No, it’s the same. They didn’t torture suspects just for the hell of it. They tortured him in order to get Achmed, just like they killed innocent Amin to get evil Abdul.
As long as your operating premise is, “Any amount of torture can be justified by a single success,” then Cheney is correct. However, by demanding the release of any memo, Cheney has moved the goalpoasts from “how much torture is good” to “how much good”. By searching for successes you are taking Cheney’s argument at face value.
Yes, they tortured Achmed Sr. to get Achmed Jr. (or whatever, I’m confusing my subjects).
But they didn’t authorize a military strike to kill civilians.
A more apt analogy would be, we tortured Achmed Sr to get Achmed jr, and, fuck a duck, I broke my wrist doing it.
Actually, yes they did.
Correction : it is sufficient evidence that such information did not exist at the time. But now ? A bit of copy/paste here, change a date there, spin around until this success seems tied post hoc to covering someone in bees rather than to the actual investigation that led to it…
Am I being overly cynical to expect something like that from Cheney and his CIA buddies ?
ETA :
Such a beautiful typo 
Equivalence! We got equivalence here, everybody come see the equivalence! Obama approved a bombing that caused collateral deaths, Bush ordered “Shock and Awe” which caused (hundreds? thousands? tens of thousands? Details, pesky details…) of innocent civilians to die, they are the same! We got yer equivalence right here, come look!..
If there were success stories that could have been announced to the public anytime up until now without compromising national security, they should have done it already, and Cheney should have been leading the band. On the other hand, if this information is still too secret to release to the public, then Cheney is a toad for asking for it to be released just to clear his name.
Why or why not?
Oh sure. Shooting missiles at houses in villages is a pure military strike, no civilians expected at all…
Don’t kid yourself. They know exactly who is in the house when they strike. That’s why they consult the big dog first. If it was just some known jack boot thug terrorist, you think they’d consult with Obama first before striking? They consulted him because he’s making a judgment call if killing civilians is worth it.
And not a call that I would want to be the one to have to make, but it still stands that the airstrike wasn’t called for in order to kill civilians.
Or it could be because any military action has to be approved by the Chief. Either way, boy, Obama ordered an *airstrike *? But… but that makes it OK to torture hundreds of innocents ! How could we have been so blind ?!
Yes, and the torture wasn’t authorized for punishment.
The cite offered by Sinaijon does not state that Obama ordered the missiles to be fired. It does say:
My eyesight isn’t what it used to be, perhaps he will come back and advise us precisely where it says it. Failing that, its safe for us to say his “cite” is a steaming load.
Hardly. Numerous people claimed that the ends should never justify the means. I provided an example where it’s basically accepted that the ends do justify the means. I simply used Obama’s Pakistan missile strikes because it was the most recent event to my knowledge.
Ahem.
Try taking of your rose colored glasses. Your cite (ha!) will improve vastly. But in case it doesn’t, try this one as well:
No.
For the same reason the equation 16/64 = 1/4, derived by cancelling out the “6” in the numerator and denominator, is a “success story” and yet is utterly irrelevant to the question of whether or not cancelling out digits in this manner is a valid mathematical procedure.
True, no doubt, but irrelevant.
You are completely losing me here.
Torture was authorized. It is punishment. Two separate but equally true statements. I don’t really get the analogy you’re trying to make with a military strike in which collatoral deaths occur.
For the record, I’m not really in favor of military strikes in which collatoral deaths occur either.
You seem to assume everyone accepts the necessity or justifiability of “collateral damage” (what a charming euphemism, isn’t it ?).
Even if that were somehow true : some ends justify some means, torture is a mean to an end, ergo torture is justified/justifiable consitutes a faulty syllogism.
Horseshit. Your cite didn’t say what you claimed it said. Period. Full stop.
Much better! See how easy that is, once you’ve been busted? Now go, and sin no more…