Dick Cheney’s Whirlwind Network Tour for the Promotion of Torture Rebutted and Forwarded to the ICC for Criminal Prosecution
Dick Cheney has admitted to being a key architect of the US torture program.
Not only did it admit it, but he bragged about it. And not only did he brag
about it, but he also stated he would do it again in a second if he faced
that choice.
What he failed to mention is that many of the prisoners who were tortured
were innocent victims sold to the US for bounty money.
Cheney also failed to mention the fact that neither Iraq nor Saddam had
anything to do with 9/11. And not only does he fail to mention this fact,
but he also fails to mention the fact that while he was directing the
torture of innocent Iraqis, Bush was literally kissing the cheek and holding
the hand of a prince from the brutal Saudi regime that had assisted
jihadists in the perpetration of the 9/11 attack against the US. Saudi
involvement in this attack is still being obscured behind false claims of
national security.
In fact, even before the Bush administration had plotted escape of Saudi
royals from the US in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack, it already
had engaged in secret energy meetings to devise a plan on how to divide up
the spoils of an atomized Iraq.
During the interview Cheney was then asked if he would consider rectal
rehydration to be a form of torture. He stated that this was not torture and
most likely done only for medical reasons. When asked what he would consider
to be torture, he stated he considered torture to be what was done by al
Qaeda to the people in the World Trade Center. Again, it seems Cheney
forgets that neither Iraq nor Saddam, nor any Iraqi Sunnis or Shiites had
anything to do with 9/11.
Then Dick Cheney argues that the torture report is flawed because
investigators failed to interview those involved in the program. It is very
difficult to conduct an investigation when the CIA destroyed evidence and
many of the people involved in the torture program had their identities
hidden or cited their Fifth Amendment rights.
Cheney goes on to argue that the torture program only became a problem when
career politicians began to throw intelligence professionals under the bus.
Again Cheney fails to mention how he and Bush threw CIA professionals under
the bus as they purged the agency of agents who provided intelligence that
proved Iraq and Saddam had nothing to do with 9/ 11 and explained why a war
with Iraq would be the greatest strategic mistake the US had ever made.
Cheney and Bush as politicians then decided to relieve General Shinseki of
command because he told them it would take twice the number of soldiers to
occupy Iraq as it took to defeat the Iraqi army. Cheney must be hoping that
all Americans are as stupid as those who believe his lies and do not notice
his hypocricy.
As soon as Bush won the presidency the secret Energy Summit commenced and
plans to invade Iraq had begun to be implemented far prior to 9/11. And
after 9/11 when there was no proof of Iraqi involvement and the CIA had
stated there was no connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, Cheney and his
gang had already determined how the spoils from Operation Iraqi Freedom
we're going to be divvied up and what contracts would be provided to
Halliburton.
And getting back to Cheney's quote of opportunistic politicians throwing
professionals under the bus, I wonder if he ever considered how the CIA felt
as he created the Expanded Iraqi Desk which later became known as the Office
of Special Plans whereupon he staffed it with a bunch of political neocon
ideologues. THen, when no WMDs were found, he tried to blame his lies to the
American people on the CIA.
In General Wesley Clark's famous Youtube video he explains how the Pentagon
explained to the Bush administration that there was no connection between
Saddam and al Qaeda and when asked why Cheney was going to invade Iraq
anyway, Cheney explained to the Pentagon, "Because it's doable."
Cheney then argues that torture was justified because the people in the CIA
stated that their torture provided actionable intelligence even though this
has been refuted time and time again by people within the CIA who were not
given leadership positions as the result of being neocon ideologues.
Does anyone actually think that the CIA will not lie to justify and cover
its crimes considering that it has already destroyed evidence that a court
had ordered to be submitted to that branch of government?
Cheney continues to argue that waterboarding is not torture when in fact the
US Government had executed Japanese officers after WWII for exactly the same
crimes. At that time the US government considered waterboarding a capital
offense punishable by death.
Then Cheney goes on to justify torture because it had been okayed by the
White House legal counsel that the president had personally staffed with
more neocon ideologues. It does not matter what some lawyers say with regard
to justifying torture. International law is clear in this respect and
provides no justification under any circumstance for the implementation of
torture.
In the video Cheney again argues that the torture program is being
misrepresented by the fact that key people were not questioned. Besides the
destruction of evidence and the citing of Fifth Amendment rights against
self-incrimination, there is also the fact that people like Director James
Clapper of the NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden never tell the truth even
when being placed under oath and subject to the penalties of perjury for
lying to and misleading Congress. Clapper and Hayden can rest assured that
they will never be called to account for perjury or high crimes, much less
misdemeanors. But the fact is that they ought to be charged with treason by
the US and prosecuted for crimes against peace by the ICC.
When Cheney was asked if a rectal rehydration what is torture he responded
by saying, "I guess the question is: What are you prepared to do in order to
get the truth about future attacks against the United States? But history,
intelligence experts, and common sense all point to the fact that torture
provides useless and false information whereby victims will say whatever
their tormentors want them to say. Torture provided useless information
about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Torture also provided useless
information with regard to evidence used in military tribunals. As a result
of of torture innocent people were wrongly implicated and also thusly
tortured.
I wonder what Cheney's response would be if asked: What compensation should
an innocent person receive for being a victim of torture and what punishment
should be inflicted upon those who wrongly torture innocents? If torture is
okay as a means with which to collect intelligence on terrorism, and
considering the US government has funded the MEK, PPK, and Jundallah, not to
mention supporting the Sandinistas, various death squads and unsavory
dictatorships such as Saddam's Iraqi Baathist rule and assisting the Shah of
Iran in maintaining power through the SAVAK, does this not then open
American fighting men and US officials to being subject to torture? After
all, don't foreign government have the right to know what crimes the US is
going to commit against them?
Cheney uses the endorsements of torture from individuals who like him are
responsible for the infliction of atrocities upon innocent human beings,
many of whom were killed in exceedingly gruesome ways. And oh, by the way,
let's not forget the many dozens of prisoners of war who were killed as the
result of torture, many of them being Iraqi military officers who should
have been protected by the Geneva and Hague Conventions by strictures that
should have been held to be inviolable. Saddam was demonized and yet even he
did not resort to torture against any Americans even though the US invaded
his country under false pretenses by waging an illegal and aggressive war
that had been planned prior to 9/11.
While Cheney continually brings up the 2000 that were killed in the World
Trade Center, he fails to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who
were killed that were completely innocent of the 9/11 terrorist attack. I am
sure Iraqi Sunnis would have been willing to blame Iraqi Shiites and vice
versa for an attack that was committed by George Bush's best friends in the
Saudi government.
The fact is is torture is used by governments to get it victims to say
whatever it is they want their victims to say. Hand Dick Cheney over to ISIS
and I am sure they can get him to admit to taking down the Twin Towers.
Don't be a fool. Look and read what the neocons have written in their
"Project for a New American Century". Their plan was to take down seven
governments in five years. The problem is that Russia and Iran now know,
understand and believe that the US is executing its plan for global
domination and are countering it with the help of China.
The International Criminal Court will now have to decide if it wants to tie
its legitimacy to the sinking credibility of the United States, or will it
seek to promote international justice.
In addition to the above article I also forwarded the following letter to
the Office of the Prosecutor for the ICC. It reads:
Information and Evidence Unit
Office of the Prosecutor
Attn: Mrs. Fatou Bensouda, ICC Prosecutor
Post Office Box 19519
2500 CM The Hague
The Netherlands
Dear Madam Prosecutor and Honorable Officials of Office of the Prosecutor,
I am a retired American Army officer who believes in the rule of
international law. As all U.S. soldiers are ordered to duty to fight in
foreign lands and have no recourse but to serve under the threat of prison
even for conflicts that are clearly violations of international law, it is
imperative that you prosecute American officials for war crimes, crimes
against humanity and crimes against peace itself.
If the ICC charges U.S. officials, I am sure there will be some soldiers who
will decide not to fight and justify their decision as a refusal to
participate in war crimes and crimes against humanity. This action will
serve to help erode support for future illegal wars in which the U.S. will
participate. If the ICC takes no action, its dereliction will ensure there
are more Iraq-type wars in Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Moreover, we will see governments continue to perpetrate false flag
operations as we have with the U.S. and EU falsely blaming the downing of
Malaysian Flight MH17 on Russia. It is clear that with Malaysia being
excluded from the investigative body the world has little chance of learning
the truth about Flight MH17 as the U.S. hides its advanced signal and
imaging intelligence products, radio traffic and radar recordings from
international scrutiny and world opinion.
What ought to be clear to the ICC is the fact that the U.S now lies like the
Israelis and the Israelis lie like people blink. With the destruction of
Libya perpetrated by the U.S. and NATO over false claims of deterring
impending genocide by Gaddafi, the U.S. now reasons Russia and China will
not interfere with its plans to continue regional destabilization and the
breakdown of international law and order. If Russia and China are to deter
U.S. crimes against peace, they will need the U.S to be called to account by
an international organization of justice. Therefore, it is imperative that
the ICC at least provides precedence for the beginning of the establishment
of some checks and balances upon U.S. unilateralism, belligerence and
militarism.
The ICC should not worry that the U.S. will refuse to cooperate with the ICC
regarding its targeting of African leaders for whom the U.S. provides
intelligence and evidence to the ICC. It is assured the U.S. will always
cooperate with the ICC in situations where it believes its interests are
being served. Accordingly, if there is an anti-U.S. government, dictatorship
or junta committing crimes, or if there is a foreign government committing
crimes that interferes with U.S. plans for hegemony, you can rest assured
the U.S. will continue to cooperate when such cooperation serves U.S.
interests.
If the ICC does not have the power to enforce international law against the
most powerful and states and so chooses not even attempt to enforce law
because it does not have the ability to enforce its will, justice is not
nearly so harmed as when a crime is simply ignored because a powerful nation
tells others no crime has been committed and then coerces an international
body into becoming the U.S.’s de facto accomplice.
U.S. war criminals will use the ICC’s failure to call their crimes a crime
as a means of legitimizing their past actions and gaining support for future
actions. The ICC should work to delegitimize the illegal actions of the U.S.
and understand that this would serve as a means of gaining international
legitimacy with the Non-Aligned Movement, the BRICS nations, and nations of
the G20 who oppose U.S. hegemony.
The U.S continues to lose international legitimacy with each criminal act it
commits. If the ICC simply ignores these crimes its international legitimacy
and subsequent decline will be closely tied to that of the U.S.’s. With
every illegal act committed by the U.S. that is overlooked by the ICC, the
Court’s legitimacy will be irrevocably harmed.
The American people need to understand the criminality of Bush family that
goes back to Operation Desert Storm’s “Highway of Death” war crime and leads
up to Operation Iraqi Freedom’s JSOC raids in which illegal killings were
covered up by digging the bullets out of the dead bodies of children and
expectant mothers.
I hope this letter allows you to better understand your responsibilities to
the innocent victims of the war the U.S. continues to create on a global
basis as it armed the very insurgents that now grew into al Qaeda and ISIS
that have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents. The U.S.’s
past crimes have become the attendant evils of aggressive war that serve to
foment violence, sectarian slaughter and all of war’s other encompassing
evils. The people of the world, including the U.S., do want a new world
order – one based on the unassailability of international justice.
We Americans have now become victims of our own government and the crimes
that were once only visited upon the innocent people of the world are now
being visited upon us. We have no more rights and are often the victim of
many forms of domestic tyranny. Our police, courts and political process
have now all become corrupted and all Americans are now at the mercy of a
government that has been held unaccountable for torture, illegal renditions,
extra-judicial assassinations and the indefinite detention of those even
military tribunals have deemed innocent. Detainees are now held just to
prevent the world from knowing more about U.S. torture and to prevent legal
accountability.
The world needs to be provided justice. Its politicians need to be held
accountable. As you know with the government of Ukraine shooting down Flight
MH17 and ISIS fighters using chemical weapons in the hope of drawing the
U.S. into a war for which the U.S. was initially seeking a casus belli so as
to begin attacks on Syria before it determined that ISIS is now the bigger
threat, it is easy to see that politicians are quite often knaves and fools
that the world must not be made to suffer.
You have duty to bring about a more just world. Please decide to give rise
to that reality.
Sincerely,
Joseph Zrnchik
P.S. As the U.S. government is now known to interfere with email through its
National Security Agency, I kindly ask for acknowledgement of receipt by the
ICC.
The views and opinions expressed above are those of the author. They have not been editted, cut or censored. I can be reached at jar2@jar2.com