Dueling speeches, similar philosophies

Most everybody else wrote about the "dueling speeches" of Cheney and Obama, set up by Obama. last Thursday, so I did so for this week's Antiwar.com column. I suspect mine was a little different than many. After acknowledging rhetorical differences, I think I made a pretty good case that the foreign policies the two embrace and advocate are remarkably similar despite the anger Cheney wants to vent and the tendency of the two establishment "sides" to view one another as as tools of Satan if not the devil incarnate.

Obama's emphases may be different, but he believes the U.S. needs to be involved -- if only to make a decision about how actively to be involved -- in every conflict and potential conflict in the world. He might emphasize Afghanistan over Iraq, and he may really have believed at the outset that the Iraq war was a mistake. But he embraces the empire and revels in being its commander-in-chief. As his domestic ambitions are frustrated -- and many will be -- he will turn increasingly to foreign affairs, as every president since WW II has.

I think Cheney's lying -- but let's find out

Barack Obama and Dick Cheney had their dueling speeches on interrogation and national security today. I printed them out but still haven't been able to bring myself to read them in their entirety yet, though I saw excerpts on TV. I'm inclined to agree with Glenn Greenwald on what I know of Obama's speech -- nice words, but we haven't seen much action yet. I'm still unclear on whether he reserves the right to torture, he plans to use military commissions for some prisoners, he sure seems to be declaring a right to use indefinite detention without charges, and he's escalating atotally unnecessary war in Afghanistan. Perhaps for understandable reasons -- domestic policy seems to be what really interests him -- he has followed Bush's lead in almost every area of foreign policy. Not much change I can believe in.

Cheney is really a piece of work. He came right out and said we weren't getting anything useful from some of these guys until we went to "enhanced interrogation." That contradicts what I've been able to discern from the record and what can be inferred from it, as well as from discussions with professional interrogators. Torture simply doesn't furnish reliable information. I think Cheney is lying, but I'll take my chances. Release all the relevant documents and let experts and bloggers have at them. If I'm wrong I'll admit it. But I doubt if I am.

Torture: a chance to learn

Here is the Register's editorial today on the torture memos. The emphasis here is on calling for a release of all the information surrounding torture, including whatever evidence, if any, exists for torture having been efficacious as a way to acquire information. Dick Cheney's call for the release of such information, I suspect, is a bit of bravado, and his claim that he had asked for such release earlier is already suspect. How sad that he now feels he must spend the rest of his life defending an indefensible decision to put together a torture program -- yes, it was a program orchestrated from the top, not an occasional excess by those in the field. I suspect a full examination would reveal almost nothing that could not have been acquired without torture. But bring it out and bring it on!

All our suspicions confirmed

In a way it's not much of a big deal. VP Cheney tells ABC that the war on Iraq would have happened even if the administration had believed the intelligence (which was there only ignored) suggesting Saddam Hussein had no WMD at all. They were simply determined to go to war. But we knew this at the time. I knew about July 2002 that the administration was going to invade with or without any evidence of a real threat to the U.S., and the trips to the UN, the inspection demands, the inspections (which Bush ended, even though he has repeatedly said, almost never challenged, that Saddam kicked the inspectors out, a lie he has to know is a lie) the scary talk of mushroom clouds, were nothing but pretexts designed to fool the American people. It worked for a while but even with the reduction in violence and the apparent success of the surge, 70-75 percent of the American people think the war was a mistake, which it decidedly was.

And now we have a report from the Senate Armed Services Committee -- with no Republican dissent -- saying that the impulse to torture came from the top, largely from Rumsfeld (though Bush had to be in the loop). It wasn't a few non-com "rogues, and it wasn't interrogators in the field begging to be allowed to use more aggressive methods. It was a bunch of sofa samurai with no practical experience in such matters but with a faux-tough attitude who pushed torture, and it came from the top. Here's my Antiwar.com column on the subject.

What's remarkable is that in almost all of the accounts finally coming forth, it is apparent that those who were most skeptical and cynical about the Bush administration turned out to be right, and they (we) may even have understated the venality and dishonesty af this administration.

Petraeus promoted -- Iran back on drawing board?

Gen. David Petraeus has been promoted to the position Adm. William Fallon resigned from/was pushed out of, that of head of the U.S. Central Command, which includes the Middle East and Afghanistan and Pakistan. (The very name Central Command is indicative of the fact that the U.S. is explicitly an imperial power, isn't it? But the term Homeland Security says the same thing.) Iraq has been Petraeus's proving ground, and he's proven to be Bush's favorite general, at least for now. I don't know if he is really is an "ass-kissing little chickenshit" climber as Adm. Fallon is said to have called him (Fallon denies it, but he's a Navy man after all), but he is certainly one of our more political generals, who knows how to ingratiate himself with the commander-in-chief.

I also don't know if Gareth Porter is correct in his opinion piece, suggesting that having Petraeus in the post formerly occupied by "Fox" Fallon, who famously vowed there would be no war with Iran on his watch, leaves Cheney in charge of Iran policy and a war with Iran much more likely. Can even a viper like Cheney be so irresponsible at a time when all the military people are saying the U.S. military is on the verge of being hollowed-out. Even to consider such foolishness is sign of an empire in decline.