Cheney’s dark side - and ours

[Forkboy]

The more Dick Cheney defends torture, the more we Americans must end our tortured ambivalence. Either we are above using the same interrogation practices that police states use, or we are are not.

This past weekend, the former vice president said he knew about waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques used by CIA personnel on terror suspects and even defended officers who went beyond authorized methods. He said they were “absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States.’’

Going further, he said it “offends the hell out of me’’ that the Obama administration has decided to investigate prisoner abuse by the CIA. He called it an “outrageous political act’’ that will demoralize the intelligence community to the point where “nobody’s going to sign up for those kinds of missions.’’

It would be easy at this juncture to demonize Cheney, who was so wrong so often in his eight years in office, most notably about the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that he and President Bush used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That war has cost the lives of more than 4,300 American soldiers, with another 31,400 wounded, and about 100,000 documented deaths of Iraqi civilians, according to Iraqbodycount.org.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/09/01/cheneys_dark_side___and_ours/

Another good piece by Jackson.

[Winterblues]

1. There will be no tears from me when that man is six feet under.

I shed tears for the country I once was so proud of and that has been ravished by these monsters, but not for the monsters themselves..As they die off I will feel a little more brightness in the world.

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

2. Didn't Dick say

that he supported even the programs CIA says were illegal?

I'm sure he said that in response to one of Wallace's questions.

If he said that doesn't it implicate Cheney in a Crime, did he confess?