WP: Cheney Fights for Detainee Policy

[Pirate Smile]

Cheney Fights for Detainee Policy
As Pressure Mounts to Limit Handling Of Terror Suspects, He Holds Hard-Line

By Dana Priest and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 7, 2005; Page A01

Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects, according to defense, state, intelligence and congressional officials.

Last winter, when Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, began pushing to have the full committee briefed on the CIA's interrogation practices, Cheney called him to the White House to urge that he drop the matter, said three U.S. officials.


Vice President Cheney has fought restrictions on handling of terrorism suspects, rules favored by other administration officials and senators. (By Stephen Morton -- Associated Press)

In recent months, Cheney has been the force against adding safeguards to the Defense Department's rules on treatment of military prisoners, putting him at odds with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon R. England. On a trip to Canada last month, Rice interrupted a packed itinerary to hold a secure video-teleconference with Cheney on detainee policy to make sure no decisions were made without her input.

Just last week, Cheney showed up at a Republican senatorial luncheon to lobby lawmakers for a CIA exemption to an amendment by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The exemption would cover the CIA's covert "black sites" in several Eastern European democracies and other countries where key al Qaeda captives are being kept.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/06/AR2005110601281.html

[mzmolly]

1. I'd love to send a gagged/hooded VP to one of his "exempt" prisons.

These people are repulsive.

[Canuckistanian]

2. I wish WP would stop being coy

It's torture that Cheney's trying to protect.

[SeveneightyWhoa]

6. My first thought.

The headline should read, "Cheney Fights for Torture Policy".

[Mira]

3. There are all those reasons we have for being against torture

such as:
It does not work
The information gained is useless and slanted
It puts our own soldiers in danger of being tortured
It gives us a terrible reputation in the eyes of the world

but few if any give the most compelling reason in my book:

We should not do it BECAUSE IT IS WRONG !

[Punkingal]

4. What an evil egomaniacal piece of crap he is....

I'm beginning to think I would rather see him frogmarched out of the White House than Rove.

[William Seger]

5. Impeach the evil SOB

Cheney is directly responsible for Abu Gharib and the other American gulags, in clear violation of US and international law. Impeach the evil fucker, then turn him over to the The Hague.