Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Former Clinton Attorney Says: Cheney is Daring Us to Indict Him

This is what I think too. I have been saying this is why he is out there, he thinks no one will ever charge him with a crime and he is just daring someone to do it.

A few of us were talking about it on The Facebook the other day. Why was Cheney running his mouth?

Well, Lanny Davis, former Special Counsel to the President for Bill Clinton, stepped up and says the same thing now. Raw Story has a synopsis of a story he did in the Washington Times.

I missed it when it was in the Washington Times. But here is what Raw Story had to say.

“I have agreed with President Obama on the need to look forward, not backward.”

Davis continues, “But … I have changed my mind about the need to indict former Vice President Dick Cheney for complicity in illegal torture.”

His insistence on putting himself on multiple TV programs and conservative radio talk shows, not only defending torture but offering the defense that it worked, has changed my mind. Not only that - he went on to attack Mr. Obama as weakening the United States in the war on terrorism because Mr. Obama immediately announced that torture would no longer be allowed.

Dem’s fighting words. They are also, in my view, reckless and irresponsible. They seem to be laying down a marker that in case, God forbid, there is a terrorist attack, Mr. Cheney can be the first to blame it on Mr. Obama’s policies and say, “I told you so.”

Even more, they seem to be an in-your-face dare by Mr. Cheney to the U.S. criminal justice system: “I am Dick Cheney, I approved violations of the law in the name of the war on terror, and what are you going to do about it?”

It reminds me of Gary Hart’s reaction in the early days of his 1988 presidential campaign to the rumors of his womanizing. Mr. Hart denied the charge - and then dared the media to catch him. Well, they took him up on his dare (specifically, the Miami Herald did). And they caught him - at least in a compromising situation that led to his withdrawal from the campaign.

So as to Mr. Cheney: I think it is time to take him up on his implicit dare and indict him for violating the 1994 federal law against torture.


Good, maybe if enough of these people start coming forward and speaking out, AG Holder will step up and get his "A Game" on and either appoint a Special Prosecutor or I think better yet, get all the information together and take it to the UN and hand it over to the World Court.

I truly think that would be the best course of action for our country. It would take the politics out of it. But it would help us heal and would stop the who did what to whom.

We don't need Congress to investigate it, we already know it happened, we know it was ordered from the top. We had a bi-partisan Senate commission who stated this already, and that should be enough to move on to the next stage.

All it takes is the will of the people and of AG Holder to move it the next step. That's where we are lacking.

THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE.

That's the problem. I have heard from people who tell me it's because the terrorists don't live in a certain country. They flew planes into buildings. They did terrible things to people and don't deserve better treatment.

My argument to all of these is simple. We went to war in Germany and France because England asked us to. Yes, we had and have our own country, but we weren't fighting for our country. Not technically. We didn't fly planes into buildings, but we dropped huge bombs into and onto their buildings and killed enough civilians to make up for it. Look what we did to them. You don't know what those bombs are doing because you don't see it. That's just in Europe.

Now, lets talk Japan. They attacked us at Pearl Harbor, they flew planes into ships, buildings, dropped bombs on everything they could and shot at anything that moved. The Japanese were very original in there treatment of prisoners, by original I mean they had a way that was never seen before and probably not seen since.

Most WWII veterans won't talk about what they saw that the Japanese did to the Prisoners they held and were glad they were killed. Bataan Death March anyone?
Some were freed and the scars, both mental and physical, they carry never left them.

Even the POW's held by the German's, after they were freed, had problems in life, which is understandable. And their treatment was nothing compared to what their friends in the Pacific Theater went through.

Yes, Cheney is daring us to do something.. so.. let's do something... sign a petition, write an email to AG Holder and ask him to charge Cheney. Do Something!

4 comments:

Woody (Tokin Librul/Rogue Scholar/ Helluvafella!) said...

Cheney's safe as houses...

He's quite confident that 1) Obama's people don't have the stones to do it; 2) there's no precedent for it, and 3) you caould't gather 12 randomly selected people to convict him if his defense were proclaiming he "acted in what I thought were the Country's best interests."

lisahgolden said...

It's hard to believe how one man can change the way a nation views itself. I get that he was not alone in this, but he was certainly driving it from the inside.

Silly Ratfaced Git said...

"there's no precedent for it"

I disagree. There is plenty of precedent for war crimes indictments.

I also think there is plenty of precedent for bringing criminal actions against criminals unless we've decided that we only enforce laws when the poor, black, or brown break them.

A Special Prosecutor to investigate war crimes should have already been appointed.

Ablamj said...

I agree SRG. I don't know what's taking so long. I don't care who it takes down, even Nancy Pelosi, but we need to investigate NOW!