Cheney's Position:
"In public discussion of these matters, there has been a strange and sometimes willful attempt to conflate what happened at Abu Ghraib prison with the top secret program of enhanced interrogations. At Abu Ghraib, a few sadistic prison guards abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulations, and simple decency. For the harm they did, to Iraqi prisoners and to America's cause, they deserved and received Army justice. And it takes a deeply unfair cast of mind to equate the disgraces of Abu Ghraib with the lawful, skillful, and entirely honorable work of CIA personnel trained to deal with a few malevolent men. "
Here is the crux of the hypocrisy and illogic of Cheney's position.
First he attempts to claim that AG was outside of legal and acceptable practices used for the so called high value terrorist (when in fact they are terrorist suspects).
Well in reality the pentagon, presumably at the direction of the WH, Geoffrey Miller incharge of detention facilities in Iraq.
en.wikipedia.org(general)
Geoffrey D. Miller (born c. 1949) is a retired United States Army Major General who commanded the US detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Iraq. Detention facilities in Iraq under his command included Abu Ghraib prison, Camp Cropper and Camp Bucca. He is also famous for training soldiers in "improved interrogation techniques".[
On November 2002, Miller was given command of Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay (GTMO), which runs the US detention facilities known as Camp X-Ray, Camp Delta and Camp Echo in Cuba. Miller claimed that two-thirds of the 600 prisoners had confessed to being involved in terrorism and were giving "actionable intelligence." However, instances of abuse such as beatings, using attack dogs to intimidate prisoners, and other abuses at Guantanamo Bay were alleged to have occurred under Miller's command.
On September 22, 2003, Miller ordered the arrest of James Yee, an Army captain who served as a chaplain for the Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo. Miller accused Yee of stealing classified documents and smuggling them out of the prison, but those charges were later dropped. It is believed that no evidence of espionage was found, but records on the case have been sealed.
For a period of time Miller exercised his right to protect himself from self-incrimination.[5] According to the New York Times: "He changed his position when the US Senate Armed Services Committee delayed his retirement until he was more forthcoming."
In May 2006 Miller testified at the courts martial of the Abu Ghraib dog handlers that his instructions on the use of dogs had been misunderstood.[6] Miller testified that he instructed that dogs should be used "only for custody and control of detainees". Miller's testimony was directly contradicted, the next day, by Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Phillabaum, the commander of Abu Ghraib's Military Police detachment.
THerefore, I believe it patently false to claim that AG was not a direct result of administration attempts to expand the enhanced interrogation techniques to Iraq.
Secondly the basic logic and premise behind the used of enhanced interrogation techniques just fails completely.
the use is justified to gain intelligence-Cheney gain "The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."
so if the use of enhanced interrogation is justified to save innocent lives, then how come it was not justified in IRaq? THe goal was to prevent terrorists attacks that were killing thousands of innocent lives. So why was AG so wrong?
The is no logic to his argument.
