makes a mockery of what we tell the rest of the world?

CHENEY: Well, then you’d have to say that, in effect, we’re prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America.

The fact of the matter is, these techniques that we’re talking about are used on our own people. We — in a program that in effect trains our people with respect to capture and evasion and so forth and escape, a lot of them go through these same exact procedures. Now…

STEVE:  When you cut through the bull and the denials, this program is justified anytime an American life is at risk.  Had Cheney been around during WWII, torture would have been our method of choice.  The other fiction here is the claim that we do this to our own people.  Any description of the actual torture that took place is not even remotely close to the training our service men and women (and I) go through to prepare us for this treatment.  It is sad that he thinks that if they do it, we do it.

SCHIEFFER: Do you — is what you’re saying here is that we should do anything if we could get information?

CHENEY: No. Remember what happened here, Bob. We had captured these people. We had pursued interrogation in a normal way. We decided that we needed some enhanced techniques. So we went to the Justice Department. And the controversy has arisen over the opinions written by the Justice Department.

The reason we went to the Justice Department wasn’t because we felt we were going to take some kind of free hand assault on these people or that we were in the torture business. We weren’t. And specifically, what we got from the Office of Legal Counsel were legal memos that laid out what is appropriate and what’s not appropriate, in light of our international commitments.

STEVE:  The truth here is that the FBI was getting good information and then the CIA stepped in with untrained interrogators and began torturing because the Administration wasn’t hearing what they wanted.  They then got the stuff they wanted and most of it was bogus.  The second part of this is true self-deception.  He would have you believe he went to the Justice Department to make sure they didn’t do anything that wasn’t legal.  The reality was they went to the Justice Department to make the illegal, legal.  Ask yourself why the bypassed all the normal reviews and channels crafting these memos, and why all the services legal chiefs opposed what they were doing.

REGRETS:

SCHIEFFER: You — you are speaking out. You say you obviously feel passionately about this. How far are you willing to take this approach? Are you willing to go back to the Congress and talk to people in Congress about this? There are all kinds of people talking about various kinds of investigations. Would you go back and talk to the Congress?

CHENEY: Certainly. I’ve made it very clear that I feel very strongly that what we did here was exactly the right thing to do. And if I don’t speak out, then where do we find ourselves, Bob? Then the critics have free run, and there isn’t anybody there on the other side to tell the truth. So it’s important — it’s important that we…

STEVE:  So what you have is an old scared little man who has defined the facts in a way to justify all the mistakes he made.  Let us not forget that the information that led us to invade Iraq came from torture that later turned out to be bogus, but those 4000+ Americans who died was just collateral damage.  He thinks the program saved hundreds of thousands of lives so the ends justified the means.  The reality is the program prevented nothing, increase the ability of Al-Qaeda to recruit, and by our own general’s words in Iraq, led to more American deaths than any other action our government took.  Dick Cheney will never admit or even understand the damage this frightened little man did to who we are and our country.  But as the facts come out, maybe we the people will learn and important lesson that hopefully we will never forget.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY:

SCHIEFFER: Colin Powell, Rush Limbaugh said the other day that the party would probably be better off if Colin Powell left and just became a Democrat. Colin Powell said Republicans would be better off if they didn’t have Rush Limbaugh out speaking for them. Where do you come down?

CHENEY: Well, if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh, I think. I think my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican.

SCHIEFFER: So you think that he’s not a Republican?

CHENEY: I just noted he endorsed the Democratic candidate for president this time, Barack Obama . I assumed that that is some indication of his loyalty and his interest.

SCHIEFFER: And you said you would take Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell.

CHENEY: I would.

STEVE:  When you think one of the few people in the Republican Party who has any one’s respect anymore, Collin Powell, is an unfit Republican, then I guess that says about all there is to say about what is left of Dick Cheney and the Republican Party.

President Obama changed course today when he may have realized he was repeating George Bush’s mistake in trying to define when the law will be applied and when it won’t.  He now says that for those who crafted these obviously flawed legal memos to justify torture, he will leave the decision as to whether to investigate and prosecute where it belongs in the Justice Department.  Many of us think he has no choice but to prosecute if we are going to honor our own laws,  treaties, and international law.  Otherwise we have no standing in the world and we cannot expect anyone else in the world to follow the law either.

But this whole argument gets confused within several issues.  First is the legal one, did we violate our own law, international law, and treaties we have signed?  The second one is the moral issue, should we even be involved in this kind of behavior?  And the third one which is closely related to the second, does it work?  If it doesn’t work, the second question becomes more problematic.  We know we have violated the law and if we are a nation of laws, we must enforce them becasue picking and choosing which laws to follow means there are no laws.  In judging people who violated the law, the second and third issues come into play.  There are mitigating circumstances if they broke the law trying to prevent a more heinous crime.  If it is immoral, then was it justified if it worked and saved lives?  This last question is really the crux of the argument Dick Cheney is making on FOX news.  “Sometimes good people have to do bad things for the greater good.”

Now I would be the first one to say once we go down this road to institutionalized torture for Al-Qaeda suspects, we have lost our bearings about who we are and it does more damage than it prevents, both to our own psyche, and to the enhancing of recruitment and motivation for our enemies.  But let’s forget that argument for a minute and just ask the question, is it effective?  Now once again I have an opinion based upon multiple sources that says no.  But what do we really know?  I would argue that we need a full and open investigation to find out what we found out and when; what happened when the CIA took interrogations away from the FBI; and did they actually get anything new or useful that wouldn’t have been found out anyway, and maybe sooner?

Now enter Dick Cheney who is calling for the release of memos he says exist that prove that torture was highly effective and prevented many attacks on the United States. This is interesting on several levels.  First, we have Mr. Secrecy now wanting to release real intelligence findings that could be considered much more damaging than legal memos on the legal basis of torture.  Second, if these memos exist, I don’t think the CIA is going to release them and the reasons are obvious.

Do you remember the justification for attacking Iraq?  The Vice President went intelligence shopping and he cherry picked anything that supported his preconceived view of the threat Saddam Hussein presented, rewarded those who provided him that information, and punished those that did not.  Some of this intelligence came from suspects tortured that later turned out to be false.  That is how we got it so wrong.  There is no question in my mind that once he turned the CIA loose to torture, they fed him what he wanted to hear.  Am I saying they lied to him?  I think they stretched the truth and in some cases, the information they claimed the got, was already known.  In some cases they exaggerated the importance of a detainee, or they got out of him what they wanted to find and Cheney wanted to hear, not necessarily the truth.

But don’t take my word for it.  If those memos are released and unclassified, then government officials who might know what really happened are then free to talk about it.  And based upon what I have read about the competing interrogation teams, there are some interesting things to find out.  In other words if those memos are released, their veracity can then be questioned, and people are free to talk about what really happened.  You can bet your sweet bippy that there are many in the CIA who never want to let those memos meet the light of day.  Because when all the conflicting information really gets out, they are going to look like they were involved in Amateur Hour for torturers and interrogators.  What they really wish right now is that Dick Cheney would just shut up and go away. Much like the intelligence for Iraq, he got fed what he wanted to hear and the truth got lost somewhere.  He is so delusional he could not sort out the difference.

All of this leaves one with the undeniable conclusion that we need to fully investigate what happened, what we really found out, and what is the truth.  What we will find will not be pleasant, but it is necessary to end this sorry period in our history.  The one thing we will find out about Dick Cheney is that as George Lucas told Maureen Dowd, Dick Cheney is no Darth Vader.  Darth Vader was once a good person lead astray.  Dick Cheney is the Emperor, evil and flawed through and through.

Note:  Tonight as I write this, the New York Times released a story that those who authorized torture never looked at its use in the past or its effectiveness.  Why would they, they have all seen “24″.  What bothers me about this is that this is all documented in Jane Mayer’s book, The Dark Side.  Anybody read it?

Paul O’Neil, then Secretary of State for George Bush, has told us that when he warned the Bush administration of a looming economic crisis in 2002, Dick Cheney replied, “Ronald Reagan proved that budget deficits don’t matter.” During the Carter years, the federal deficit had averaged $54.5 billion annually.  During the Reagan era, deficits skyrocketed, averaging $210.6 billion over the course of Reagan’s two terms in office.  Overall federal spending nearly doubled, from $590.9 billion in 1980 to $1.14 trillion in 1989. In those eight years, the United States moved from being the world’s largest international creditor to the largest debtor nation.  (Washington Post)

Right now we are in a real economic crisis and we have already authorized over $1 trillion in bailouts ($700 million for the banking crisis, and over $300 million for AIG). What many of us are calling for is a massive investment in infrastructure, alternate energy, R&D, and support of state programs to kick start our economy and get us back on track.  So if we are in such massive debt where is this money going to come from?  The answer is that we are going to borrow it.  Right now, deficits don’t matter.

Now there are a couple of reasons for this.  First it is one thing to create massive deficits so that you can cut taxes while partaking in frivolous foreign adventures, i.e. the Dick Cheney approach.  It is totally another thing to create a large deficit to invest in your future.  One is a free ride that will someday have to be paid for and the other is an investment in our future that should pay the dividends to pay for this investment.  Maybe this example will help.  Some students, especially doctors take out six figure loans to get through school.  For most of them it is a good investment, because in the future their income will allow them to easily pay off that loan and it will secure their future.  As James K. Galbraith, the economist professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas, stated in his interview with Bill Moyers last week:

“One of two things can happen. The government can take action and help stabilize the economy in which case we will have more spending but also more employment.  Or the government cannot take action and let the economy collapse in which case we will have much less tax revenue. The deficit is going to be larger either way. There is no way of avoiding that. The only question is do you work to have a good economy or do you accept a terrible economy?”

The second point is that the deficit, although larger than it was in the Bush or Clinton years, is not significantly growing as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product).  That is kind of like saying when you buy a home if your monthly payment is below a certain percentage of your monthly income, the bank figures you can afford the loan (these were the rules they blew off to create the current housing crunch).  Or as Professor Galbraith pointed out:

“Well, the deficit isn’t beyond sight. The deficits in the Bush administration in relation to the size of the economy were never all that large. They were certainly larger than they were under Clinton, but that was in part necessary because of the changed economic situation, the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2000.”

And where are going to get that money?  It turns out that the dollar is remaining the anchor currency of the world economy; right now the euro is falling rapidly as the dollar rises.  Again as Professor Galbraith points out:

“Uncle Sam’s credit is excellent. Uncle Sam can borrow short term for practically nothing these days. Everybody wants to have Treasury Bills and bonds because they’re safe. Uncle Sam can borrow for 20 years at 4.3%. That’s the same rate that the United States could borrow at for 20 years in the last month of the Eisenhower administration. So from our point of view, we’re actually well placed, I mean, as the government of the United States is well placed to take the lead in pulling the country and the world out of this crisis.”

The biggest problem is going to have the political courage to stand up and convince America that the way out of our crisis is in the short term to increase the deficit.  Note that in all the debates the moderators all tried to push the question, what are you going to cut so you can afford your spending program.  The right answer is only those programs that do not work or are wasteful but we are not going to worry about the deficit right now.  If either candidate had said that, although exactly what we need to do, there would have been a media circus and attacks from the other side.  I am not the only one who thinks this way. Martin Wolf, the widely read columnist for the “Financial Times,” and the author of a new book, “Fixing Global Finance,” said (Fareed Zakaria GPS):

“ I do actually think that, though governments are heavily indebted, we are going to spend ourselves out of the recession. We’re going to have fiscal deficits in the Western world as a whole, which are going to be, as it were, unimaginable for some years. And the markets will swallow it, because they’ve got no other assets to buy now which they trust.”

It is going to be an uphill battle convincing our citizens and getting Republicans who have been nothing but obstructionist for the last 2 years, to understand this new dynamic and go along with it.  Hopefully Barack understands this and the voters will neuter the Republicans.