During an interview on the HuffPoLive program on Thursday morning, radical-left reporter Glenn Greenwald slammed former vice president Dick Cheney for saying that the interrogation tactics used by George W. Bush's administration have “worked now for 13 years,” and “I'd do it again in a minute.”
Greenwald, who is best known for his connection with NSA secret-leaker Edward Snowden, grumbled that “Cheney is able to go on Meet the Press instead of where he should be -- which is in the dock at The Hague or in a federal prison.”
Host Alyona Minkovski opened the segment by stating: “Suddenly, we've been hearing so much especially from former Bush administration officials, especially Cheney, who said: 'Yes, we waterboarded, and I'm OK with it.'”
“He also called the torture report 'crap,' which was the executive summary of it even though he didn't read it,” she asserted before playing a clip from his appearance on last Sunday's edition of NBC's Sunday morning news and interview program, when Cheney stated:
It worked. It worked now for 13 years. We've avoided another mass casualty attack against the United States.
We did capture bin Laden. We did capture an awful lot of the senior guys of al Qaeda who were responsible for that attack on 9/11. I'd do it again in a minute.
Minkovski then asked: “Are you surprised at him saying that?”
“No, not at all,” Greenwald replied. “First of all, whether torture worked or not is completely irrelevant to the question, and nobody should be interested in that.”
“If the idea that it works is a reason or an excuse to do it, then we've officially lifted the taboo on torture,” he continued. “Everyone who tortures claims they do it for a good reason, and yet it's been banned under treaties and international law, including a treaty that Ronald Reagan signed -- and championed, actually -- on the grounds that torture is never, ever justifiable.”
The liberal reporter then used Cheney's freedom to bludgeon the current Democratic occupant of the White House:
“The reason why Dick Cheney is able to go on Meet The Press instead of being where he should be -- which is in the dock at The Hague or in a federal prison,” Greenwald stated, “is because president Obama and his administration made the decision not to prosecute any of the people who implemented this torture regime.”
He added that this choice was made “despite the fact that it was illegal and criminal, despite the fact that the U.S. imprisons more of our population than any other country in the world.”
Greenwald continued by stating:
When you send the signal, as the Obama administration did, that torture is not a crime that ought to be punished, it's just a policy dispute that you argue about on Sunday shows, of course it emboldens torturers like Dick Cheney to go around and say: “What I did was absolutely right.”
“I have no idea how people think that, given that we didn't punish anybody for it and given that large majorities of the population now believe in the virtue of torture, it will never happen again,” he noted.
“Of course it will happen again, and a big part of why is because we decided to shield torturers instead of prosecuting them,” Greenwald added.
As NewsBusters has previously reported, the liberal reporter isn't shy about sharing his extreme views.
While working at the Guardian newspaper in August of 2013, Greenwald defended his cooperation with Snowden because “journalism is not a crime, and it is not terrorism.”
In May of this year, the reporter charged that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton as being “banal, corrupted, drained of vibrancy and passion.”
As a guest on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher this past June, the agitated liberal journalist called “total bulls***” on fellow panelist Paul Rieckhoff, a veteran and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, for questioning Snowden’s true motives in fleeing to Russia.
Last August, he called the American media “racist,” “anti-Muslim” and “ethno-centric” “cowards” during another interview on HuffPoLive. In addition, he slammed Israel for its “savagery” against Palestinians and defended the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has been accused of supporting terrorism in the U.S.
Who knows what Greenwald's next target will be? It probably won't be ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) or other terrorist organizations in the Middle East, but given the opportunity to reveal more secrets from any government agency, you can bet he'd jump at the chance.
