I expect to utter the quote in that headline quite a bit in the next four years, as the Obama administration draws praise ? or at least escapes criticism ? for taking steps similar to those that generated controversy under his predecessor.
Newsweek sets the stage this week, with a cover story that suggests our new president might follow in at least some of the footsteps of ? Dick Cheney!
After years of reading stories about the Bush administration?s evil ways, including implications of war crimes, we learn from Stuart Taylor Jr. and Evan Thomas that Bush?s direct predecessor (you know, the next Secretary of State?s husband) approved ?dozens of renditions? and at least one assassination plot. I?m shocked ? shocked!
Taylor and Thomas also downplay the downside of torture:
The issue of torture is more complicated than it seems. America brought untold shame on itself with the abuses at Abu Ghraib. It’s likely that the take-the-gloves-off attitude of Cheney and his allies filtered down through the ranks, until untrained prison guards with sadistic tendencies were making sport with electric shock. But no direct link has been reported. Waterboarding?simulating drowning by pouring water over the suspect’s mouth and nostrils?is a brutal interrogation method. But by some (disputed) accounts, it was CIA waterboarding that got Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to talk. It is a liberal shibboleth that torture doesn’t work?that suspects will say anything, including lies, to stop the pain. But the reality is perhaps less clear.
This paragraph is notable for its awful implication that Cheney?s ?attitude? led directly to Abu Ghraib. (Who says ?it?s likely? that attitude ?filtered down through the ranks?? Isn?t the source of that accusation a pretty important fact?) But that sort of sloppy, ersatz journalism is commonplace for Newsweek and its peers.
What interests me more are the asides that suggest a degree of nuance rarely contemplated in discussion of Bush administration policies. Torture is more complicated than it seems? Torture doesn?t work, except ?reality is perhaps less clear?? Hmm.
Taylor and Thomas never say, ?You know, that Cheney was right about some things.? But they occasionally come close:
[After 9/11] Cheney, especially, was contemptuous of congressional hand-wringers, and he (understandably, under the circumstances) felt the urge to move fast.
Imagine that parenthetical aside escaping the Newsweek editor?s delete key ? or the writers’ brains, for that matter ? prior to the election of a Democratic president. We can expect to see this type of change repeatedly in the coming weeks and months, any time Obama and his allies take steps that look surprisingly similar to those that have made our outgoing president an object of media scorn.
And if you don?t know why we can expect this change of course among the media, please let me introduce you to Jon Ham.
