Townsend Admits CIA Documents Don’t Back Up Cheney’s Claims About Torture.

This is what Dick Cheney said then:

One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified.

I formally asked that they be declassified now.

This is what he is saying now that the reports have been released:

The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda.

It's a nice dodge, but it doesn't cut the mustard. He said that the release of the memos would show that EIT specifically led to the terrorists giving information, implying that it would be clear that this was the only way to gain this information.

On the video above even former Bush homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend admits that the memos don't prove what Cheney promised they would prove.

It’s very difficult to draw a cause and effect, because it’s not clear when techniques were applied vs. when that information was received. It’s implicit. It seems, when you read the report, that we got the — the — the most critical information after techniques had been applied. But the report doesn’t say that.

The press are being very kind to Cheney by refusing to point that fact out to people.

UPDATE:



Young Turks take on this subject.

Hat Tip to Think Progress.

Tags: Cheney, torture, war crimes, EIT