Darth Cheney pops up again on Hannity - where else? - to accuse the Obama administration of being weak and worthless, now drop and give me twenty.
(Incidentially, you know as well as I do that Cheney would have been president of Omega House. Why the wingers like people whom normal humans loathe in real life is one of the enduring mysteries of the universe).
But, here’s an interesting twist. All bent out of shape that Obama would dare - dare! - release the torture memos, Cheney is now agitating for other information to be released, information that ostensibly would show that torture worked.
What it might show, via Sullivan, is that one suspect in particular - Abu Zubaydah - talked the first time he was waterboarded.
Problem is, he was then waterboarded another 82 times:
The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.
A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.
Why? Why 82 more times if the CIA had reason to believe that everything he knew was given up the first time?
Just to be sure? Or was it punishment? Asks Sullivan:
Even though the victim had nothing more to tell, the torture had to go on and on - in part to generate data to justify the torture. Can you imagine what it felt like to put Zubaydah on the waterboard the seventieth time, knowing he had nothing more to say, knowing he was the wrong guy?
Cheney wants transparency? Fine. Let’s give it to him.
But if the record shows - as it seems apparent it will - that the use of these “enhanced interrogation techniques” continued even after we knew there was “nothing more to say,” then I say - we must prosecute. And we must start at the top.
Update: And Cheney may be bluffing:
Did Dick Cheney really “formally” ask the CIA to release reams of intelligence allegedly showing that the torture program worked, as Cheney claimed last night on Fox News?
An intelligence source familiar with the situation says the answer is No.
“The agency has received no request from the former Vice President to release this information,” the source told me a few moments ago.
