Christopher,

The motives of the ”shutter Gitmo” advocates vary enough not to be easily pigeon-holed.  For sure, a large block of the Left seeks to advance a transformed America, as you identify.  But, that’s not necessarily true of all of them, nor is it the case that calls for Gitmo closure should be casually dismissed by the Right.  It’d be helpful to hear a compelling argument from someone on this blog for the need to close Gitmo asap.

As to Fred Kaplan, Dick Cheney and the Left, the former Veep long ago emerged as one of those eternal boogeymen that fuels the juices of true blue members of the Left.  And, while Kaplan’s feckless attack lacked any meaningful detail (“Cheney . . . built a case on straw men, red herrings, and lies.”) – indeed, I can just as easily, and conclusorily, reply that Kaplan built his critique on straw men, red herrings and lies – that doesn’t mean Cheney is going to emerge as an effective spokesman for the Right.  In fact, far from it, if yesterday’s face-off was any indication.  PBHO is simply playing a different ball game when it comes to communication.

In the end, I suspect we’ll see Cheney effective at moving policy, but less effective at swaying the public on himself, the Bush Administration, or the Republican Party.

Just read this piece by Fred Kaplan over at Slate that purports to expose Dick Cheney’s ‘lying’ in his speech on torture yesterday as opposed to Obama, who “…spelled out his logic, backed up his talking points with facts, and put forth a policy grounded—at least in his view—not just in lofty ideals but also in hardheaded assessments of national security.”

But it strikes me that if the case for Cheney lying in the speech was so strong, why does Kaplan resort to writing:

In short, his speech was classic Dick Cheney, with all the familiar scowls and scorn intact. The Manichean worldview, which Cheney advanced and enforced while in office, was on full display.

So what if Cheney was scowling and scornful!  That doesn’t mean he was lying.  Kaplan and his ilk just can’t get beyond this obsessive need to caricature.  What does it mean to say the speech was ‘classic Dick Cheney?’  Certainly, it could mean different things to different people.  One wonders if Kaplan even listens to what the man has to say.

But speaking of lies, Kaplan produces a whopper…

And nobody is claiming that the subjects of interrogation were “victims,” much less “innocent.” To decry torture does not imply the slightest sympathy for the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Really?  Nobody thinks that?  What about Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times?  Does a writer for the paper of record count?  Because in this column, he’s pretty clear about what he thinks of the inmates at Gitmo:

…most of the inmates were probably innocent all along, but Pakistanis or Afghans turned them over to America in exchange for large cash rewards. The moment we offered $25,000 rewards for Al Qaeda supporters, any Arab in the region risked being kidnapped and turned over as a terrorism suspect…

…over time — and it’s painful to write this — I’ve found the inmates to be more credible than American officials.

When you take sentiments like Kristof’s and then add to it the fact that dozens of ACLU lawyers have been rushing to represent the worst of the worst at Gitmo, you can’t credibly say that nobody has ’slightest sympathy’ for KSM and his cohorts.  It’s just not true.  Otherwise, there would be no great outcry over the use of waterboarding.

Finally, Kaplan does his best imitation of Obama and paints with as broad a brush as possible, with no actual facts to back up his claims:

Nobody is claiming that Osama Bin Laden and his crew would go away if we treated prisoners more nicely. However, it is indisputable that the reports of torture, the photos from Abu Ghraib, and the legal limbo at Guantanamo have galvanized al-Qaida’s recruitment campaigns. Everyone acknowledges this, hardly just “the Left.” It’s why many Republicans lamented the news stories and the photographs—because they might help the enemy.

Is it indisputable that reports of torture have helped the enemy?  Where is the proof?  Does Kaplan really think that people are joining Al-Quaeda because America waterboarded KSM?  Why did they join Al-Quaeda in 1999, when we weren’t waterboarding people?  Note that Kaplan deftly inserts the Abu Ghraib incident to bolster his case, which is supposed to be about Gitmo, after all.

And, of course, now everyone acknowledges this according to Kaplan, just like nobody had sympathy for the detainees.  Kaplan is so busy talking about what everyone and nobody is doing that he forgets the point of his column, which was that Cheney was lying.

But he never actually proved that.  He just knows that Cheney was speaking, so it must be untrue.

Really, the only thing he proved was that opinions like Kaplan’s are indeed worthy of Cheney’s scowl and scorn.