Maybe this has already been discussed to death, and I missed it. (If this is redundant I will delete.) Or maybe I'm totally off base - and in a world ruled by Bush-Cheney for 8 years I sometimes wonder if I'm the crazy one.
But why does no one confront Cheney, or even mention in comments about Cheney, that it is a logical fallacy that "X is true because there is no proof that X is false"? This means the non-occurrence of an event cannot be used as proof that actions taken prevented the event from occurring. Or, in other words, it is wrong to say because you tortured suspected terrorists and another terrorist attack did not occur on American soil while you tortured, torture keeps America safe.
The sole justification for using torture that they can provide is that it kept us safe. But the only non-refutable statement they can make is that we have not been attacked successfully again in the US. That is not enough.
I know for sure that all the reasons why torture is bad policy have been discussed over and over, so I won't go there. Instead, this is about why, by the rules of logic and common sense, the argument of a lack of another attack cannot be used as proof that torture (and the other policies of the Bush/Cheney administration) worked and should be challenged.
I was on a business trip to Canada on 9/11. I was in my Montreal area hotel room brushing my teeth as news reports came in of a plane hitting a WTC tower. That was my first and only overnight trip there. By Cheney's logic, I could just as easily claim that as long I do not spend another night in Quebec, America is safe.
This approach is consistent with the idea of a "War on Terror." That suggested Al-Qaeda and their ilk behave in the tradition of a nation that has declared war, i.e. regular assaults in a fairly predictable style, such as the London Blitz. Or that there was a battle front where our soldiers would face their soldiers and that front was on our borders. (Ironically that front has been created - in Iraq and Afghanistan.)
I don't claim to be even an armchair expert on Al-Qaeda but if you look at various timelines of their attacks, or attacks by related/inspired groups, (NPR, Wikipedia, BBC, Guardian) there is often a few months, if not years, between major attacks. And the attacks occur in different countries all around the world. And, as has been pointed out many times, their first attack on the WTC was in February 1993, but the next attack was not until September 2001, eight years and eight months later.
I think it would be acceptable to deduce from this information that the fact another attack had not occurred in the US does not conflict with their normal behavior, or demonstrate that the normal behavior has been altered or interrupted. It could be just as true that after such a successful attack, they moved on to completing plans for other attacks elsewhere. The pattern does not indicate a hurry to attack the enemy. They seem willing to wait and plan carefully. They also seem to give priority to Western targets in Muslim countries.
My thinking is that this also shows why the argument that we had to resort to torture out of desperate need is weak. The 24 scenario of an imminent threat seems to indicate a massive failure to gather intelligence on plots that have likely been in the planning stage for months if not years.
So it is their responsibility to provide examples of plots that were uncovered or blocked as a result of information given under torture. Yet, I can find no definite examples of this. Yes, a plot to fly planes into the U.S. Bank Tower/Library Tower in Los Angeles is often given as an example of one foiled by information divulged under torture. But trying to find details that confirm this has not been easy. Recent articles in Slate and Media Matters discuss why what is known about a possible plot does not match up with the period the torture was conducted. Certainly if there were any irrefutable examples, every GOP mouthpiece would be citing it over and over.
Or maybe Cheney is right because he knows something I will never know and torture gave us the information that has kept us safe. Though it didn't do much for London, Madrid, Bali, etc.