The lies of Liz Cheney.

The amount of lies Liz Cheney manages to pack into this one interview is rather startling. She appears to live on an almost fact free planet.

Lie #1

L. CHENEY: Well, I think that, if you look at the documents that were released, if you read through the documents, not just the ones my dad asked for, but the inspector general's report itself, you see without a doubt now -- it's now conclusive that enhanced interrogation led to intelligence that saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks.

Except it's not. As even Republicans now admit:

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.

And that's certainly not the opinion of the people who interviewed these men:

Mr. Cheney is right when he says detainees who were subject to torture and abuse gave up valuable information. But the men who did the questioning flatly dispute that it was duress that moved them to do so.

Deuce Martinez, the C.I.A. officer who interrogated Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, engineer of the 9/11 mass murders, said he used traditional interrogation methods, and not the infliction of pain and panic. And, in an article on the Times Op-Ed page, Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who oversaw the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, another high-ranking terrorist, denounced “the false claims” about harsh interrogations. Mr. Soufan said Mr. Zubaydah talked before he was subjected to waterboarding and other abuse. He also said that “using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions.”

Lie #2.

L. CHENEY: And frankly, what's he going to do in the future if he's faced with the threat of imminent attack, no longer having access to these techniques, having said he won't use them.

The implication here is that Obama is endangering the nation. The truth is that the Bush regime stopped using these techniques in 2004. Which means that for the whole of Bush and Cheney's second term this supposedly life saving device was kept in a cupboard.

Lawrence Wilkerson:

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

Lie #3.

L. CHENEY: And instead we are releasing terrorists, like Binyam Mohammed, who planned attacks against the United States. He's now been released and lives freely in London.

This is the most outrageous lie of all. Binyam Mohamed has never been found guilty of any crime relating to terrorism. And the notion that he "planned attacks against the United States" is based on a confession he gave after being tortured, torture which included slashing his penis with a blade.

It's on that basis that Liz Cheney announces that this man is a "terrorist"?

And that's before we get to the fact that even Rumsfeld has admitted that, "there was not an actual plan".

This man was held in US custody for four years, where he suffered outrageous torture - which British courts have proof of - but which they are unable to release because of American threats to stop sharing intelligence with the UK if the treatment meted out to Mohamed is ever made public. He, like hundreds of others, was held in US custody for years, tortured, then released without a single word of apology for the grave injustice which had been done to him.

He deserves an apology, he certainly doesn't deserve to be further besmirched by people like Cheney who seem to think they can call someone a "terrorist", even though no court has ever found them guilty of anything.

I don't know the libel laws in the United States, but had Cheney said that in this country she could be sued. If I was Binyam Mohamed's lawyer I would sue her in a second.

But we shouldn't be surprised that she lies so often. I imagine the acorn doesn't fall very far from the tree.

Tags: Liz Cheney, Binyam Mohamed, torture, Obama, war crimes