Cheney Blames Tenet For Creating The Iraq-9/11 Link

Waterboarding was ‘well done,’ Cheney says

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/...was-well-done/

(Gold9472: How can that be? I thought, "The Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime." Tenet once said that he would not be the "Fall Guy." Maybe now would be a good time for him to nail Cheney to the wall.)

BY JOHN BYRNE
Published: June 1, 2009

On Iraq and 9/11: ‘That’s not something I made up’

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is usually very careful at choosing his words.

Perhaps not so today. In a speech Monday at the National Press Club, continuing along familiar themes of terrorism, Guantanamo and his hatred for The New York Times, Cheney spoke defensively of the administration’s practice of water-boarding detainees.

“I don’t believe we tortured,” Cheney remarked, noting that the interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration were vetted by White House lawyers. They didn’t cross a “red line,” he said.

And then he delivered the whopper: “There were three people who were water-boarded.... It was well-done.”

The former vice president also made an odd comment about detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay.

He framed their detention as a choice between two options: either we imprison them, or we kill them.

“We need Guantanamo... If we didn’t have it, we’d need to (invent) it,” Cheney remarked. “If you don’t have a place to hold these people, the only other option is to kill them.”

“We don’t operate that way,” he added.

Cheney’s comments were transcribed by The Swamp, the blog of the Chicago Tribune.

“If I had it to do all over again, I would do exactly the same thing,” he continued. “I don’t have much tolerance or patience for those who have the benefit of hindsight eight years later and have forgotten what happened on 9/11.... Just imagine, what would happen if you had 19 men in one of our cities... armed with a nuclear weapon or (a biological weapon).”

He also laid it thick on The New York Times:

“We found ourselves in a situation where The New York Times received a leak - we called them into the Oval Office,” Cheney said. “The publisher, the editor and the Washington Bureau chief... all came down to the Oval Office and talked to the president,” where they were told that writing about the program would let terrorists know the U.S. is reading their mail and would break some laws.) “They went ahead and they published it anyway, and their award for doing it was they won the Pulitzer.”

“My own personal view is that damaged our security,” he said.

“I think it’s going to be very difficult to close Guantanamo,” Cheney said. “The New York Times again, one of my favorite publications... referred to the prisoners at Guantanamo as abductees... These are bad actors.... The ones that are left, these are the worst of the worst... There is not a lot of great demand out around the country to have those folks shipped to the nearest facility.”

And about Iraq and 9/11: “That’s not something I made up.”

“The prime source of information on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda was George Tenet,” the former CIA director, Cheney said. “There was a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq that stretched back 10 years. That’s not something I made up... That’s something the director of the CIA was telling us.

He added: “We know that he was making $25,000 payments to the families of suicide bombers... We know there were other terrorists... who had found safe harbor in Iraq over the years. I do not believe, and I have never seen any evidence to confirm, that he was involved in 9/11... But the fact of Saddam Hussein being a terrorist-sponsoring state... was, I think, a fact.”

What he didn’t say was that the Times held their story about the Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program for a year after they first had it — which meant the story stayed out of the news in 2004, when Cheney and President Bush were running for reelection.

This video is from C-SPAN, broadcast June 1, 2009.

Video At Source

Cheney: No link between Saddam Hussein, 9/11

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/01/cheney.speech/

6/1/2009

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he does not believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the planning or execution of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says Saddam Hussein "provided sanctuary ... and resources to terrorists."

He strongly defended the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, however, arguing that Hussein's previous support for known terrorists was a serious danger after 9/11.

Cheney, in an appearance at the National Press Club, also said he is intent on speaking out in defense of the Bush administration's national security record because "a clear understanding of policies that worked [in protecting the United States] is essential."

"I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true," Cheney conceded.

But Hussein was "somebody who provided sanctuary and safe harbor and resources to terrorists. ... [It] is, without question, a fact."

Cheney restated his claim that "there was a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq that stretched back 10 years. It's not something I made up. ... We know for a fact that Saddam Hussein was a sponsor -- a state sponsor -- of terror. It's not my judgment. That was the judgment of our [intelligence community] and State Department."

Cheney identified former CIA Director George Tenet as the "prime source of information" on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Tenet "testified, if you go back and check the record, in the fall of [2002] before the Senate Intelligence Committee -- in open session -- that there was a relationship," Cheney said.

Hussein was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq in December 2003. In November 2006, the former Iraqi leader was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. He was executed the following December.

Among other things Monday, Cheney also called the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center a "good facility ... if you are going to be engaged in a world conflict, such as we are, in terms of global war on terrorism. You know, if you don't have a place where you can hold these people, the only other option is to kill them. And we don't operate that way." Watch what Cheney has to say about the detention facility »

He reiterated his call for President Obama to declassify documents detailing the results of "enhanced interrogations" of high-value detainees.

Since Obama has already released memos detailing the interrogation methods, Cheney said, it is important to share the results of those interrogations with the public as well.

"I would not ordinarily be leading the charge to declassify classified information, otherwise they wouldn't call me Darth Vader for nothing," Cheney said.

But "once the [Obama] administration released the legal memos that gave the opinions that were used to guide the interrogation program, they'd given away the store. ... I [therefore] thought it was important to have the results that were gained from that interrogation program front and center as well."

On May 14, the CIA rejected the former vice president's request to declassify the documents. CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano, in a written statement, said the two documents are the subject of pending lawsuits and therefore cannot be declassified.

Cheney said Monday that the memos previously released also were the subject of ongoing lawsuits. He said Obama can release the additional documents with "the stroke of a pen."

On May 21, Cheney gave a full-throated defense of the Bush administration's enhanced interrogations of al Qaeda prisoners during an appearance at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

He has said that the interrogations saved the lives of "thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands." He called the techniques the Bush administration approved "legal, essential, justified, successful and the right thing to do."

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/01/...blames-clarke/

Another party heard from. I should really watch the speech, but I really can't stand that man.