Speaking to an audience in Michigan, Bush asserted that the information obtained in enhanced interrogations saved American lives. He avoided criticizing Obama for his interrogation policy changes.
From the CNN article:
“The former president earned a noisy standing ovation when asked what he wants his legacy to be.
“‘Well, I hope it is this: The man showed up with a set of principles, and he was unwilling to sacrifice his soul for the sake of popularity,’ he said.”
iggy donnelly
PrairiePopulistsAndProgressives.net 
Terrorists, having been torturfied so we now know their evil intent, should be happiated they freely gave us such important information.
Dubya has a soul? Does that trump the lack of a brain?
I hear good comedians are paid well. But that probably leaves bush the lesser out since he hasn’t ever been good.
What I find interesting is the fact that Bush will not openly criticize Obama.
Of course Bush will try to defend his use of torture because he is still saying it was legal and he was not breaking any laws. Of course, we all know the Justice Dept simply wrote memos calling torture legal.
Where were the tea baggers protesting Bush when he defended his TARP bailouts?
If he was serious about doing all he could to keep us safe after 9/11 – then why didn’t he follow through with his promise to capture Bin Laden?
As for his legacy, the only thing the man can say is that he kept his principles without regard to popularity. After all, this man left office with one of the lowest approval ratings. As for his principles, a person can have strong principles and still be wrong.
But I still would love to know what Bush and Obama have talked about in these past few months.
Lets not forget the disgrace that was Hurricane Katrina.
They were teabagging Bush. 🙂
“…enhanced interrogations saved American lives.”
When will someone ask W. or Cheney to prove this statement. If they won’t then we need to ask them to “stand the floor up!”
😉 I don’t think there will come a time that doesn’t bring a chuckle.
Cheney has stated he has offered numerous times to testify about the torture program. But when pressed if he will testify under oath, he says only under certain circumstances – which means – NO.
I suspect even if there was an investigation, Cheney and Bush would both slither through it and their cheerleaders would make a big ruckus to distract from the truth.
The Plum Line
Greg Sargent’s blog
Levin: CIA Torture Documents Cheney Wants Don’t Prove Squat
There’s some important news about Dick Cheney and torture in a speech that Senator Carl Levin gave before the Foreign Policy Administration this week.
Specifically: Levin confirmed that he’d seen the classified CIA documents that Cheney has been asking the CIA to declassify and release — and said that they don’t prove Cheney’s claim that torture worked by any stretch.
Levin’s comments are highly newsworthy because they give us the most detailed picture yet of what’s in the documents Cheney wants. You can watch Levin’s speech right here at TPM. This is what Levin said about the documents:
Mr. Cheney has also claimed that the release of classified documents would prove his view that the techniques worked. But those classified documents say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of the abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified so that people can judge for themselves what is fact and what is fiction.
If this is true, it’s big. A Senator who has seen the documents Cheney claims will prove that torture saved lives says that those docs contain absolutely nothing about whether the torture techniques were actually responsible for yielding any valuable intelligence.
Networks such as MSNBC have given literally hours of airtime to Cheney and his daughter Liz to claim endlessly that these docs will prove Cheney’s torture assertions. These claims have gone almost entirely unchallenged, due to the classified nature of the documents. You’d think that a contrary claim from a well-respected Senator who has also seen the docs would merit a few passing mentions, too.
—–
I found this interesting reading on the Huffington Post blog. Thought others here would like to read it.
It will be interesting to see if these memos are ever declassified. Like Levin said, let people judge for themselves what is fact and what is fiction.
Very interesting! Thanks for that find.
Hurry! Dangle another bright and shiny object in front of the Republicans! They don’t know where to look, what to think… Puts me in mind of this expression — I must hurry: For there they go, and I am their leader.
“George W. Bush was rarely heard from during his final months in office. Hideously unpopular, and never personally interested in policy matters, he did his best to stay out of the limelight. Even as his administration took repeated, drastic policy measures—nationalizing AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, requesting $700 billion in TARP funds, etc.—to deal with the unraveling of the global financial system, he lurked in the bankground and left the sales job up to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. But now Bush is back.
Though Obama won the election, the effort to tar McCain with the Bush brush didn’t work very well. In the final Newsweek poll before the election, 50 percent viewed McCain favorably and 44 percent unfavorably and other polls were similar. Voters, in other words, liked McCain; they just liked Obama better. Meanwhile, everyone hated George W. Bush. Even Republicans. Throughout the presidential primary, a varied cast of characters competed to claim for themselves the mantle of Reagan; absolutely nobody wanted to say they were running as Bush’s successor.
But with Bush emerging to public view, it’s becoming clear that over the course of the four month-long Obama administration, the GOP has turned back around and covertly re-embraced the Bush legacy.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-29/bush-comes-out-of-hiding/?cid=hp:featureline
Principles?
Soul?
Delusional!
Have a listen to what General Petraeus has to say about torture. Wonder how those who favor torture will spin this one!?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/video/item/petraeus-talks-geneva-convention
I thought General Patraeus words (see video link above) were strong. But the words Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, used are blunt.
— snip —
“But then last week, a voice from the recent past re-emerged, claiming that America can do what we please, preaching unilateralism again, and embracing the arrogance that for too many years alienated our friends and set back efforts to achieve common goals. Former Vice President Cheney’s world view, which so dominated the Bush years and which so dishonored our nation, gained a little traction last week—enough to persuade me to address it head-on here tonight.
I do so as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which recently completed an 18-month investigation into the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody and produced a 200-page bipartisan report which gives the lie to Mr. Cheney’s claims. I do so because if the abusive interrogation techniques that he champions—the face of which were the pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib—if they are once more seen as representative of America, our security will be severely set back.
When former Vice President Cheney said last week that what happened at Abu Ghraib was the work of “a few sadistic prison guards” acting on their own, he bore false witness. And when he said last week there was no link between the techniques used at Abu Ghraib and those approved for use in the CIA’s secret prisons, he again strayed from the truth. The seeds of Abu Ghraib’s rotten fruit were sown by civilians at the highest levels of our government.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-06-02/a-senator-calls-out-cheneys-lies/full/