On Friday afternoon, President Obama said that the heavy-handed interrogation techniques used on al-Qaeda detainees, such as waterboarding, amounted to what “any fair-minded person would believe were torture.” When I heard that, I wondered how long it would take for a right-winger to come completely unglued about it. Well, we didn’t have to wait long. Just hours after Obama made those remarks, the daughter of one of the men responsible for this disgraceful episode in our history actually said–with a straight face–that the men who used these methods were heroes and patriots.
Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney’s elder daughter and a State Department official for most of the time from 2002 to 2007, stopped by Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” to talk about Obama’s comments. She told guest host Monica Crowley that Obama was an “utter disgrace.” To Cheney’s mind, rather than focus on the crises at the border, he was more concerned about “targeting and going after patriots, heroes–CIA officers who kept us safe after 9-11.” She flatly said that Obama was “slandering” the agents who engaged in this, much as he did when he visited Egypt in 2009. This actually has to be seen to be believed–watch it here.
When I first saw this on Alan Colmes’ blog, I wanted to scream. After all, any fair-minded person would consider waterboarding, hypothermia, and the other enhanced interrogation methods used at? the other black sites to be torture. Almost as breathtaking as Cheney’s comments is Crowley’s reaction. Or rather, lack thereof–she didn’t even try to press Cheney on it. Where has this country gone when anyone can say that someone who uses this is a hero and not get called out for it?
If the people who did this are heroes, we probably owe a whopper of an apology to Melvin Morse, a former pediatrician from Delaware who was arrested for waterboarding his 11-year-old stepdaughter in 2012. A jury needed only six hours to convict him earlier this spring, and he is now serving three to five years in prison. I wonder if Cheney considers Morse to be a hero. And if she does, is she willing to say this to his stepdaughter’s face, woman to woman?
Most of us have come to expect this sort of bilge from Fox News. After all, it’s a journalism organization in name only. It doesn’t make it any less nauseating, though. After all, if a significant sector of this country actually thinks that the people who engaged in this behavior are heroes, there is something fundamentally wrong. Almost as unnerving is that Cheney spent much of 2013 mounting a primary challenge for Mike Enzi’s Senate seat–one she would have almost certainly won had she ousted Enzi in the primary, since Wyoming is redder than an overripe cherry. Cheney was probably voicing what much of the GOP base thinks about the waterboarding issue. Still, the prospect that someone who is on record as saying those who did these despicable things are heroes could actually have made it to the Senate is nauseating.
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Darrell Lucus is a radical lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
