Jacob Heilbrunn takes a look at the the Obama/Cheney mano a mano and ponders why Cheney is still getting a hearing for the same old discredited nonsense and bamboozlement. Did you notice, as Jacob points out, that Cheney tried yet again to float the Iraq/al Qaida canard?
One of the weirdest moments in Vice President Cheney’s speech was when he claimed that “President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate.” We talked to various sources and no one even seemed to know what he was talking about since Obama and his CIA have explicitly ruled out the use of Cheney-era torture techniques.
As near as we can tell, Cheney bases this on an extremely flimsy statement made not by President Obama but by Sen. Kid Bond (R-MO).
It’s always sort of an inherent difficult proposition to try to find the evidence that Cheney bases one of his claims on. But Zack Roth is doing his best over at TPMmuckraker in this post and this one.
Lawrence O’Donnell calls Cheney’s speech the sleaziest presentation by a Veep since Spiro back in the day.
Setting aside the truly ludicrous idea that imprisoned terrorists are going to break out of prison like something out of an old Jimmy Cagney movie, I have heard from a number of readers who say we should be worried that these terrorist prisoners will spread their ideas within the prison system. If you imagine that these al Qaida dudes are going to be hanging around the prison yard, pumping iron and forming their own Islamist gang to go toe to toe with the Aryan Brotherhood and the Black Guerrilla Family that might make some sense. But I don’t think these folks are really familiar with how the federal supermax facilities work these days — particularly the premier one in Florence, Colorado, where all the high profile baddies are. All these guys are in solitary lockdown at least 23 hours a day, when they’re allowed into a special exercise cage. Then there’s the 78 cell “control unit” for prisoners who are not allowed any contact with anyone. This article from the Post from a few years ago has more details.
Short attention span? Pressed for time? We have the Obama speech whittled down to its essential highlights.
It turns out the ringleader of the New York Four, the guys who got busted last night for attempting to bomb a synagogue in Riverdale, got stoned to prepare for the big event.
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Our compressed video highlights of Cheney’s “Unpleasant Things” speech.