Uncheneyed, Unhinged

As I wrote on facebook last night:
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It wouldn't surprise me to learn that there are plenty of people WITHIN the Agency who wish that Dick Cheney would shut his yap!
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The more people say defending the torture, the more people who want prosecutions are going to motivated to push for them and beleive in the justice of their position.
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Transparent lies do nothing to help the cause.

Good to see Maureen Down coming in from the cold. Must say I am surprised. I have often wondered at the Three Cheneys act: Mum, Dad and the Kid from State.

There is a destructive nexus between those like Limbaugh and Hannity, etc., who say absurd, reactionary things because that is their market niche, and those like Cheney who say absurd and reactionary things because they have convinced themselves they are correct.

It's been quite a while since MoDo delivered a great column but she did today.

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In all of his career as a public servant, has any anything Dick Cheney has been responsible for not ended in failure or disaster?
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Answering that question could be an interesting exploration of the concept of 'failing upward'.

Dowd has done more to hurt journalism in this country than anyone I can think of.

PNNTO: I agree; which is why I am surprised. I read her today after having stopped reading her column some 18 months ago. And I read her because Joe provided the link: was curious.

Joe,please ask MoDo and yourself were was the outrage in 2002 thru 2007 when these things were happening.

This debate is getting prety silly.
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President Bush said "we don't torture." President Bush made sure that military personnel caught on film practicing torture had their day in court.
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There were investigations of these military personnel and their leaders (civilian and military) were called to account before congress. None of this was perfect and it was a pretty thing to watch, of course some people got away who should have paid more of a price. But that's the way our system works in a way. The country was able to move on a little bit under the belief that we were not going to allow our people to do this sort of thing.
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Now that the water boarding has taken center stage we all of a sudden don't know if water boarding is torture. However, if you notice Cheney is now saying it does not really matter if water boarding is torture because it worked.
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We are allowing one man and his daughter to focus on water boarding as if that were the only crime that occurred here. This man and his daughter have a platform to pretty sell the entire country on a daily basis the idea that there is some justification for not only our highest government officials engaging in, condoning and covering up criminal behavior, but that we should not investigate their conduct and no one should be held accountable for it. And this is to our benefit and not Cheney's. He only cares about keeping us safe. That's his one and only motive.

Journalism has been hurt by it's own actions. Jim Lehrer and David Gregory do not believe that it is a reporter's responsibility to point out errors in statements made by an interviewee.
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Meanwhile, those loathsome news aggregation websites provide links to articles that provide confirmation that a lie has been told. The websites are much less polite, but far more truthful than MSM. The press was amazed that a child was able to ask Condoleeza Rice follow-up questions. The press was truly unaware of how foolish the child made MSM appear.
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No one who is going to get a Cheney interview will ask the piercing questions that even a child would pose. Cheney realizes that he is safe to rant.

Joe-Do you still think after this daily assault on our intelligence by Cheney that there should be no investigating? That an investigation is too much for Obama and the country to handle? I would asked with Cheney out there every day telling one single lopsided story is this going to make the story go away, put the country at ease and allow the President and Congress to get to work?
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Cheney is telling us with a few memos he can demostrate how the country was saved from horrific attacks. Why not have an investigate and allow him to do just that?

Maddow had a terrific segment on this topic last night, with Col. Wilkerson as guest:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Well, that embed didn't work. Here's the link to the Maddow segment: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30711836

Americans hate dick Cheney. That he has become the new face of the GOP is solidifying the Dem stranglehold on Washington for years to come.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Cheney is not going to shut up Joe. You can't make him and as long as he has a platform within the media he is going to keep this festering.
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How long is this supposed to go on? Where does it all end? Is the goal to have Obama say America supports torture and we recommend it to all our friends because it just works? Maybe the goal is to have torture 2.0. Beyond water boarding. Super inhanced interrogation. How to kill your detained under the colour of law and justify it to the world because other countries are so stupid.

Gunny, Rachel echos your point. Cheney's omnipresence will likely insure hearings and more, like the one going on this morning in the Senate: “What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration.”
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I will be thrilled when the media buzz shifts from "did torture work and keep us safe" to the correct one "OMG, they tortured people to get false confessions to support their case for war in Iraq."

Via Josh:
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Dick Cheney's daughter Liz Cheney asked if she could stay on longer on MSNBC this morning to ambush Eugene Robinson about torture.
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One thing I can't help mentioning. I know others have ridiculed this nonsense. But I truly cannot believe that Liz Cheney keeps going on the air to say that waterboarding cannot, by definition, be torture since we do it to our own people to prepare them for the experience of being tortured. Setting aside the elementary point that we're doing it to prepare for them for the experience of being tortured (which suggests it is torture) is it not the most obvious thing in the world that being waterboarded by your fellow soldiers, knowing that you won't be injured and that the whole experience will be very short, is nothing at all like being waterboarded by captors dozens of times with no reason to believe it will ever end?
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How does this fool even get put on television?
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http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

gunny: Maybe the goal is to have torture 2.0. Beyond water boarding. Super inhanced interrogation. Good point. Somebody (Sully? Yglesias? ??) blogged on that issue in the last several days. The logical extension of "these techniques worked so they are good" is for them to proliferate and expand for use wherever a threat is perceived, even in a fevered wingnutty brain. We need more of Jesse Ventura telling it like it is, torture is about false confessions with a predetermined outcome: "I'll put it to you this way: You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."
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“Well, then you'd have to say that, in effect, we're prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America,” Doomsday Dick said.
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If Cheney is going to put it in terms of American lives, then I'd like to rebut by reminding him of Jessica Lynde, the soldier who was captured by the Iraqi Army at the beginning of the Iraq war and rescued by our troops from...a hospital, where her captors had taken her for medical attention.
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Dear Mr Cheney: Will the next captured American soldier - male or female - stand a better or worse chance of receiving humane treatment by his captors as a result of our behavior at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib?
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What Cheney has done is sacrifice *future* American lives.

By the way Mornin Joe is torture to watch with Joe Scar's belief that if we can't torture then that means we can asked any questions of detainees at all and Mika's constant "I don't see how this is good for the democrats and the folks against torture?"

How does this fool even get put on television? - Because the talking heads don't puncture the bubble of their stupidity. We all know that the man who was tortured in Lybia to give Cheney the "proof" of a Iraq/Al Qaeda connection then disappeared and committed committed suicide a few days ago. There is no reason why every interviewer/pundit out there does not also know this, and use it to push back against the lies. But I always feel that the community represented by the Swampland commenter community is far more informed than most in the msm.
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The news of the death by possible suicide of former CIA "ghost prisoner", Ali Mohamed al-Fakheri, also known as Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, has caused only a small murmur in the U.S. press. The Washington Post's Peter Finn wrote a story on it Monday, noting the key fact that it was the tortured confession of al-Libi in an Egyptian prison, where he had been rendered by the U.S. and subjected to beatings and mock burial, that was used by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in his February 2003 presentation to the UN as evidence that Iraq was in league with the Al Qaeda terrorists and/or interested in using WMD.
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This “What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration” is now live at the link.

Here is what Dowd was writing at the time of Gore's speech (Sept. 2002). I lack the time and expertise to read and evaluate these, but from the descriptions, she was making good points.
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Of course, she apppears to have dolled them up as if this were court gossip, not life and death. Sometimes, it's best to drop the pith and make your point as if it's about something serious.

At the hearing, Lindsey Graham is proving himself to be a pathetic tool.
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No surprise.

I believe Graham is the only repuglican in attendance.