I heard stuff like “to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims” and chalked it up as more Cheney, distractionist blather. Who’s calling terrorists innocent victims here? Nobody, Cheney. Nice strawman though.
To be 100% honest though, I simply can’t listen to Cheney anymore. He makes my skin crawl. I have a physical, visceral reaction to the man that is unlike anyone else on the planet. I’d much, much rather listen to Bush than this fucking goblin.
LouisB opined that Cheney’s strenuous opposition to Obama’s policies and repeated assertions that he knows better than Obama how to keep America safe gives succor to native right-wing crazies who think, for example, that Obama was born in Kenya and is a Muslim Marxist. That’s not exactly just disagreeing with an elected official. Plus, he said that after Shodan posted.
Oh, and do recall the constant chorus that dissent is treason from virtually the entire previous administration.
Worse than that, both the terms “war” and “torture” are not just rhetoric. They are categories with legal implications. So it is important to get it right. While our anti-terrorism military operations abroad are not properly a “war” in many of the legal senses of war (a point Cheney himself has made on multiple occasions), our interrogation conduct was “torture”. Both “War on Terror” and “Enhanced Interrogation” are manipulative euphemisms used by the Bush Administration for political and legal ends when it suited them.
“Requesting a change in interrogative protocol” = Begging for mercy
“Stress-based vocalizations” = Screaming in agony
“Religious utterances” = “Oh, dear God, make it stop!”
“Non-positive reaction formation” = the world, recoiling in horror
Yes, but claiming that the terrorists will see us as weak and divided if we argue over torture, and then criticizing the President’s stance on torture is pretty funny. It would be easy for him to stop the argument over torture, and then the terrorists would be scared. So which is more important: that we have the right policy on torture, or that whatever policy we have on torture we shouldn’t argue about it.
If we shouldn’t argue about it, then he should shut up. If it’s more important to have the right policy on torture, then he should stop complaining that everyone who disagrees with him is emboldening the terrorists.
I remember *some *in the media taking Gore to task, and some defending him.
I’ve heard some in the media taking Cheney to task, and some defending him.
What is the saddest thing about Cheney is that, I think, he is so paranoid about the rest of the world and so afraid of change that he really believes the bullshit he spouts is the best thing for America (and to him that’s all that matters) even when he knows it is false. He really does love America; but that loyalty would be to wherever he was born and whatever political system he was born into. Freedom is not important to him. Keeping things exactly the same as it was when he was a kid, or the romantic notion of how it was in the generation before is the most important. It has to be preserved at home NO MATTER WHAT.
You’re seriously going to pretend that you think NOBODY in the media said it was OK for Gore to criticize Bush? Or are you just going to play the “ha-ha, made you waste 15 minutes googling before telling you that cites won’t change my mind anyway” game?
Only in the sense that the Bush administration didn’t say it. Bush might have, Cheney might have, another member of their administration may have, but the administration as a whole never said AFAIK.