Keith Olbermann: Cheney’s speech false to fact and reason

MSNBC ^ | May 21, 2009 | Keith Olbermann

[EveningStar]

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment about Mr. Cheney's speech. Neurotic. Paranoid. False to fact and false to reason. Forever self-rationalizing. His inner rage at his own impotence and failure dripping from every word and as irrational, as separated from the real world, as dishonest, as insane, as any terrorist.

[EveningStar]

Olbermann is evil.

[exist]

Olbermann belongs in a secret CIA prison.

[Colonel_Flagg]

He obviously was in the situation room while Bush and Cheney kept us safe, right? So he’s in a position to know.

< /sarcasm>

Keith Olbermann is a menace.

[GBA]

"Neurotic. Paranoid. False to fact and false to reason. Forever self-rationalizing. His inner rage at his own impotence and failure dripping from every word and as irrational, as separated from the real world, as dishonest, as insane, as any terrorist."

I know he's not talking about Cheney, is Olbermann talking about himself? Sure sounds like it.

[chuck_the_tv_out]

It’s the power of BDS. Many people are (terminally) minded such that if they see someone go crazy about something, they assume they might have a valid cause.

Of course we then have people “on our side” telling us not to talk about 0’s place of birth, because they are either idiots or infiltrators.

[library user]

This guy Olbermann would have a little more credibility once he’s first learned how to give a woman an orgasm.

[lonestar]

Olbermann doesn’t recognize the truth when it hits him between the eyes!

[Tzimisce]

It’s cute that Olberman still thinks he matters. :)

[freekitty]

Why even listen to this guy. No one in the libtard press is remotely interested in the truth.

[popdonnelly]

I don’t know if he’s evil, but he’s certainly no friend of fact and reason himself. Cheney is far his superior in both those departments.

[Jagdgewehr]

Long-winded leftist sophistry. Nothing like manufacturing your own truth and passing it off as undeniable fact.

[Jeffrey_D.]

I agree with you. It is the power of BDS . . .

I just read the whole rant. This guy is totally deranged. Call in the white coats!

Keith, “Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go! . . . . . (unbelievable)

[ozzymandus]

Olbermann’s only “job” is to rail against all things Republican, conservative, and American. He’s nothing but an impotent (!) attack dog for the far left. He’s never told a single truth in his life. That’s why he’s failed at every job he’s had, until he was hired as a professional liar.

[Sudetenland]

I’m wondering who writes this guys stuff? He’s obviously not intelligent enough to do it himself. What a joke.

[GeronL]

Uberdork knows its the exact opposite. They don’t care. They think 1+1=3 or something

[GeronL]

but have the other 80,000 viewers commented?

[Still Thinking]

Olbermann talking about someone who can’t reason. I didn’t even bother to read past the excerpt.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

Olbermouth is your typical example of your worst case typical liberal men.

[Still Thinking]

This guy Olbermann would have a little more credibility once he’s first learned how to give a woman an orgasm.

I don't know. I'll bet he does OK on "tingly" Chrissie Matthews, who's kind of a quasi-female. Is that close enough?

[AnotherUnixGeek]

His inner rage at his own impotence and failure dripping from every word and as irrational, as separated from the real world, as dishonest, as insane, as any terrorist.

An awful lot of projection here by Olbermann, revealing far more about Olbermann's own inner demons than anything about Cheney's calm, measured speech. Also quite a bit of dishonesty. If he were given a choice between being put in Dick Cheney's absolute power or Khalid Sheik Muhammad's absolute power for one hour, Olbermann and everyone else knows he'd choose Cheney in a heartbeat.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

" It’s cute that Olberman still thinks he matters. :) "
The term that applies is : insolent.....
Also, someone who is so self confident of his or her's own self importance. ( Typical Liberal ) ....

[Russ]

Let’s try to go 30 days without mentioning Olbermann or what he has to say. Officially ban him from FR...

[Maelstorm]

There he goes. Can’t debate so he personally attacks. I’d like to see Cheney debate him.

[Jeff Chandler]

This entire controversy can be resolved with the full release of the documents. That is was Cheney has requested.

As long as Obama only releases select, politically expedient portions of the documents, the Democrats’ attacks are disingenuous.

[Dutch Boy]

Olberman even lied about Cheney requesting the documents and continued to do so even after Politico published the document request.

[pallis]

Can you imagine anyone in the 0media saying something like this about 0’s lying clap trap? Keith just gave 0 a Lewinsky.

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

The way the Left’s pundits are yelping about Chaney’s speech, the more I know he hit a bullseye.

[nathanbedford]

Rather than dismiss Mr. Olbermann because he has bizarre sexual proclivities, I thought it might be helpful if some conservatives address Mr. Olbermann's allegations rather than his sex habits. Let us stop acting like Maureen Dowd and start acting like conservatives. Accordingly, I have done a cut and paste job on Olbermann's rant in italics and invite Freepers to fill in the interstices below with their counter factual evidence:

1.even if our laws told you, you could not

2. It was in the language of the 2001 military authorization you force-fed the Congress that you could do it,

3.our international treaties told you, you could not.

4.the first-hand witnesses, the interrogators of these beasts, said the information preceded the torture and ended when it began.

5.the legal opinions were dictated by you and your cronies

6.the torture began before the legal opinions were even written

7.the program was detailed on the front page of the website of a defense department sub-contractor

8.you totally ignored terrorism for the first 20 percent of your first term and the worst attack on this nation in its history unfolded on your watch.

9.He still believes in "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."

10.He still assumes everyone we captured is guilty without charge or trial,

11.to prosecute law-breaking by government officials is "to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors."

12.there is documentary proof that those guards (Abu Ghraib) were acting on orders originating in the office of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.

13hijackers without passports targeting a building whose name Mr. Bush couldn't remember, clowns who thought they could destroy airports by dropping matches in fuel pipelines 30 miles away, men who planned to attack a military base dressed as Pizza delivery boys forgetting that every man there was armed, and today: the four would-be Synagogue bombers, one of whom turns out to keep bottles of urine in his apartment, and to be on schizophrenia medicine.

[Typical_Whitey]

I guess people like Olbermann will be blaming the next terror attack on America on the victims instead of on the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

[McBuff]

Hear! Hear!. . .let’s indeed stick with the issues rather than focus on Olbermann’s sexual proclivities. . .because its obvious that man hasn’t a d*ck anyway.

[highlander_UW]

Olbermann is the poster boy for the unhinged left. If he had to hold down a real job he'd be cleaning out the oil cooking vats at a McDonald's and on notice for a poor job at that.

[tentmaker]

He is indeed evil and the future of our nation may depend upon whether or not the public can see through him or swallow it whole. This is scary.

As a youth and young adult, I often marveled at how the German people could possibly have swallowed the Nazi propaganda that seduced them into believing Hitler was serving up their salvation.

This is the answer. This is how it happened.

[upcountryhorseman]

Why are these hate-filled posts allowed?

[Titus-Maximus]

Ben Affleck owns this guy....

A tendentious speech - mostly overwrought emotion and leftist cant, with vague accusations of law breaking that no one can point to in the code. Waterboarding is not torture under the UN definition - see Victoria Toensing’s piece for someone who actually knows something. It is not against the law in the US - they tried to pass that law and it never passed!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124243020964825531.html

As for Cheney’s responsibility for 9/11 - how about 8 years of Clinton where 7 billion dollars were stripped from the CIA budget and they had not recruited one agent in 5 years! From George Tenet’s own book where he was not proud of overseeing the dismantling of one of the greatest intelligence services of all time. It put America at incredible risk and so deep a wound that it could never be fixed in 6 months time anyway - American intelligence was greatly diminished under Clinton, indeed - he refused to meet with the CIA director throughout his entire two terms! Additionally Clinton watched the Khobar towers, the Cole, our embassies attacked, and Bin Laden handed to him and what did he do - he blew up an aspirin factory when the Lewinsky news got bad. What a waste! That this cable TV mouth with an audience of at least his cat, can talk for 60 minutes and never once mention these grotesque derelictions of duty by Bush and Cheney’s predecessor means the so called journalist is a fraud, a shill, a jive talking pimp who is not really interested in the truth, but frankly just partisan politics. A hack journalist who fancies himself the cable TV equivalent of Ed Murrow. In fact his partisanship and efforts to spike stories because of his leftist political bias has led to Americans dying - he can blame himself, for his lies and worthless professionalism, for 9/11, he bears responsibility as well.

Meanwhile Janet Reno did everything she could to separate the CIA and FBI which weakened us further and this unfortunately received little coverage.

At the end of the day a good lawyer or anybody with half a brain would shred this imp, but what must be most amazing to that pompous TV ass is to watch Obama tremble at the mere mention of Cheney - and move his speech to counter Cheney and to copy and preserve every single right Cheney claimed in defense of this nation - this time surrounded by his own pious rhetoric of “morality”, and cheerleaded by MSBNC and the likes of this loudmouth imbecile, but there is no real change. Obama has realized the truth and the danger and completely ignored his campaign promises.
What else is new!

[Titus-Maximus]

.

[Titus-Maximus]

By VICTORIA TOENSING

Sen. Patrick Leahy wants an independent commission to investigate them. Rep. John Conyers wants the Obama Justice Department to prosecute them. Liberal lawyers want to disbar them, and the media maligns them.

What did the Justice Department attorneys at George W. Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) — John Yoo and Jay Bybee — do to garner such scorn? They analyzed a 1994 criminal statute prohibiting torture when the CIA asked for legal guidance on interrogation techniques for a high-level al Qaeda detainee (Abu Zubaydah).

In the mid-1980s, when I supervised the legality of apprehending terrorists to stand trial, I relied on a decades-old Supreme Court standard: Our capture and treatment could not “shock the conscience” of the court. The OLC lawyers, however, were not asked what treatment was legal to preserve a prosecution. They were asked what treatment was legal for a detainee who they were told had knowledge of future attacks on Americans.

The 1994 law was passed pursuant to an international treaty, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment. The law’s definition of torture is circular. Torture under that law means “severe physical or mental pain or suffering,” which in turn means “prolonged mental harm,” which must be caused by one of four prohibited acts. The only relevant one to the CIA inquiry was threatening or inflicting “severe physical pain or suffering.” What is “prolonged mental suffering”? The term appears nowhere else in the U.S. Code.

Congress required, in order for there to be a violation of the law, that an interrogator specifically intend that the detainee suffer prolonged physical or mental suffering as a result of the prohibited conduct. Just knowing a person could be injured from the interrogation method is not a violation under Supreme Court rulings interpreting “specific intent” in other criminal statutes.

In the summer of 2002, the CIA outlined 10 interrogation methods that would be used only on Abu Zubaydah, who it told the lawyers was “one of the highest ranking members of” al Qaeda, serving as “Usama Bin Laden’s senior lieutenant.” According to the CIA, Zubaydah had “been involved in every major” al Qaeda terrorist operation including 9/11, and was “planning future terrorist attacks” against U.S. interests.

Most importantly, the lawyers were told that Zubaydah — who was well-versed in American interrogation techniques, having written al Qaeda’s manual on the subject — “displays no signs of willingness” to provide information and “has come to expect that no physical harm will be done to him.” When the usual interrogation methods were used, he had maintained his “unabated desire to kill Americans and Jews.”

The CIA and Department of Justice lawyers had two options: continue questioning Zubaydah by a process that had not worked or escalate the interrogation techniques in compliance with U.S. law. They chose the latter.

The Justice Department lawyers wrote two opinions totaling 54 pages. One went to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, the other to the CIA general counsel.

Both memos noted that the legislative history of the 1994 torture statute was “scant.” Neither house of Congress had hearings, debates or amendments, or provided clarification about terms such as “severe” or “prolonged mental harm.” There is no record of Rep. Jerrold Nadler — who now calls for impeachment and a criminal investigation of the lawyers — trying to make any act (e.g., waterboarding) illegal, or attempting to lessen the specific intent standard.

The Gonzales memo analyzed “torture” under American and international law. It noted that our courts, under a civil statute, have interpreted “severe” physical or mental pain or suffering to require extreme acts: The person had to be shot, beaten or raped, threatened with death or removal of extremities, or denied medical care. One federal court distinguished between torture and acts that were “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.” So have international courts. The European Court of Human Rights in the case of Ireland v. United Kingdom (1978) specifically found that wall standing (to produce muscle fatigue), hooding, and sleep and food deprivation were not torture.

The U.N. treaty defined torture as “severe pain and suffering.” The Justice Department witness for the Senate treaty hearings testified that “[t]orture is understood to be barbaric cruelty . . . the mere mention of which sends chills down one’s spine.” He gave examples of “the needle under the fingernail, the application of electrical shock to the genital area, the piercing of eyeballs. . . .” Mental torture was an act “designed to damage and destroy the human personality.”

The treaty had a specific provision stating that nothing, not even war, justifies torture. Congress removed that provision when drafting the 1994 law against torture, thereby permitting someone accused of violating the statute to invoke the long-established defense of necessity.

The memo to the CIA discussed 10 requested interrogation techniques and how each should be limited so as not to violate the statute. The lawyers warned that no procedure could be used that “interferes with the proper healing of Zubaydah’s wound,” which he incurred during capture. They observed that all the techniques, including waterboarding, were used on our military trainees, and that the CIA had conducted an “extensive inquiry” with experts and psychologists.

But now, safe in ivory towers eight years removed from 9/11, critics demand criminalization of the techniques and the prosecution or disbarment of the lawyers who advised the CIA. Contrary to columnist Frank Rich’s uninformed accusation in the New York Times that the lawyers “proposed using” the techniques, they did no such thing. They were asked to provide legal guidance on whether the CIA’s proposed methods violated the law.

Then there is Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, who declared that “waterboarding will almost certainly be deemed illegal if put under judicial scrutiny,” depending on which “of several possibly applicable legal standards” apply. Does he know the Senate rejected a bill in 2006 to make waterboarding illegal? That fact alone negates criminalization of the act. So quick to condemn, Mr. Robinson later replied to a TV interview question that he did not know how long sleep deprivation could go before it was “immoral.” It is “a nuance,” he said.

Yet the CIA asked those OLC lawyers to figure out exactly where that nuance stopped in the context of preventing another attack. There should be a rule that all persons proposing investigation, prosecution or disbarment must read the two memos and all underlying documents and then draft a dissenting analysis.

Ms. Toensing was chief counsel for the Senate Intelligence Committee and deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration.

[doug from upland]

Olbermann get a mention here and what Hitler would like to do to his testicles.

HITLER RANTS ABOUT PELOSI AND THE CIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar-goGpnc_M

Leave a comment for Nancy if you have a moment.

[JimRed]

Ten of the Olber-moron’s thirteen remaining viewers strongly agreed.

[Jeff Gordon]

Olbermann is sniveling little child. (My apologies to children).

[SteamShovel]

a Special Comment about Mr. Cheney's speech. Neurotic. Paranoid. False to fact and false to reason

Only an MSNBC LUNATIC could say this.

[gov_bean_ counter]

The guy quite simply just makes up sh!t as he goes along. Too much like listening to my children trying to get out of trouble when they were four years old.

[csense]

Someday this guy is going to have a nervous breakdown or psychotic episode, and it’s probably going to happen in public.

[Steel Wolf]

Someday this guy is going to have a nervous breakdown or psychotic episode, and it’s probably going to happen in public.

With the real angry types, I always wonder if it's just their shtick (a la Michael Savage). I mean, how could you be that angry that often, and not develop serious mental problems? Unless it's just an act. Even still, it must be draining.

In Olbie's case, I don't think it's an act at all. I'm all about being passionate about one's beliefs, but to go so far as to be consumed by rage 24/7 is a sad way to live. Principles notwithstanding, he's a sputtering, furious loon who is ever closer towards being carted away in a straightjacket.

[donaldo]

Olbermann = Vagina Envy.

[wardaddy]

it’s amazing to see a major news network that editorializes like Paul Krassner circa 1969 is the network head (who is it? Dan Schmuck Abrams?)

it’s incredible the radicalism pervasive and so blatant in network news

kids....the media was always left leaning but NEVER like this...not even close...

Brinkley, Huntley, Mudd, Severeid, Reasoner....no way...Cronkite was a lefty but nothing like Olbermann and maddow and Chrissy

how much worse will it get?

Welch woulda never put up with this like asshat Immelt does.

[csense]

LOL

You said it better than I could, friend. That pretty much sums up how I see it too. I mean, it's one thing to go off on a few ad hominems from time to time, but this guy is just consumed with rage. I guess this guy never got the message that comic satire is the best way to deal with your enemies in public. It's healthier for you, and it pisses them off even more...

[csense]

Even the liberals are starting to marginalize him, and when that happens, you know you’ve jumped more than a few tracks....