# Is Dick Cheney right? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 21, 2009, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833 "2009-04-21T13:09:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/101 "2009-04-21T19:25:17Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > No one has answered the basic question. by releasing the torture techniques details without also releasing any success stories, is an unbalanced or unfair inference created? Why or why not? On what basis do you think there \*were \*any “success stories”? :dubious: Don’t you think Cheney would have told us about them, crowing with pride, while he was taking far more heat than he is now - _if there actually were some?_ So what is \*your \*basis for thinking that the presumption that he’s not telling the truth could be unfair or unbalanced? ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/102 "2009-04-21T19:40:20Z")
> [@Sinaijon](#): > > Like torture, Civilian causalities are often a horrible part of war, … This is a disgusting sentiment, and your attempt to paint an equivalency between deliberate torture and casualties due to missile strikes is not defensible. I mean, we can’t simply say “Whoops - we really tried not to torture people, and we made every effort not to waterboard a bunch of suspects, but hey, accidents happen. The wet towels just slipped out of my hand and landed all over the guys face. We mistakenly piled naked prisoners up into a pyramid by accident.” ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/103 "2009-04-21T19:47:48Z")
[Source: Despite Claim, Cheney Didn’t Really Ask CIA To Release Torture Intelligence](http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/source-despite-claim-cheney-didnt-really-ask-cia-to-release-torture-intelligence/) > [@](#): > > Did Dick Cheney really “formally” ask the CIA to release reams of intelligence allegedly showing that the torture program worked, as Cheney claimed last night on Fox News? > > An intelligence source familiar with the situation says the answer is No. > > “The agency has received no request from the former Vice President to release this information,” the source told me a few moments ago. If Cheney’s lying about this, a reasonable person might conclude that that he might not be truthful in the rest of what he said either. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/104 "2009-04-21T20:02:28Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > If Cheney’s lying about this, a reasonable person might conclude that that he might not be truthful in the rest of what he said either. The hell you say. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/105 "2009-04-21T20:06:19Z")
The hell, I DO! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/106 "2009-04-21T20:08:44Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > On what basis do you think there \*were \*any “success stories”? :dubious: Don’t you think Cheney would have told us about them, crowing with pride, while he was taking far more heat than he is now - _if there actually were some?_ And similarly, if there was some slamdunk evidence of this, don’t you think they would’ve rushed such a case to trial so they could make grand political theater out of how effective torture works? Or is it just possible that these methods don’t actually hold up to scrutiny in the eye of the law? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/107 "2009-04-21T20:09:13Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > I would find it refreshing if the conservatives who defend torture would admit that “ends justify the means” is the real argument in favor of torture instead of pretending that what happened wasn’t torture. That would at least be an honest debate. And I agree that one piece of that debate involves asking how effective torture was. > > But I disagree that this means we ought to declassify memos on that subject. > > First, given the political circumstances and the actors involved, I see no reason to believe any such memos would be accurate. How do you trust evidence from the people who deliberately destroyed other evidence they had on the topic? > > Second, if the memos are true, then this is precisely the kind of information that should remain secret. There’s no point in keeping secret the legal justification for techniques that we don’t use anymore and which were public anyway. But there absolutely is an interest in not revealing what we learned about terrorist operations and when we learned it. > > Third, the information on effectiveness is largely irrelevant to the political debate over torture. Our elected officials have made the decision that we aren’t going to torture _even if it prevents us from getting valuable information_. If people disagree with that decision–which assumes _arguendo_ that we’re foregoing important intelligence–they are free to vote for different leaders. > > Fourth, to the extent the information is relevant to torture policy, so is a lot of other information we don’t have. It isn’t actually leveling the playing field–it is a prejudicial stacking of the deck. We don’t know exactly how many people died under coercive interrogation. We know there are at least a handful, and probably more. We don’t know the effectiveness of other interrogation techniques against which to compare torture. We don’t know the exact costs of torture in terms of terrorist recruitment, etc. I could go on. It is fantasy to think that the one missing piece in the “ends-means” debate is the efficacy of torture. It isn’t. And we cannot release the rest of the information either because we don’t have it or because it would be too damaging. THIS would be an excellent example of analyzing the question and presenting a conclusion based on that analysis. On behalf on Reasoned Debate, **Richard Parker** , I thank you. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/108 "2009-04-21T20:16:04Z")
From Andrew Sullivan today: > [@](#): > > A reader makes an excellent point: > > > [@](#): > > > > So here’s a question for the torture defenders: > > > > Let’s assume that these methods are (1) useful (2) safe when performed under the OLC guidelines (3) necessary to keep as options for the future > > > > If so, how could tapes of successful interrogations (or even some which were not successful) not be the single most valuable training tool available to future generations of interrogators? How could they not have any “intelligence value” as a training tool? > > So why were they destroyed? We know why, of course. They shock the conscience and prove that the United States is a torturing nation. Without them, the lies, increasingly threadbare, can nonetheless continue. With the tapes viewable, as with the photos at Abu Ghraib, the war crimes trial begins. And Bush and Cheney go into the dock first. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/109 "2009-04-21T20:36:08Z")
So far, my best guess is Cheney is bluffing. First clue? He wants the memos for his “memoirs”. (Which will likely do for mendacity what a thermonuclear bomb does for “hot”.) Note, he’s not taking part in the unseemly debate swirling about, he has more lofty conerns. But by specifying (actually, by _not_ specifying…) which documents he refers to, he invites us to believe that he is personally aware of their existence. And if his request is refused, he is left standing, batting big brown innocent eyes, denied the evidence that would prove his case. And note the venue: Sean Hannity, who not only can be expected to throw him Nerf balls, but to throw like a girl. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/110 "2009-04-21T20:41:50Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > So far, my best guess is Cheney is bluffing. Mine is that he’s trying to dissuade Obama, via the press and a public opinion that includes a large helping of its own enablers’ guilt, from having Holder open a formal investigation of him and Yoo, Bybee, Gonzales, et al. The results can only be severely negative for them in all aspects, but if the thing gets underway anyway, there’ll be no stopping it. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/111 "2009-04-21T20:45:28Z")
In addition to the whole question of the morality of torture itself (which I see no need to address further), there’s a deep issue of intellectual honesty here. Yeah, some of the victims probably did say some things that were true, and most of them probably didn’t. But it’s not even a matter of finding the gems of truth hidden in amongst the mounds of “bad” information. We don’t even have contaminated information here: We actually have _no information at all_. To elaborate: Suppose I capture 100 prisoners, all of them innocent. I ask all of them for some piece of information, with some incentive for them to answer (not even necessarily torture: I could offer rewards for the talkers, for instance). Let’s say, for instance, that I ask every one of them for the name of the city in which the chief of Al Qaeda’s operations in Iraq is hiding. None of them actually knows, since none of them are actually involved with AQ, so they all just name an Iraqi city at random. Clearly, I don’t have any information, here, since the only place I could have gotten it from is from the prisoners, and none of them had any information, either. But now, suppose that a week later, the troops on the ground manage to actually capture that leader I was asking about in some city or another. Just by random chance, it’s likely that a few of my interrogees named that city. So now, I can selectively declassify just those interviews, and show the nation two or three different prisoners saying that so-and-so is hiding in such-and-such a city, just where we found him. Absent any other information, it now looks like my interrogation method (whatever it was) yielded useful information, when in fact it yielded not even low-quality information, but none at all. And the only way to make that evident would be to release all of the data: Not just the two or three that guessed right, but the 97 or 98 who guessed wrong. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/112 "2009-04-21T20:49:40Z")
> [@42fish](#): > > Given that they recently felt the need to consult with Obama to authorize deadly force against known jack-boot thug pirates, I’m guessing ‘Yes’ would be the answer to this one. The reason that the president needed to OK the missile strikes is that they were launched against sites in our ostensible ally, Pakistan. That requires top authority. Strikes are carried out within Afghanistan that do not require presidential approval. My guess is that to the extent the president was included in the loop for the piracy event, it had more to do with the news exposure and the fact that it occurred on the high seas. (At one point, the _Bainbridge_ was towing the lifeboat within 8 miles of the coast and I doubt that Somalia adheres to a 3 mile limit when 12 and 200 mile limits are the norm.) ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/113 "2009-04-21T20:53:39Z")
Worse, Somalia doesn’t even seem to have an actual government. **Chronos** , in your scenario, we’re actually worse off than if we had no information. If we place any credibility in anything these guys are blurting out to make the pain stop, we divert resources from following credible information to hunt all those wild geese. Further, the fact of granting credibility to such information tends to reduce the credibility ascribed to the good stuff, eventually making it all appear to be just noise. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/114 "2009-04-21T21:01:53Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > See, even here I think you don’t directly answer the question. If I may infer from your post what I think your answer is, it would be: > > No, we should not release the information gained, because there’s no way to judge whether particular pieces that were valuable could have been obtained without torture, so classifying a particular nugget of info as a “torture success” is simply not possible. > > Is that correct? That would be my main point, yes. Beyond that, however, we have the fact that the previous administration got lawyers to rationalize torture. I do think those opinions should be exposed and debated publicly so that no future administration can dig them up, classify them, then use them to excuse future tortures. For that to happen we do need to know the actual opinions expressed, but we do not need to know whether they met some vague standard of success. (We really do not even need to know that they actually led to torture for the purpose of debating the quality of their legal assertions.) ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/115 "2009-04-21T21:11:44Z")
What exactly is a “formal request”, anyway? Is it somehow more significant than an “informal request”? [http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/source-despite-claim-cheney-didnt-really-ask-cia-to-release-torture-intelligence/](http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/source-despite-claim-cheney-didnt-really-ask-cia-to-release-torture-intelligence/) According to this fellow, Greg Sargent, > [@](#): > > …“The agency has received no request from the former Vice President to release this information,” the source told me a few moments ago… [http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/cheney-spox-refuses-to-explain-his-formal-request-for-cia-torture-intel/](http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/cheney-spox-refuses-to-explain-his-formal-request-for-cia-torture-intel/) Further, from the same Greg Sargent… > [@](#): > > …I just reached a spokesperson for former Veep Dick Cheney, and she categorically refused to explain what Cheney meant when he claimed on Fox News last night that he had “formally asked” the CIA to release intelligence allegedly proving that torture works… > > …I told the spokesperson about the intelligence source’s denial, and asked how procedurally this formal request had been made. The reply: “We have no comment.”… ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/116 "2009-04-21T21:17:38Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > That would be my main point, yes. Beyond that, however, we have the fact that the previous administration got lawyers to rationalize torture. I do think those opinions should be exposed and debated publicly so that no future administration can dig them up, classify them, then use them to excuse future tortures. For that to happen we do need to know the actual opinions expressed, but we do not need to know whether they met some vague standard of success. (We really do not even need to know that they actually led to torture for the purpose of debating the quality of their legal assertions.) Well… maybe. By that I mean that if the techniques involved are found to be clearly against the law, then you’re right: the quality of their legal assertions is not changed by what revelations ensued. But if the techniques are found to be legal, then the debate turns to whether those techniques are ethical, moral, wise, or useful. It seems to me that information about how successful they are might be relevent in any debate along those lines. And now that I think about it, suppose the debate is framed as: _should_ those illegal techniques be explicitly made legal? That is, should the US enshrine torture in the law? It seems to me that the usefulness of the technique is relevant for that debate, too. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/117 "2009-04-21T21:20:46Z")
Perhaps it’s a “my cheque is in the mail” situation. Mr Cheney wrote out a nice letter to the CIA, put some stamps on it, and mailed it to them, but freedom-hating Commie Muslim stooges working for the Post Office intercepted his letter, burned it, and forwarded the ashes to Al Qaeda headquarters as a memento. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/118 "2009-04-21T21:21:54Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > By that I mean that if the techniques involved are found to be clearly against the law What makes you think that isn’t clear already? Come on now. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/119 "2009-04-21T22:17:10Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > That’s not the question. Obviously, if they don’t exist, they cannot be released. But that does not mean Cheney would not ask for them to be released anyway, because that puts the Obama administration in the impossible position of proving a negative. In other words, just because Cheny asked for them to be released, is no evidence that the memos even exist. > [@](#): > > If they do exist, should they be released? Yes, but I am not sure what it would prove. Certainly not that torture achieves ends that less rigorous interrogation cannot. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833/120 "2009-04-21T22:20:32Z")
Update: It has been reported (if anyone cares) that Cheney did, in fact, make a request to the National Archives to request declassification from whomsoever it may concern. So, never mind. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dick-cheney-right/493833.md?page=7)