{"id":8890,"date":"2006-10-27T14:53:22","date_gmt":"2006-10-27T18:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8890.html"},"modified":"2006-10-27T14:53:22","modified_gmt":"2006-10-27T18:53:22","slug":"cheney-water-boarding-and-a-no-brainer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/cheney-water-boarding-and-a-no-brainer\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheney, water-boarding, and a ‘no-brainer’"},"content":{"rendered":"

It certainly sounded<\/i> like Dick Cheney had admitted<\/a> that U.S. interrogators subjected terrorist suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called “water-boarding.” In an on-air chat with Scott Hennen from WDAY in Fargo, N.D., Cheney appeared<\/i> to say that the administration doesn’t regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. “It’s a no-brainer for me<\/a>,” Cheney said.<\/p>\n

However, as several alert readers noticed, the White House is backpedaling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The White House said Friday that Vice President Dick Cheney was not talking about a torture technique known as “water boarding” when he said dunking terrorism suspects in water during questioning was a “no-brainer.” […]<\/p>\n

Earlier, White House press secretary Tony Snow denied that Cheney had endorsed water boarding.<\/p>\n

“You know as a matter of common sense that the vice president of the United States is not going to be talking about water boarding. Never would, never does, never will,” Snow said. “You think Dick Cheney’s going to slip up on something like this? No, come on.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Josh Marshall responded<\/a>, “You mean, Dick Cheney totally muff something out of mix of arrogance and incompetence? Who could ever imagine that?”
\n
\nLook, this need not be complicated. Cheney was asked if “a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives.” The vice president replied, “Well, it’s a no-brainer for me, but for a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture.”<\/p>\n

In what other context could anyone seriously believe Cheney was speaking in? Tony Snow told reporters, “The vice president says he was talking in general terms about a questioning program that is legal to save American lives.”<\/p>\n

But that’s just it — the terms weren’t<\/i> general. On the contrary, Hennen was being rather specific. Cheney, instead of sticking to the usual Bush gang line (“We don’t talk about techniques”), let the moment get the better of him. The VP acknowledged, perhaps accidentally, not only the administration’s policy but also his own beliefs about the technique.<\/p>\n

The White House may not like it now, but that’s what happened, and so far, their explanations are laughable. As reader J.G. put it, the Bush gang “needs to call the Maytag man; the spin machine is broken.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It certainly sounded like Dick Cheney had admitted that U.S. interrogators subjected terrorist suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called “water-boarding.” In an on-air chat with Scott Hennen from WDAY in Fargo, N.D., Cheney appeared to say that the administration doesn’t regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. “It’s a no-brainer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}