Cheney misled public about torture memos!
WASHINGTON - August 26, 2009 - Last spring, the news media trumpeted Vice President Dick Cheney’s challenge to release the CIA’s torture memos.
It was a move Cheney supported because, he said, the documents would vindicate his claims that the Bush regime’s torture program operated within the law, and provided indispensable information in protecting the U.S. from further terrorist attacks.
Since Monday, when the CIA released a significant part of those documents - a 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report on torture practices - there has been hardly a mention in the mainstream press about the fact that the report largely contradicted what the former vice president has been saying in public.
“The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful - wouldn’t do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal,” Cheney told ABC News last December. “Any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong. Did it produce the desired results? I think it did.”
Yet, this week, as the report was slowly processed by reporters and analysts, it became increasingly clear that the program did not produce “the desired results.”
It was a move Cheney supported because, he said, the documents would vindicate his claims that the Bush regime’s torture program operated within the law, and provided indispensable information in protecting the U.S. from further terrorist attacks.
Since Monday, when the CIA released a significant part of those documents - a 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report on torture practices - there has been hardly a mention in the mainstream press about the fact that the report largely contradicted what the former vice president has been saying in public.
“The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful - wouldn’t do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal,” Cheney told ABC News last December. “Any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong. Did it produce the desired results? I think it did.”
Yet, this week, as the report was slowly processed by reporters and analysts, it became increasingly clear that the program did not produce “the desired results.”
