As I have noted, the far-right in anti-Obama hunt for Red October had reached new lows when Dick Cheney's daughter Liz launched a slanderous campaign against government lawyers who had in the past defended detainees in US custody.
Adding to this blacklisting and targeting is Fox News ,who - despite the lynch mob forming around these lawyers - made their identities public.
But now, even well respected human rights and civil liberties organizations are being singled out and attacked in an arrogant, defensive, and bizarre column by Bill Kristol. As you read the snips below, keep in mind the following points:
- Kristol, along with Liz Cheney, are board members of Keeping America Safe - the very group that has launched attacks on the lawyers to begin with. So he is indeed defensive.
- The arrogance Kristol displays in an almost child-like tantrum, claiming he knows something we don't know, na na na na na.
- The very organizations that Kristol singles out - the ACLU and Human Rights Watch - helped expose detainee abuses which implicate Dick Cheney in serious crimes and raises questions about the true motivations of Liz Cheney and her group (which includes Kristol).
In addressing the closing of Gitmo question, here is what Bill Kristol writes:
Well, get ready for more shock and concern, ACLUers -- it’s going to happen. President Obama (aided by his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel), is coming to realize how foolish he’s been to delegate so much authority on war on terror matters to his hapless attorney general and the left-wingers working for him at the Justice Department. He is going to reverse course on the KSM trial -- as he has on preventive detention and on the release of photos of alleged abuse by U.S. servicemen, and as I suspect he ultimately will on closing Guantanamo.
Does anyone else find the above entirely bizarre in the level of arrogance and defensiveness?
Then he outright lies:
Speaking of those working at Justice: THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that another left-wing advocacy group, Human Rights Watch, is circulating a letter condemning what the letter describes as “a shameful series of attacks on attorneys in the Department of Justice who, in previous legal practice, either represented Guantanamo detainees or advocated for changes to detention policy.” The Human Rights Watch letter mischaracterizes the “attacks” as saying “that the Justice Department should not employ talented lawyers who have advocated on behalf of detainees.”
In fact, the main issues in the debate have been whether Congress and the public are simply entitled to know who these lawyers are, and the question of whether former pro bono lawyers for terrorists should be working on detainee policy for the Justice Department.
How very strange, since Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's group literally called these lawyers the "al -Qeada Seven" and openly questioned their loyalty to the United States, even suggesting that their values are closer to those of Osama bin Laden.
[more after the fold]
Moreover, the vast-left wing conspiracy that Kristol claims is "mischaracterizing" the "al Qeada Seven" label as slanderous and ugly (which it is), is in fact a vast right-wing conspiracy, including the likes of Kenneth Starr:
"The group that includes leading conservative lawyers and policy experts, former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and several senior officials of the last Bush administration is denouncing as “shameful” Republican attacks on lawyers who came to the Obama Justice Department after representing suspected terrorists.
Senate Republicans have demanded details of the lawyers' past work and Liz Cheney’s group “Keep America Safe” has questioned their “values." A drumbeat of Republican criticism forced the Justice Department reluctantly to identify seven of them last week. But the harshness of the criticism – Keep America Safe labeled a group of them the “Al Qaeda Seven” — has provoked a backlash from across the legal establishment.
“We consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications,” wrote the 19 lawyers whose names were attached to the statement as of early Monday.
The statement cited John Adams’s defense of British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre to argue that “zealous representation of unpopular clients” is an important American tradition."
The real question is why really are Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, and Gitmo lawyers the target of Dick Cheney and his boot-marchers?
The answer is simple. Dick Cheney has admitted to violating both domestic and international law. His legacy is firmly tied to war crimes, crimes against humanity, violations of the Geneva conventions, torture, kidnapping, extraordinary rendition, etc. There is no turning back to un-say what has been said. The only strategy left is to target those who are witness to these crimes directly.
The Coward that is Dick Cheney
In fact, had any of these crimes been committed and openly admitted to by a government official of any other country, questions surrounding waterboarding techniques and such would have been moot and the perpetrators would have long ago been summoned to the Hague.
This latest smear against "daddy's enemies" by Liz Cheney and others is an act of desperation to defend a man who is not only criminal, but cowardly. So much of a coward is Dick Cheney, that his little darling daughter is out defending him and using tactics as ugly as her father's character.
It is to our everlasting shame that we - the United States -have failed our traditions by not prosecuting our own criminals and war profiteers, leaving the world in the untenable position of somehow upholding international law without openly attacking "the greatest" nation in the world.
A man who was sure of the moral and legal strength of his position would not send foot-soldiers out to smear his critics. He would instead allow himself to be judged in the two spheres where the argument is taking place: the moral sphere and the legal sphere.
Keeping America Safe - and its various supporters - are really the Dick Cheney protection cabal, which is employing tactics straight out of the House Committee on Un-American Activities' playbook-- hardly the actions of an honorable man, certain of his moral and legal position.
