Cheney Wrong Yet Again

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says former Vice President Dick Cheney's claims -- that classified CIA memos show enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding worked -- are wrong.

Levin, speaking at the Foreign Policy Association's annual dinner in New York on Wednesday, said an investigation by his committee into detainee abuse charges over the use of the techniques -- now deemed torture by the Obama administration -- "gives the lie to Mr. Cheney's claims."

The Michigan Democrat told the crowd that the two CIA documents that Cheney wants released "say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques."

"I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what is fact, and what is fiction," he added.

Justice Department documents released in April showed that Bush administration lawyers authorized the use of techniques such as sleep deprivation, slapping, stress positions and waterboarding, which produces the sensation of drowning.

Rummy's Bible Briefings

These cover sheets were the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence serving both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. In the days before the Iraq war, Shaffer’s staff had created humorous covers in an attempt to alleviate the stress of preparing for battle. Then, as the body counting began, Shaffer, a Christian, deemed the biblical passages more suitable. Several others in the Pentagon disagreed. At least one Muslim analyst in the building had been greatly offended; others privately worried that if these covers were leaked during a war conducted in an Islamic nation, the fallout—as one Pentagon staffer would later say—“would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

But the Pentagon’s top officials were apparently unconcerned about the effect such a disclosure might have on the conduct of the war or on Bush’s public standing. When colleagues complained to Shaffer that including a religious message with an intelligence briefing seemed inappropriate, Shaffer politely informed them that the practice would continue, because “my seniors”—JCS chairman Richard Myers, Rumsfeld, and the commander in chief himself—appreciated the cover pages.

But one government official was disturbed enough by these biblically seasoned sheets to hold on to copies, which I obtained recently while debriefing the past eight years with those who lived them inside the West Wing and the Pentagon. Over the past several months, the battle to define the Bush years has begun taking shape: As President Obama has rolled back his predecessor’s foreign and economic policies, Dick Cheney, Ari Fleischer, and former speechwriters Michael Gerson and Marc Thiessen have all taken to the airwaves or op-ed pages to cast the Bush years in a softer light. My conversations with more than a dozen Bush loyalists, including several former cabinet-level officials and senior military commanders, have revealed another element of this legacy-building moment: intense feelings of ill will toward Donald Rumsfeld. Though few of these individuals would speak for the record (knowing that their former boss, George W. Bush, would not approve of it), they believe that Rumsfeld’s actions epitomized the very traits—arrogance, stubbornness, obliviousness, ineptitude—that critics say drove the Bush presidency off the rails.

SLIDESHOW OF INTEL COVERS HERE

Full Cheney Confession

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura told the nation that Norm Coleman is a hypocrite who has lost the election for U.S. senator and should give up his fight against Al Franken for a second term.

In a wide-ranging interview Monday night on CNN with Larry King and in his trademark blunt style, Ventura also called former Vice President Dick Cheney a coward for avoiding service during the Vietnam War and made a pitch for himself to be appointed ambassador to Cuba.

Ventura railed against the military interrogation tactics under the Bush-Cheney administration, calling waterboarding torture.

"It's drowning," he said. "It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning." Ventura said he knows because he was subjected to waterboarding as part of his military training.

"I'll put it to you this way: You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."

Ventura also challenged Cheney for avoiding service during the Vietnam War with college deferments. "Clearly, he's a coward. He wouldn't go when it was his time to go."

As for Cheney's boss, Ventura called former President George W. Bush "the worst president of my lifetime. Barack Obama inherited something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy."

Ventura had one piece of advice for Obama: Appoint him ambassador to Cuba.

"I went there as a governor, I felt comfortable with the Cuban people, I met with Fidel Castro when I was there as governor," Ventura said, adding that U.S.-Cuba relations should be normalized.

"They love the American people, they just dislike our government," he said.

Full Cheney Panic

I don't know how else to interpret his obviously self-destructive grandstanding this weekend. But think of the long view for a moment. Here is a former vice-president, who enjoyed unprecedented power for eight long, long years. No veep ever wielded power like he did in the long history of American government. In the months after 9/11, he swept all Congressional resistance away, exerted total executive power, wielded a military and paramilitary apparatus far mightier than all its rivals combined and mightier than any power in history, tapped any phone he wanted, claimed the right to torture any suspect he wanted (and followed through with thousands, from Bagram to Abu Ghraib) and was able to print and borrow money with impunity to finance all of it without a worry in the world. But even after all that, he cannot tolerate a few months of someone else, duly elected, having a chance to govern the country with a decent interval of grace.

What character does this reveal? The same character that sees torture - torture - as a "no-brainer". The same man who believes that freezing naked prisoners to hypothermia or strapping them to a board for a 175th near-drowning or stringing them up in stress positions so long the shackles rust up is in line with America's constitutional history and custom. The same tyrannical temperament that cannot abide another reality existing which isn't hammered or tortured into the shape he wants and demands.

Worse: he launches verbal assault after assault on the men and women who succeeded him. He accuses them of risking the lives of Americans, of making America less safe, and openly brags that his violation of the Geneva Conventions worked. Not content with writing his memoirs and letting history judge, he flails around like some prize fish, flapping on the deck of the boat, opening and shutting his mouth as his career expires.

And as history slowly accepts that this man disgraced his office more profoundly than any before him, as it sinks in that this man did not merely make mistakes, as all flawed politicians do, but committed war crimes, with pre-meditation and elaborate subterfuge, he slowly realizes what's happening to him. He can feel it. And so he resists the way he always resists - by lashing out, attacking, smearing, snearing, and grabbing every inch of the limelight he can.

Those of us who want him to face real accountability should, of course, welcome all this. Cheney does not seem to understand that he is incriminating himself further with every interview, every time he adjusts his story, every time he moves from torture as a "no-brainer" to a "last resort", every time he assaults yet another person who knows too much about him and what he did.

But does Cheney really believe that in a battle for the judgment of the American people, and for history, he will win a brawl with Colin Powell, with a man who is actually on record early on warning of the dire consequences of weakening or abandoning the Geneva Conventions?

Cheney wants a war with him? Now? Judged in the theater of public opinion - outside the Hannity-Limbaugh-Coulter ghetto?

They really do want to commit suicide, don't they? Well, I'm not in a rush to stop them.

For some late-night hosts, the laughs come cheap

"Beautiful day in New York City," David Letterman mused on the "Late Show" recently. "Am I right about that? A gorgeous day. It was so nice today that AIG gave a bonus to Al Roker."

That joke, part of Letterman's March 17 monologue, wasn't penned by the late-night host or one of the dozen writers on his staff. It was written by Phil Johnson, a freelance writer and Web developer, sitting at home in Boston.

Johnson says he has gotten more than 160 of his jokes on the "Late Show With David Letterman" and, before that, "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."

The 39-year-old is part of an underground network of comedy writers who supply the late-night programs with a constant stream of material. If one of their jokes gets on the air, they get a check for $75 or $100. What they don't get is any credit or union pay.

That doesn't daunt Matt Little, an unemployed comedian who spends hours each day scouring news websites in his Brooklyn apartment, crafting one-liners that may never air. The 28-year-old got his joke-writing start while working as a page at the "Late Show," where he persuaded the head monologue writer to let him submit material.

Little still remembers what it felt like the first time Letterman used one of his jokes. The quip: "It was so hot out today that Rupert Murdoch bought Dairy Queen."

"I was in the balcony paging that day, and I had to run off in the corner where it was really dark and kind of jumped around, trying not to scream like a little girl," he recalled.

For each of the 15 or 20 jokes that he's gotten on the air, he's received a check for $75 from Worldwide Pants, Letterman's production company. In the memo line, it reads "one joke."

"You pour so much time into this," said Little, who also submits material for the "Weekend Update" segment of "Saturday Night Live." "And you don't find out until the show airs if you got a joke on or not. I like to say that it's like you're holding your lottery ticket in your hand, hoping that the words match up."