Treason by any other name...

...Is still treason. And suborning treason is exactly what Dick Cheney is doing with his "stay behinds" in the Obama administration and various other agencies.

In an interview on "Fresh Air with Terri Gross" Seymour Hersch, veteran investigative reporter with the "New Yorker", Hirsch stated that Cheney left these "stay behinds" for his own purposes...

You leave people behind. It’s a stay behind that you can continue to contacts with, to do sabotage, whatever you want to do. Cheney’s left a stay behind. He’s got people in a lot of agencies that still tell him what’s going on. Particularly in defense, obviously. Also in the NSA, there’s still people that talk to him. He still knows what’s going on. Can he still control policy up to a point? Probably up to a point, a minor point. But he’s still there. He’s still a presence. - Seymour Hersch

Cheney is a private citizen now, his security clearances are null and void as he no longer has a "need to know". By encouraging his moles to report back to him he is suborning treason, and if the information is classified, he...and they...are engaging in espionage. I understand the penalties for this are quite severe.

Thus far, however, the Obama administration seems content to let the worst excesses of the Bush administration go unanswered for. Perhaps that will change with this new awareness of traitors in their midst.

Imagine that...

After years of being detained at GITMO, being subjected to water-boarding and other forms of torture...er, "harsh interrogation"...it turns out that Abu Zubaida provided no actionable intelligence. What was obtained, before he was tortured, I mean "harshly interrogated", were the names of Al Qaeda members and their associates, and many of those were found on the hard drive of his laptop. And, contrary to claims by the Bush administration, Zubaida was not Al Qaeda's "...number three leader..." He was simply a go-to guy for arranging transportation for the families of Al Qaeda functionaries. No "plots" were foiled by his torture and perhaps the only ones furthered were those of the Bush administration to keep America in a constant state of fear.

Like so much else involved in the Bush administration's "war on terror", exaggeration, misinformation and outright lies were the preferred tools of the administration in maintaining a level of fear in America conducive to whatever action they chose to pursue. From illegal domestic wiretapping to the suspension of habeas corpus...from claiming the authority to suspend the constitutional rights of American citizens to invading Iraq...the Bush administration ground the Constitution under its heel, using the "war on terror" as a convenient pretext for whatever action it chose to take to secure its grasp on power. We are only now beginning to realize the true scope of the Bush legacy...memos by John Yoo and now federal Judge Jay Bybee are but the tip of the iceberg.

Even more disappointing is the failure of the Obama administration to live up to its duties under US and international law. That being to prosecute those individuals responsible for providing legal cover for the administration's torture policies or those who authorized the use of torture on prisoners in US custody. It doesn't require a congressional "truth commission"...Just a special prosecutor with the staff and funding to follow the evidence wherever, and to whoever, it may lead. The platform of change President Obama ran on are beginning to ring hollow.


Sources:

Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots

Profile: Abu Zubaida

Secret Bush Administration Torture Memo Released Today In Response To ACLU Lawsuit

Top Interrogators Declare Torture Ineffective in Intelligence Gathering