Cheney Seeks CIA Exemption to Torture Ban

By DAVID ESPO and LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writers Sat Nov 5, 1:11 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Vice President
Dick Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to Republican senators this week to allow
CIA exemptions to a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects in U.S. custody, according to participants in a closed-door session.
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Cheney told his audience the United States doesn't engage in torture, these participants added, even though he said the administration needed an exemption from any legislation banning "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment in case the president decided one was necessary to prevent a terrorist attack.

The vice president made his comments at a regular weekly private meeting of Senate Republican senators, according to several lawmakers who attended. Cheney often attends the meetings, a chance for the rank-and-file to discuss legislative strategy, but he rarely speaks.

In this case, the room was cleared of aides before the vice president began his remarks, said by one senator to include a reference to classified material. The officials who disclosed the events spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the discussion.

"The vice president's office doesn't have any comment on a private meeting with members of the Senate," Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Cheney, said on Friday.

The vice president drew support from at least one lawmaker, Sen. Jeff Sessions (news, bio, voting record) of Alabama, while Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) dissented, officials said.

McCain, who was tortured while held as a prisoner during the Vietnam War, is the chief Senate sponsor of an anti-torture provision that has twice cleared the Senate and triggered veto threats from the White House.

Cheney's decision to speak at the meeting underscored both his role as White House point man on the contentious issue and the importance the administration attaches to it.

The vice president made his appeal at a time Congress is struggling with the torture issue in light of the
Abu Ghraib prison scandal and allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The United States houses about 500 detainees at the naval base there, many of them captured in
Afghanistan.

Additionally, human rights organizations contend the United States turns detainees over to other countries that it knows will use torture to try and extract intelligence information.

Cheney's appeal came two days before a former senior State Department official claimed in an interview with National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" that he had traced paperwork back to Cheney's office that he believes led to U.S. troops abusing prisoners in
Iraq.

"It was clear to me there that there was a visible audit trail from the vice president's office through the secretary of defense down to the commanders in the field," Lawrence Wilkerson, a former colonel who was Secretary of State
Colin Powell's chief of staff during
President Bush's first term, said Thursday.

Wilkerson said the view of Cheney's office was put in "carefully couched" terms but that to a soldier in the field it meant sometimes using interrogation techniques that "were not in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva Conventions and the law of war." He said he no longer has access to the paperwork.

Cheney spokeswoman Jennifer Mayfield declined to comment on Wilkerson's remarks.

The Senate recently approved a provision banning the "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. The vote was 90-9, and an identical provision was added to a second measure on a voice vote on Friday.

Comparable House legislation does not include a similar provision, and it is not clear whether anti-torture language will be included in either of two large defense measures Congress hopes to send to Bush's desk later this year.

The White House initially tried to kill the anti-torture provision while it was pending in the Senate, then switched course to lobby for an exemption in cases of "clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States." The president would have to approve the exemption, and Defense Department personnel could not be involved. In addition, any activity would have to be consistent with the Constitution, federal law and U.S. treaty obligations, according to draft changes in the exemption the White House is seeking.

Cheney also has met several times with McCain, including one session that CIA Director Porter Goss attended in a secure room in the Capitol.

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U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is shown in Perry, Georgia in this October 28, 2005 file photo. The indictment of former top White House aide Lewis Libby in the CIA leak investigation will put Cheney's office at the center of court proceedings, raising the specter of a politically damaging trial for the beleaguered Bush administration. (Bob Snow/Reuters)

__________________

It's a toughie. isn't it?

Let's say you were in charge and captured Muhammed Atta on September 10 and you knew something was going to happen with aviation but not exactly what or when. On Sept 10, you'd have quizzed him and released him. On Sept 11, what would you do? How about if he was in custody all that time and you watched the airplanes strike the Towers and Pentagon and a field in PA. Will there be more airplanes? Other, different attacks?

No.I would use techniques recommended by the best interrogation experts, and I sincerely doubt that those techniques would resemble anything that is being advocated by Cheney.

Why do people still listen to Cheney? Aside from being a liar, he's incompetent. I used to give him credit for the success of the first Gulf War, but it appears that he just had good people working for him. Otherwise, he has made a debacle of just about everything he's laid his hands on.

the red is positive and the black is negative, hook em up

I believe that modality was already proven ineffective at Abu Ghraib.

__________________

All I have to say is, the Gitmo prisoners should thank Allah that I am not in charge of interrogations.

If I was in charge, they would be talking. I would get fired, but they would be talking.

Now, where did I put that propane torch?

__________________
Palangi

2004 C240 Wagon 203.261 Baby Benz
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TRUMP .......... WHITEHOUSE
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Great. Suppose they didn't have any info other than, "Mohammed, Ichmail, Yusef, want to kill Americans because they invade our homeland." Torture will leave different sorts of scars on the doers of it -- a coarsening of one's nature, a practiced hand at brutality, a mean sneer towards people who cross you when you think what you could do to them.

We're supposed to be better than them. Might be good to actually hang onto a moral edge.

__________________
1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

That's the example that's always held up, or, the one about us knowing a nuclear device is hidden in a city and we just happen to have a guy in custody who knows where it is.

Trouble is, you could go through ten thousand guys, thinking they had the knowledge, only to get a bunch of false leads cause they really had no information but were saying anything to get you to stop.

Meanwhile, word gets out that the infidel is torturing Muslims right and left and our actual security decreases as a result. Torture doesn't work too well. Seems to be a lot of agreement on that one amongst people who actually know about these things.

__________________
1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Sure as hell made a buncha punks feel like the man, though.

__________________
1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

This is the kind of thinking that got a certain western European nations notoriety.........along with the SS.

Cheney might be compared to the "nose of the camel".

There are phycological ways to gain intellegence besides 'bully boy' tactics.
Obvoiusly, Palangi's above comments comes from experience ?



.

__________________
[http://languageandgrammar.com/2008/01/14/youve-got-problems-not-issues/ ]

"A liberal is someone who feels they owe a great debt to their fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money."

Yeah,even got some of 'em layed too.

__________________

Huh? Those guards were perverse cretins seeking self-gratification from degradation of others.They were NOT under orders. They were NOT interrogators. Learn the facts.


Bot

How do you know it doesn't work, because of what you have read, huh? Might want to look into it some more. There are all manner of degrees of torture. Simple incarceration would be a form of torture for me. A dental drill and the words, "Is it safe?" might work on somebody else. The key to coercive interrogation is to study the victim and find what makes him tick. Deprive him of his strengths and push on his weakness. It needn't be ripping flesh and soldering irons. Psychological coercion works, too.

Where do you draw the line? Is it okay to interrogate a terror supect? without Mirandizing him? Should he have a lawyer?

What if he was caught with left-over chemicals and wiring and plans for the Democratic National Convention? Should he be mirandized and lawyered-up?

What if he's caught on the field of battle, gun in hand, and in uniform? Miranda? Lawyer?

What if he's caught dressed as a civilian, before detonating a car bomb? Miranda? Lawyer?

What if he has your kid somewhere and you are the one who catches him? Miranda? Lawyer?


B

Once again sarcasm and irony have been squandered for naught.


P.S. we really do not,cannot know whether they were "under orders" or not,a,la Eichmann,"I vas only following orders" little difference there,human cruelty has no borders,old man.

__________________

During WW2, in general, these interrogation methods were used by the allied forces and rooted out spies and discovered important information.

I have heard comments in the past from very educated foreign citizens that were not in agreement with the war in Iraq but rather commented that the United States should have just had Saddam killed covertly and put an end to him.

Hey, the world's true forces have to be dealt with in rather unseemingly fashion now and then. That is the nature of the beast.

__________________
1979 300D 220 K miles
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