It isn’t a case of the Democrats now going off soul searching, it case of total revamp from top to bottom after Trump’s win last Tuesday. The Amazing Democrats’ advice very early on to the Clinton Campaign (and some of those comments were posted on our social media platforms as far back as the late summer of 2015) went unheard unlike when we worked for the Obama/Biden campaign in 2012. It is time DNC to fire all your overpaid pollsters (who got it so wrong), consultants and the like. The DNC should of known in their hearts of hearts that after Bernie Sanders won twenty-two states with so little money against Hillary Clinton, their candidate of choice would be in serious trouble if the Republicans got a candidate who could storm the mainstream and social media which Trump did and of course got a bit of luck along the way with that first letter released by the FBI Director that certainly damaged Hillary in early voting and gave a huge boast for Trump with his base. Yes, a lot of questions will be asked as to how the FBI were allowed to influence an election so openly. But this was far from the only reason Hillary lost even if the DNC die hards believe it to be so. The DNC and Democrats have lost their way and have been now for a long time. Their obsession only seems to be with fundraising not the core principles of what the party was founded on, Trump was able to tap into that huge hole in the DNC. It was a party that once cared for the low income, the homeless, our veterans, the poor people of America and not the massive billions of dollars in fundraising which was totally wasted trying to take Trump down. Just think today how many homeless people that billion of dollars plus would do to help house the homeless crisis in our major cities which should have been a top issue for Hillary.
Hillary campaign interviewed myself and members of The Amazing Democrats, for the record we call ourselves The Amazing Democrats as we not die hard Democrats, we wouldn’t have followed Hillary in to the fires of hell if she was wrong and we wouldn’t be silent either even if it meant we were fired from the campaign, that’s the way worked in the Obama/Biden 2012 reelection campaign and we were amazed how we survived not to be fired (nearly maybe once or twice when we really overstepped our mark and criticized some of the President’s polices publicly). The interviewing process went back as far as January 2016 to join her campaign. We were subjected to rounds and rounds of interviews, back ground checks, etc. Months would go by and we heard nothing and then it would start all over again. It was by late August this Editor got interviewed for the sixth time, more back ground checks and then was offered four important positions in four different swing states and one of this offers came directly from the DNC. All this was paid employment and not volunteer work. That last weekend in August for me was were I suffered so much turmoil as I had to give them a decision by the following Monday. It meant dropping everything in my life and getting on a plane to Pennsylvania. What was most troubling in my mind was I could sense there was panic setting in for the Democrats and Hillary’s campaign. I didn’t sleep that weekend. I went back to the old formula that the Obama campaign thought me and even though I didn’t have access to data like we did when worked for Obama, never the less, I ran the data all weekend long. It is a long and laborious process that you can see today that both the pollsters and media don’t do, why? Maybe they just are too lazy to do it, who knows? You have to run every state’s county’s data county by county, you have then figure in the data available from both the candidates’ primary wins or loses, a lot of mathematics but in the end you get a somewhat overview, be it very rough. Also you have to take into account that I had been tracking the swing states every week since both primaries ended last year. Not good for Hillary and her team I could see, in fact the Wednesday before the election I was gloomy, I could predict Trump was going to win Ohio by three percent (he won by five percent so I was only out by two percent) and as you know, no Presidential candidate can take their place in The White House if they don’t win Ohio. With all this, it was the hardiest email I ever sent, declining the positions to work on the Hillary Clinton campaign.
As we move into the Trump Presidency, it’s going to be a very dark lonely path for the Democrats. Yes, there is the mid-terms in 2018, but if the DNC works as it has for the last twenty years, they are a very slow climb back up on Capitol Hill as remember this Presidential election in 2016 had the lowest turn out of voters in years, which helped Trump but destroyed Hillary’s chances of winning, nearly 50% of the electorate didn’t bother to vote and historically mid-term voting has a very low voter turn-out. Also if Trump makes any small success of his first term and as everything Trump touches turns to gold, whether you like his manner and process or not and as it very hard to unseat a sitting President, as we all know, Trump going for a second term, then the DNC and Democrats could be looking at the wildness for next eight years at least, that’s 2024, a very depressing thought I know, but maybe a fact unless the DNC make radically chances and that starts today, not six months before the 2018 mid-terms.
In the 2006 mid-terms under George W. Bush, the Republicans got wiped out in the House and the Senate. All the media said at that time that Republican Party need to reinvent itself and stop been the “party of no”. Did they? Of course not, in fact under Obama as President and because of their hatred of him, they became the “party of no, no, no” on every bill he sent to the House and Senate. Now look where they are ten years later. The power of Washington again with the Democrats hanging onto their coattails and the sad thing is, Trump gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice. If he gets two terms, who knows, with three more justices ready for retirement in the next few years, he might even hit the golden jackpot of nominating four Supreme Court justices, a very scary thought. The Democrats however can’t do as the Republicans did in 2006, which was nothing to change their image and beliefs but the Democrats aren’t so lucky. If the DNC go back to business as usual, it will be a very dark long road for the Democrats back to the shining lights of The White House. It is simply the base. The Republican base and the Democrat base is so so much different and as Trump said decades ago when he was a registered Democrat, pro-choice and donated a lot of money to Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaigns: “If I was to run as President, I would run as a Republican as their voters as so dumb and easy to fool, I would lie and lie to them until I got numbers”. That’s all he had to do for this Presidential campaign and he is the winner today not Hillary Clinton.
Which brings what fundamentally went south very early on in the Hillary Clinton campaign:
1. NEVER EVER underestimate your opponent.
2. If he/she gets down in the dirt, you go down there with them. Hillary taking the high road was her downfall as political correctness (PC) means nothing anymore in the world of social media as we saw with Trump, the King of Twitter and Obama/Biden in 2008 as the King of Facebook. PC has gone way too far in the US and the rest of the world and Trump, no matter what you think, turned PC on it’s head in this presidential election and as he said on 60 Minutes last night, “it was nasty, very nasty but I am the one sitting here today talking to you and not them”. In fact 2020 and 2024 will be so so much nastier. Rumors were that Trump using his own money, paid pockets of supporters all over America to flood the internet with lies about Hillary and Bill Clinton and the secret? They could never be traced back to him or his campaign. Why didn’t the Hillary Clinton campaign do the same with the rumors about Trump’s ties to the Mafia? Why was this never floated all over the internet? PC I guess but he won and Clinton lost. The new trend now with Presidential campaigns as Trump has lowered the bar, is to win 2020 or 2024 the candidates from both parties to win, will have to get down in the mud and get dirty. Sad? Of course but no cares about the loser, they only care about the winner.
3. Dump the negative ads. One billion dollars was such a waste of money by the Clinton campaign and Trump barely spent a faction of that. We kept telling the Obama/Biden campaign and the DNC in 2012, negative ads don’t work anymore and only turn all the voters off. Pity they didn’t listen.
The Amazing Democrats are not all about criticizing without offering the DNC suggestions for the road forward:
1. Fire all your overpaid pollsters, consultants, lobbyists, etc..
2. Allow the progressive members of the party to take over. (I do not mean the loony left), members who understand the issues of the day to day worries of the lower income Americans (who sadly are too many), the homeless crisis in our cities all over America, our veterans living on our streets.
3. Get back to what a community organizer really is. I used get so annoy with new volunteers who joined our team who tried to tell the person forcefully on the other side of the phone why they should vote for Obama or donate to Obama’s campaign and the DNC. A community organizer’s job is to listen and listen well and then send what they hear up the line and hope they are listening otherwise you get a result like Tuesday’s Presidential elections.
4. As the advice to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, get off the negative ads obsession (turns all voters off).
5. And please with every email you sent, stop looking for donations all the time. It makes us feel you don’t care about anything but money and donations which we know to be true.
6. Find the soul of the Democrat Party again of FDR and John F. Kennedy.
7. And finally, listen. Never stop listening to those on the ground as we are the ones who can make the difference from the Democrats winning or losing an election.
Here is to the 2018 mid-terms, see you then and to 2020 Presidential election. Keep the faith and a sense of humor as The Amazing Democrats do and God Bless America,
An abrasive arrest of young pool party attendees in McKinney has led to the suspension of one of the responding officers after a video of the incident appeared online.
The video, seen by many as another example of racially motivated and unnecessary police force, shows the officer throwing black juveniles in swimsuits to the ground and pulling his gun on them in one instance. The incident occurred Friday at a community pool in the city northeast of Dallas. One officer has been suspended pending an investigation, according to a statementby the McKinney Police Department on Sunday morning.
RELATED: 24 episodes of police abuse caught on camera.
The department said officers were responding to reports of juveniles fighting at a community pool. In the YouTube video, one officer can be seen forcing a black male to the ground. He then spends a significant portion of the seven-minute video dragging to the ground and detaining a 14-year-old black girl in a bikini.
When she stands up again at one point, the officer pulls his gun out. He puts it away several seconds later and puts his knees to the girl’s back while waiting for other officers to cuff her. The officer also is seen shouting and cursing at pool partygoers throughout the video, telling them to get to the other side of the street or they’d also be arrested. In the middle of the scrum, one girl yells at him, “You’re not going to be a cop no more.”
Here’s what the McKinney Police Department had to say about the incident:
“The initial call came in as a disturbance involving multiple juveniles at the location, who do not live in the area or have permission to be there, refusing to leave. McKinney Police received several additional calls related to this incident advising that juveniles were now actively fighting.
First responding officers encountered a large crowd that refused to comply with police commands. Nine additional units responded to the scene. Officers were eventually able to gain control of the situation.
McKinney Police later learned of a video that was taken at the scene by an unknown party. This video has raised concerns that are being investigated by the McKinney Police Department. At this time, one of the responding officers has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of this investigation.”
Buzzfeed News spoke to the Brandon Brooks, who uploaded the video and believes the incident was racially charged. “Everyone who was getting put on the ground was black, Mexican, Arabic,” said Brooks, who is white. “[The cop] didn’t even look at me. It was kind of like I was invisible.”
Another 14-year-old girl, who said she was the only white person detained at the scene, told BuzzFeed News the fight broke out after adults told the black juveniles to return to “Section 8 [public] housing.” The girl was released after 25 minutes and her family told BuzzFeed News they’ll file a complaint against the adult woman who made the racist remarks.
It all started with an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly that ran Monday. In it, Kelly asked Bush whether “knowing what we know now,” he would have authorized the use of force against Iraq. Here how he responded:
“I would have and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got. In retrospect, the intelligence that everybody saw — that the world saw, not just the United States — was faulty. And in retrospect, once we invaded and took out Saddam Hussein, we didn’t focus on security first, and the Iraqis in this incredibly insecure environment turned on the United States military because there was no security for themselves and their families.
Um, okay”.
My initial read on those comments was that Bush was either (a) unbelievably politically tone-deaf or (b) had misheard the question.
Since I know that Bush is not politically tone-deaf, option “b” was the only one that made any sense.
And, judging from Bush’s answer, there seems to be plenty of evidence to support the idea that he heard Kelly asking whether he would have voted to use force against Iraq back then — without hearing (or understanding) the “knowing what we know now” part of the question. In his answer, Bush documents then-New York. Sen. Hillary Clinton’s vote for the use of force resolution and then admits that the intelligence leading up to the war was eventually proven to be “faulty.” That’s not the sort of statement a politician gives if he thinks that the country should have gone to war in Iraq even knowing what we know now.
Then came this from Bush adviser Ana Navarro on CNN Tuesday: “I e-mailed him this morning and I said to him, ‘Hey, I’m a little confused by this answer so I’m genuinely wondering did you mishear the question?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I misheard the question.’ ”
Bush’s campaign didn’t answer e-mails seeking clarification of all of this, although they did point reporters (okay, me) tothis clip of Kelly saying Bush misheard the question.
Bush is also scheduled to appear on conservative commentator Sean Hannity’s radio show today.
There seems roughly a 100 percent chance that Bush will use that platform to clarify a position that enraged conservatives. And it’s a near-certainty that he will lean on the explanation that he simply misheard the question. Which, as I note above, is totally consistent with the answer he gave.
But mishearing or not, the hubbub caused by Bush’s answer — both among conservatives and Democrats, who seized on it — shows just how careful Jeb has to be when talking about his brother. This is the second incident in the past week – the first was when Jeb said George W. was one of his main advisers on Israel policy — where the legacy of the first brother Bush is creating controversy and problems for his younger sibling.
There are two realities at work here: (1) Jeb is George W.’s brother, and (2) Jeb does not want to be cast as a third George W. term. Distancing yourself from a less-than-popular politician of your own party is a difficult thing to do no matter what. (See Al Gore and Bill Clinton circa 2000.) That goes quadruple (or more) when that politician is your brother.
This mixup — and I genuinely think that’s what we are dealing with on the Iraq question — reveals why having the last name “Bush” is a genuine issue for Jeb in 2016. There will be a tendency to always assume the worst when it comes to him and his brother.
WARNING GRAPHIC: Video Shows Fatal Police Shooting In South Carolina.
There are no more words anymore that any of us can say or write when we watch this video over and over again. No, it is not because we are sick or bored with nothing to do, it is because, after all that has happened and being said and again today we witness what the African-American community have being saying for so long: that the White Police Officers are out to kill them given the right circumstances. We saw that in South Carolina today and how Police Officer Michael T. Slager murdered Walter L. Scott who fled because he hadn’t paid child support? You see here we go in American and its business as usual with the bullshit as Mr. Scott’s twenty year old history of a battery charge is brought up within hours of the video being leaked to the press. Where is the other side of the story? That Police Officer Slager who murdered Walter Scott in cold blood and then planted his Police Department issued taster gun beside Mr. Scott as he lay dying or possibly dead from the rounds of bullets fired from Slager’s handgun. Where was Officer’s Slager’s record played out to the media? Where were the media reports of the complaints made against him on previous occasions and that were dropped as they have their secret code and it can’t be broken and that is that one Police Officer can’t give evidence against another (or rat as they would call it against their brother or sister in uniform). Why can’t us lay people wake up to the truth and take our heads out of our asses and get away from these post 9/11 Hollywood movies that have mostly turned all our cops on screen into heroes.
South Carolina ’s Police Officer Slager actions as we all watched them in horror today makes LAPA Officer Dennis Peck (Richard Gere) from the movie “Internal Affairs” look like a boy scout.
For one as a voter I am tired of this and there is no other side to this story as the video shows us how coldly and inhuman those two Police Officers walked around the body of Mr. Scott for nine minutes and calmly planting evidence on Mr. Scott unaware of them being filmed doing such. A murder charge for Office Slager? Oh please, why does the US Justice System insult us time after time? We know Officer Slager will walk away a free man just like Officer Wilson did when he murdered Michael Brown in cold blood too. It is time Congress brought in new rules and guidelines for our Nation’s Police Officers and all their guns are removed from them until they learn to respect them and human life. If I hear the President open his big mouth again about the bravely and courage our fine Police Officers show in their daily duties which they are paid for, I will change over and vote for Jeb Bush in 2016. He should put up or shut up for his own people and stop turning his back on them all the time. No President has ever done this anytime in our turbulent history but President Obama and history will not be kind on him regarding this fact and his disastrous record on Civil Rights as his term as President of the United States of American comes to a close in 653 days.
To think those two Police Officers in South Carolina are paid to serve and protect when you would treat a dead animal kinder then these Police Officers treated Mr. Scott as we all saw on video. All I can honestly say and knowing how these individuals operate when threatened, that the person videoing that very sick behaviour of Officer Slager is lucky they weren’t seeing by Slager and they should count their blessings that they are alive today. It is the person who risked their life shooting that video of the cruel murder of Walter Scott in South Caroline for us all to witness who we should be invited to the Oval Office for a medal from the President and not another Police Officer that makes Obama look good and makes for nice press and pictures on the West Wing video clips series.
There are no two sides of the story any longer, we are all sick to our stomachs what we see now on a daily basis and it is time for Congress and The White House to wake up and bring in new rules and laws governing sworn Police Officers who are paid to serve and protect and it is about time the candidates for the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election started getting involved in this debate (including Hilary Clinton). All the Presidential candidates better not hide under the tails of their campaigns avoiding this issue as we will ensure (with the power of our pen and our blogs) to bring this issue right up to the top of the election pile and no matter how much they duck and run from it, we will be there to remind all 2016 Presidential candidates (including Hillary Clinton) of their civic duty. Please 2016 Presidential candidates bring this issue to the forefront of the discussion for the American people so we can vote accordingly as we only have 580 days left to the US Presidential election on Tuesday November 8th, 2016.
(c) The Editor of The Amazing Democrats (Los Angeles) Blog, Facebook and twitter.
It is time that North Korea is thought a very hard lesson not because over hacking what is meant not to be even a very good comedy (“The Interview”) from people who have viewed it in LA and not because Sony Pictures is Un-American (and now insult us by blaming the cinema chains in the US and flip-flopping all over the shop that is so embarrassing) but because we have to. Not over hacking a major US movie corporation but the editor of this blog had a long talk recently with a South Korean Army lieutenant based on the South-North Korean border and he stated that the American public are not being fully informed by the US mainstream media (what’s new, always takes us bloggers to break the real story and than get no credit for it) about what is really going on there and that North Korea is very close to having a fully operation Nuclear missile. For one who doesn’t agree with war, sometimes it is necessary and this is a case in point now that Iran are somewhat willing to talk and try and find an agreement with the US with their Nuclear program. It is time the President turned his full attention to North Korean and rid that Country for the sake of it’s people of that sickening dictator Kim-Jong-un. China like Russia, when President Clinton bombed Serbia, will toe the line. They have too much to lose if they don’t sticking by this sad sick little excuse of man called Kim-Jong-un. It is just a pity it wasn’t all over a classic movie like The Godfather and not some second rate Hollywood comedy. Sony Pictures don’t deserve the huge profits they will get when they do release it (and trust me they will as money talks as we all well know) as everyone in the World (including Kim-Jong-un) will want to see it but Sony Pictures will forever remain Un-America and should study history and as FDR said “The only thing to fear is fear itself”. Shame on you Sony Pictures, shame on you. – Editor’s note.
Obama Vows a Response to Cyberattack on Sony
By DAVID E. SANGER, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and NICOLE PERLROTH (New York Times)
WASHINGTON — President Obama said on Friday that the United States “will respond proportionally” against North Korea for its destructive cyberattacks on Sony Pictures, but he criticized the Hollywood studio for giving in to intimidation when it withdrew “The Interview,” the satirical movie that provoked the attacks, before it opened.
Deliberately avoiding specific discussion of what kind of steps he was planning against the reclusive nuclear-armed state, Mr. Obama said that the response would come “in a place and time and manner that we choose.” Speaking at a White House news conference before leaving for Hawaii for a two-week vacation, he said American officials “have been working up a range of options” that he said have not yet been presented to him.
A senior official said Mr. Obama would likely be briefed in Hawaii on those options. Mr. Obama’s threat came just hours after the F.B.I. said it had assembled extensive evidence that the North Korean government organized the cyberattack that debilitated the Sony computers.
If he makes good on it, it would be the first time the United States has been known to retaliate for a destructive cyberattack on American soil or to have explicitly accused the leaders of a foreign nation of deliberately damaging American targets, rather than just stealing intellectual property. Until now, the most aggressive response was the largely symbolic indictment of members of a Chinese Army unit this year for stealing intellectual property.
The president’s determination to act was a remarkable turn in what first seemed a story about Hollywood backbiting and gossip as revealed by the release of emails from studio executives and other movie industry figures describing Angelina Jolie as a “spoiled brat” and making racially tinged lists of what they thought would be Mr. Obama’s favorite movies.
But it quickly escalated, and the combination of the destructive nature of the attacks — which wiped out Sony computers — and a new threat this week against theatergoers if the “The Interview,” whose plot revolves an attempt to assassinate the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, opened on Christmas Day turned it into a national security issue. “First it was a game-changer,” one official said. “Then it became a question of what happens if we don’t respond? And the president concluded that’s not an option.”
But as striking as his determination to make North Korea pay a price for its action was his critique of Sony Pictures for its decision to cancel “The Interview.” Mr. Obama argued that the precedent that withdrawing the movie set could be damaging — and that the United States could not give in to intimidation.
“I wish they had spoken to me first,” Mr. Obama said of Sony’s leadership. “I would have told them, ‘Do not get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.’ ”
In a clear reference to Mr. Kim, he said, “We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States.” That would encourage others to do the same “when they see a documentary that they don’t like or news reports that they don’t like.”
The chief executive of Sony Pictures, Michael Lynton, immediately defended his decision and said Mr. Obama misunderstood the facts. He argued that when roughly 80 percent of the country’s theaters refused to book the film after the latest threat, “we had no alternative but to not proceed with the theatrical release,” Mr. Lynton told CNN. “We have not caved, we have not given in, we have not backed down.”
In a follow-up statement, Sony said that it “immediately began actively surveying alternatives” to theatrical distribution after theater owners balked. But so far no mainstream cable, satellite or online film distributor was willing to adopt the movie.
Mr. Obama did not pass up the opportunity to take a jab at the insecure North Korean government for worrying about a Hollywood comedy, even a crude one.
The headquarters of Sony Pictures in Culver City, Calif. The F.B.I. said that some of the methods employed in the Sony cyberattack were similar to ones that were used by the North Koreans against South Korean banks. Credit Christopher Polk/Getty Images
“I think it says something about North Korea that they decided to have the state mount an all-out assault on a movie studio because of a satirical movie,” he said, smiling briefly at the ridiculousness of an international confrontation set off by a Hollywood comedy.
The case against North Korea was described by the F.B.I. in somewhat generic terms. It said there were significant “similarities in specific lines of code, encryption algorithms, data deletion methods and compromised networks” to previous attacks conducted by the North Koreans.
“The F.B.I. also observed significant overlap between the infrastructure used in this attack and other malicious cyberactivity the U.S. government has previously linked directly to North Korea,” the bureau said. “For example, the F.B.I. discovered that several Internet protocol addresses associated with known North Korean infrastructure communicated with I.P. addresses that were hard-coded into the data deletion malware used in this attack.” An Internet protocol address is the closest thing to an identifier of where an attack emanated.
Some of the methods employed in the Sony attack were similar to ones that were used by the North Koreans against South Korean banks and news media outlets in 2013. That was a destructive attack, as was an attack several years ago against Saudi Aramco, later attributed to Iran. While there were common cybertools to the Saudi attack as well, Mr. Obama told reporters on Friday he had seen no evidence that any other nation was involved.
The F.B.I.’s announcement was carefully coordinated with the White House and reflected the intensity of the investigation; just a week ago, a senior F.B.I. official said he could not say whether North Korea was responsible. Administration officials noted that the White House had now described the action against Sony as an “attack,” as opposed to mere theft of intellectual property, and that suggested that Mr. Obama was now looking for a government response, rather than a corporate one.
The F.B.I.’s statements “are based on intelligence sources and other conclusive evidence,” said James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Now the U.S. has to figure out the best way to respond and how much risk they want to take. It’s important that whatever they say publicly signals to anyone considering something similar that they will be handled much more roughly.”
While American officials were circumspect about how they had collected evidence, some has likely been developed from “implants” placed by the National Security Agency. North Korea has proved to be a particularly hard target because it has relatively low Internet connectivity to the rest of the world, and its best computer minds do not move out of the country often, where their machines and USB drives could be accessible targets.
Private security researchers who specialize in tracing attacks said that the government’s conclusions matched their own findings. George Kurtz, a founder of CrowdStrike, a California-based security firm, said that his company had been studying public samples of the Sony malware and had linked them to hackers inside North Korea — the firm internally refers to them as Silent Chollima — who have been conducting attacks since 2006.
But he should go away and be quiet because if he and George W. Bush weren’t in the special President’s club (where they all look out for each other) then Dark Vader and George W. would be facing some real jail time if they were prosecuted (which they should be) but we know they won’t. Reminds us what lays ahead in 2017 if Jeb Bush runs and wins for the Republicans. War again, the CIA back torturing the wrong people and we can say goodbye to the Affordable Care Act. And will anything be done under J. concerning Immigration and Social Security reform in 2017?
Nope, just like his brother W, J will do nothing but talk and talk until we kick the Republicans out of the House and Senate in 2018. All fun and games in Washington and would be funny if it wasn’t our lives they were all playing with.
By Scott Shane (New York Times)
As vice president, Dick Cheney was the most enthusiastic sponsor for the brutal C.I.A.interrogation program used on Al Qaeda suspects, protesting when President George W. Bush scaled it back in his second term. Now that a Senate Intelligence Committee report has declared that the C.I.A.’s methods, later prohibited, violated American values and produced little or no useful intelligence, Mr. Cheney is fiercely defending not just the agency’s record, but his own as well.
“I would do it again in a minute,” Mr. Cheney said in a spirited, emotional appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He denied that waterboarding and related interrogation tactics were torture, noting that three of the last four attorneys general have agreed with his view.
The NBC host, Chuck Todd, pressed Mr. Cheney on what might constitute torture, reading actual episodes from the Senate report: Holding a prisoner in a coffin-sized box for 11 days? Handcuffing a prisoner’s wrists to an overhead bar for 22 hours a day? But Mr. Cheney gave no ground.
“I can’t tell from that specifically whether it was or not,” he replied.
He even declined to criticize C.I.A. practices used on prisoners called “rectal feeding” and “rectal rehydration,” though he noted that “it was not one of the techniques approved” by the Justice Department. “I believe it was done for medical reasons,” he said. The Senate report suggests that it was largely used without medical orders to punish prisoners who refused water or food.
At 73, nearly three years after a heart transplant, Mr. Cheney clearly feels his own legacy is at stake.
In the early months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush delegated the detailed oversight of the campaign against Al Qaeda to his vice president, who embraced the task and urged the harshest measures. Mr. Cheney had long believed that restrictions placed on the intelligence agencies after scandals in the late 1970s were ill-advised, and he relished the chance to take the restraints off the C.I.A.
Mr. Cheney may be running some political risk. For some viewers, his gloves-off comments on “Meet the Press” may recall his many appearances being interviewed on Sunday morning television shows in late 2002 and early 2003 before the invasion of Iraq.
At that time, he repeatedly asserted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda, claims that turned out to be false. He also made a famously inaccurate prediction on the same show, “Meet the Press,” on March 16, 2003, that American troops would be “greeted as liberators.”
Continue reading the main storyBut that experience has not deterred him. In the wake of the Senate report, he has only stepped up his defense of the C.I.A., deciding that the best defense is a relentless offense.
Mr. Cheney was also asked on Sunday to answer questions about detainees who had faced lengthy incarceration, and sometimes harsh treatment, even though the C.I.A. concluded they posed no terrorist threat or had been imprisoned by mistake. The Senate report counts at least 26 such “wrongfully detained” prisoners among the 119 detainees who passed through the C.I.A. secret overseas jails.
The former vice president responded that, in his mind, the greater problem was “with the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield.”
Asked again whether he was satisfied with a program that erroneously locked up detainees, he replied, “I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.”
The Senate committee’s report makes the case that the wrongful detentions and use of torture were actually counterproductive, citing C.I.A. officers’ own views that harsh tactics had “poisoned the well” in questioning some prisoners.
The 6,000-page Senate study, based on a review of more than six million pages of C.I.A. records, is by far the most ambitious look at the program to date. Its damning conclusions are based strictly on what C.I.A. officers were themselves reporting inside the agency at the time.
The portrait it paints of a program that was not just brutal but incompetent has drawn global comment, most of it highly critical of the C.I.A.’s former tactics. The report has been hailed by the United Nations and human rights groups as a long-delayed step toward accountability, though they say the people who approved and conducted the program must be held responsible for grave violations of law and morality.
The report’s conclusions might have been expected to offer vindication to another Republican stalwart, Senator John McCain, who has long been the leading voice denouncing torture and countering Mr. Cheney on the interrogation question.
But the torture issue has split Congress and the country largely on partisan lines, and Mr. McCain’s commentary on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, where he was asked about Mr. Cheney’s remarks, underscored how lonely his position has become in the Republican Party.
The Senate report was produced solely by the intelligence committee’s Democratic staff members, after the Republicans decided to stop participating, and Republicans have almost universally panned it as a biased and flawed study, noting that its authors relied exclusively on documents and did not interview C.I.A. officials.
Unlike nearly every other politician in the debate, Mr. McCain has personal experience with the topic: as a downed Navy pilot, he was tortured by his North Vietnamese captors as a prisoner of war, an experience that left him with the deep conviction that the United States should never use such tactics. Mr. Cheney, by contrast, received four deferments as a student and a fifth as a new father and never served.
Mr. McCain said some defenders of the C.I.A. program are engaging in a “rewriting of history” and are whitewashing torture. “You can’t claim that tying someone to the floor and having them freeze to death is not torture,” he said. He noted that waterboarding had a gruesome pre-C.I.A. history dating back to the Spanish Inquisition, and that the United States “tried and hung Japanese war criminals for waterboarding Americans in World War II.”
“What we need to do is come clean, we move forward and we vow never to do it again,” Mr. McCain said. “I urge everyone to just read the report.”
Mr. Cheney said he had read “parts” of the report. But the former vice president responded to Mr. Todd, “Go read what the directors of the agency said about the report.”
Indeed, Mr. Cheney’s latest remarks were part of a barrage of commentary attempting to undercut the Senate’s blistering report on the C.I.A. program. Defenders of the program, including a former C.I.A. director, Michael V. Hayden, and the official who actually ran the program, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., outnumbered those criticizing its methods on Sunday morning’s political shows.
Waterboarding was never used, at least with official approval, after 2003. In 2006, against the vice president’s advice, Mr. Bush moved the accused 9/11 conspirators to an American detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The secret prisons housed only a handful of additional prisoners before President Obama ordered them closed on his first full day in office in 2009.
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