Cheney lays it on thick

December 20, 2005

Over the weekend, Dick Cheney said Bush’s NSA surveillance program “might have led us to be able to prevent 9/11,” had it been in place at the time. Today, Cheney dropped the pretense and said spying on Americans on American soil without a warrant has literally been a lifesaver.

Cheney said the program had “saved thousands of lives.”

“It is, I’m convinced, one of the reasons we haven’t been attacked in the past four years,” Cheney said.

Could the program have been just as effective if the searches and wiretaps been cleared retroactively by a secret court? Cheney didn’t say. In fact, the VP didn’t say a lot of things, such as the fact that the surveillance program didn’t give the administration a new “capability,” but rather just let Bush circumvent a FISA court he didn’t feel like dealing with.

You know that part in A Few Good Men when Col. Jessep is asked if he ordered a code red and he says, “You’re goddamn right I did“? I think the White House has adopted this as their primary political strategy. They’ve been caught, but they’ve embraced their wrongdoing. They’re proud of it.

The pitch, in essence, is that the electorate, deep down, in places we don’t talk about at parties, wants the White House to ignore the law and disregard checks and balances. It’s pretty risky — without a decent response to why they need to go around FISA, the White House can’t explain why their program is necessary. “You can’t handle the truth” won’t work in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

In fact, A Few Good Men offers a compelling model. Jessup ignored the law to pursue ends he believed were noble, while the Bush White House ignored the law, presumably for the same reason. In the movie, Jessup ended up in jail. We’ll see how things go for the Bush gang.

That is such a crock. Changes on spying regulations has prevented attacks? Please. I am quite sure that they know communications are monitored and take precautions. How such a supposedly, emphasis on supposedly, smart man could utter such stupid crap is a mystery.

  • You know what else might have prevented 9-11? Reading the Presidential Daily Briefings and taking them seriously. But I guess that means someone would have had to interrupt Bush’s vacation. We all know how much he hates that.

    What a bunch of assholes.

  • he’s full of crap. someone wrote either here or on dkos that this scandal is what will separate the conservatives who believe in america from those who only believe in power for its own sake (and given their industrial and financial nature, we’re talking textbook, not hyperbolic fascism).

    it’s also the scandal that will show whether the democrats have any will. the republicans are sticking the gloves in their face and laughing. will the dems fight back or continue to cover up and crouch and try not to get hit.

    i already know the answer. which is why i asked my boss today about a transfer to our canadian office.

  • Of course, here’s the real argument:

    “We are doing something so secret we can’t tell you about it, but trust us when we tell you that it has had real results, which are also so secret we can’t tell you about it, except to tell you that you should trust us.”

  • Yeah – too bad no reporter asked Cheney that “Since the White House ignored PDB’s before 9-11, why should citizens feel assured that info from these (mass??) phone taps will be listened to and acted upon?”

  • It’s the Cliff Robertson character at the end of Three Days of the Condor:

    “The people aren’t going to want us to ask them how we’re going to get the oil, they’re just going to want us to get it…”…thekeez

  • Not just the PDB, but simply better communications between and within our many agencies would likely have thwarted the 9/11 attacks. Improved communications would have led to additional investigation which would have led to more discoveries of additional pieces of the plot. There was and is no need for any administration to go beyond FISA to stop such things.

  • The pitch, in essence, is that the electorate, deep down, in places we don’t talk about at parties, wants the White House to ignore the law and disregard checks and balances.

    Sadly, I suspect this is true of a large portion of the electorate.

  • Americans hate red tape and bureaucracy. As
    long as they believe that terrorism is such a
    devastating threat to our way of life, they will
    accept these transgressions for the greater good,
    if properly presented to them. And I have to
    hand it to Cheney – he’s doing just that. He’s
    pulling no punches, telling the American people
    that thousands of lives have been saved, hundreds
    of attacks from these faceless monsters prevented.
    And they’ll buy it. Why not? Our enemies want to
    destroy us. They believe that. Everyone does.

    I don’t think it’s a deep down secret – I think the
    public openly embraces cutting corners to get the
    job done. Don’t we hear all the time, “If you haven’t
    got anything to hide, why do you care if they know
    what books you took out of the library?”

    These guys can get away with anything as long as
    the public remains terrified about terrorism. And
    no one, but no one, is doing anything to put the
    threat into proper context. This is classic Chicken
    Little and the sky is falling hysteria in this country.

    Therefore, anything goes.

  • Larry Johnson (http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog), noted former CIA agent and television commentator, believes that the need to go around the court may have been to avoid going before a federal judge with information gained from interrogation methods that violate the Geneva Conventions.

    That certainly would tie this latest scandal to the whole torture issue, among other things. There may be some validity to that.

  • “…the electorate, deep down, in places we don’t talk about at parties, wants the White House to ignore the law and disregard checks and balances.”

    True that. The people have been indoctrinated to this by the Republican propaganda machine. Imagine Mr. Bush removed from the scene, and that will not change. Elect a Democratic President, and that will not change. Elect 60 Democratic Senators, three or four hundred Democratic Representatives, and that will still not change. This is the real problem. Face up to it and start figuring out how to deal with it. Rwanda was talked into civil war over a long period of time by a handful of radio personalities. We are headed down precisely the same path.

  • PhilW – you’ve nailed it. I’d also like to hear:

    Mr. President, you’ve described the unauthorized leaking of government secrets as “shameful”. Have you considered bypassing FISA as well as using aggressive interogation techniques to get to the bottom of the unprecendented outing of a covert CIA operative by a person, or persons, in the White House? After all, it is your contention that the Constitution grants you powers as Commander and Chief well beyond what anything Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald is permitted to do. One wonders is unauthorized wire tappings, beatings, rapes, etc. might illicit more cooperation out of your and the VP’s staff than has happened to date…

    Or:

    Your interpretation of your powers as Commander and Chief are, according to many scholars, extroidinarily broad. Do you think that the American people would be more comfortable with you covertly executing these powers if you had a better track record for honesty and honoring your committments? After all, your failure to act on the 8/6 PDB prior to 9/11 and your failure to honor your committement to the American people to fire anyone involved in the leaking of Plame’s CIA affiliation may leave many Americans with the concern that they sacrificing their civil liberties not, as the constitution dictates, for their own defense but for the personal objectives of a rather untrustworthy politician…

    -jjf

  • THere are a lot of things they’ve done in the past 4 years that they can claim prevented any attacks – since there haven’t been any, virtually all actions they’ve taken can be given credit for our relative peace and quiet.

    If we had an attack tomorrow, I wonder what the story would be?

  • Steve Clemons helpfully reminds us that the Director of National Intelligence is John Negroponte.

    As an ultra-nationalist, I support “Death Squad Johnny” in his Honduras and Iraq escapades. But when he brings that sh*t home, I have to worry that DC is making war on us.

  • Well, since Bin Laden attacked us for having troops in Saudi Arabia (where Mecca and Medina are) and those troops were moved to Kuwait in 2003, he probably doesn’t have the same “motivation” to attack us here any more. We mostly have to worry about the new Bin Ladens Bush created in his war in Iraq. Between moving the troops from Saudi Arabia and all the crap the Shrublicans (like the reprehensible republican reptile Ted Stevens) have imposed on us, Bin Laden already won.
    Let’s impeach Bush and start from there. What will be said when the number of American troops killed in Iraq exceeds the number of Americans killed in 9/11? It would be accurate then to say that Bush killed more Americans than Bin Laden. Not to downplay the 30,000 Iraqis he killed. Who is really the bigger terrorist? Bush or Bin Laden. I certainly know which has done more damage to America.

  • If Bush goes down, will Cheney go with him? The thought of Cheney ascending to the presidency creeps me out, but the thought of Hastert saddling up to ride into the whithouse creeps me out even more.

  • If ,as the adminstration has declared, the secret spying has kept us from having attacks here, how many terrorists have been caught ? But I guess that is secret too!

  • Right on Joan. They have managed exactly ZERO convictions. They have provided evidence of exactly ZERO thwarted plots.

    As it happens I switched from briefs to boxers on September 12th 2001. Since we have not been attacked since then I can honestly say that I think I am personally protecting innocent American citizens. It would be irresponsible of me to go back as the blood of countless women and children would be on my hands.

    This is typical. They try to make critics prove a negative, which is nearly impossible. It makes me sad that anyone buys this line of crap.

  • Three Days of the Condor is right, Jeff. And after Turner tells Higgins he’s given the whole story to the NY Times, Higgins sneers, “How do you know they’ll print it?” and the movie ends. Well 30 years later here we are, and the Times didn’t “print it” for over a year, and maybe that decision tipped the election.

  • As it happens I switched from briefs to boxers on September 12th 2001. Since we have not been attacked since then I can honestly say that I think I am personally protecting innocent American citizens.

    “For instance, Dad, I could say that this rock here is protecting us from an attack against tigers.”
    “How does it work?”
    “It doesn’t work. It’s just a stupid rock. But you don’t see any tigers, do you?”
    “Lisa, I would like to buy your rock.”

    –The Simpsons

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