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Yesterday MSNBC gave Liz Cheney a platform to deceive yet again.
Now interestingly enough Carlos Watson asked for questions to ask Liz Cheney before she came on for the interview. I myself submitted probably 10 good questions to ask her. Nothing over the top, just straight forward questions that she probably would have a hard time answering and which would expose her as being there purely for propaganda purposes. Several other people endorsed many of the questions. Sadly maybe at the most one of my questions were used. Not only that he allowed Liz Cheney to make up shit out of whole cloth. Like for instance when she said that Bush saying torture saved lives meant thats exactly what happened. Or when she claimed DNI Dennis Blair said that torture saved lives which he didn’t.
Maybe the most frustrating thing was that Carlos Watson used the "some people say" device when interviewing her instead of being specific. The President of the United States says she is wrong. The Director of the FBI says she is wrong. The FBI interrogator who extracted the most useful information from Abu Zubaydah says she is wrong. But Watson seemed content with generalities allowing her to frame it as if just partisan politicos were the ones who were saying she was wrong.
Watson also refused to say that waterboarding is "illegal" using that word, or that the CIA may have "broken the law", instead using the weaksauce euphemism "crossed the line". What the hell does "crossed the line" mean? And what in the hell is so hard about being honest about what is at stake here?
Well now Greg Sargent is reporting that the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Carl Levin, has now come out and said that Liz Cheney and her daddy Dick are both full of shit.
Levin’s comments are highly newsworthy because they give us the most detailed picture yet of what’s in the documents Cheney wants. You can watch Levin’s speech right here at TPM. This is what Levin said about the documents:
Mr. Cheney has also claimed that the release of classified documents would prove his view that the techniques worked. But those classified documents say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of the abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified so that people can judge for themselves what is fact and what is fiction.
If this is true, it’s big. A Senator who has seen the documents Cheney claims will prove that torture saved lives says that those docs contain absolutely nothing about whether the torture techniques were actually responsible for yielding any valuable intelligence.
Networks such as MSNBC have given literally hours of airtime to Cheney and his daughter Liz to claim endlessly that these docs will prove Cheney’s torture assertions. These claims have gone almost entirely unchallenged, due to the classified nature of the documents. You’d think that a contrary claim from a well-respected Senator who has also seen the docs would merit a few passing mentions, too.
Yeah you would think that but for some reason I doubt it will happen. For whatever reason MSNBC has decided to allow Liz Cheney to come on their show and have free reign. I don’t know if the edict has been handed down from on high, but its pretty evident that either no anchor has been allowed to really press her on specifics or every anchor who has interviewed her is woefully inept. I happen to have a pretty high opinion of Carlos Watson so I am going to go with the former. But the question is when will people start holding MSNBC accountable for absolutely failing their audience by giving these softball interviews? I can’t think of one credible reason for them continuing to have a blatant propagandist come on their network and spew misinformation. Can you?
Like it or not Liz Cheney can move public opinion on this issue. That means that every time she is allowed on MSNBC they are basically helping to push against accountability for torture. That is not only morally wrong but also irresponsible. We should demand better.
Crossposted at Smooth Like Remy
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If the documents contain anything other than the AZ->KSM->stopping the LA attack narrative that Cheney, Hayden, and everyone else has hinted at repeatedly, the gist would’ve been leaked by now. There’s a 99.9% chance that they’re nothing other than an official version of that story written up by the CIA at Cheney’s request, probably detailing some more sensitive details such as exactly what information from AZ helped in capturing KSM that was gathered post-technique-enhancement.
On another note, does anyone ever ask Liz or Dick how Bush managed to make America safe for the three or four years or so of his presidency that torture wasn’t used? I thought it was accepted that torture came to an end after it was brought to light in ‘05.
Trust me, if you could see my twitter feed yesterday that was one of the questions I wanted Carlos Watson to ask. Alas to no avail
Out of a long series of appallingly bad journalism and egregiously disingenuous coverage, the unquestioned acceptance that Liz Cheney has something to offer this discussion is easily the worst. She has no expertise or historical participation to draw on. She isn’t a constitutional scholar, a human rights authority or a professional interrogator. What quality does Liz Cheney actually have that makes the cable news shows seek her mandarin – like observations on the intricacies of trying to legally torture prisoners in a liberal democracy well known for it’s support of human rights and the rule of law?
SHE’S HIS DAUGHTER.
That’s all. The whole source of her authority on the issue. If anyone is surprised that a wholly uninformed and inexpert offspring might take an impassioned position in support of her DAD, no matter how irrational, historically incorrect or blatantly radical it might be, I’d like to meet them. Because parents defending children, children supporting parents, families circling the wagons is what human beings do. I just don’t understand why they don’t go find Mohamed Atta’s or Terry McVeigh’s children and ask them, if in their unbiased and expert opinion, if there was anything wrong with the actions of their late daddy….
mikey