Cheney lied repeatedly in speech on closing Guantanamo, paper says
John Byrne
Raw Story
Friday, May 22, 2009
American newspapers don’t use the word “lied” as a matter of form — preferring the more innocuous “false statements,” which is supposed to be less biased. But a McClatchy newspaper article Friday says myriad elements of Cheney’s terrorism speech Thursday were tantamount to lies — positing that the former Vice President was guilty of “omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.”
Most significant, notes McClatchy’s Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, are comments Cheney made about how valuable intelligence that was collected during “harsh interrogations” actually was.
He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair , as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a “deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country.”
In a statement April 21 , however, Blair said the information “was valuable in some instances” but that “there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”
A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general’s investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any “specific imminent attacks,” according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.