The Cheney Doctrine

I'm sick of torture. And the fact that we're one of the countries way up there on the J.D. Powers annual "torture reliability" list makes me unwell as well. As does talking AROUND torture. What this country needs is an up front national referendum on whether we should or shouldn't be torturing people. Oh wait. That's right, we did have one.. Last November 4th.

These aren't your normal ordinary everyday forms of torture we're talking about either: like 12th in line at a understaffed Starbucks or shuffling through life a Golden State Warriors fan or being forced to watch NBC's prime time lineup against your will, I'm referring to real, state sponsored, "talk or we do something crazy" Jack Bauer on steroids kind of stuff.

The big difference being, Keifer Sutherland's rascally television torturer gets most of his best results simply by raising his voice. "Are you going to talk?" "Never." Compelling him to move in real close and yell in the dastardly scoundrel's face: "ARE YOU GOING TO TALK NOW?" "Okay. Okay. I'll talk. Just lower your voice. The kids are trying to sleep."

Now we got Nancy Pelosi and the CIA exchanging torture lying charges. Don't you hate it when lovers' spats go public? The Republicans are gleefully sliding into the House Speaker cleats up because she has little of the President's Teflon coating. To many Americans she's that great aunt who smiles too much at Thanksgiving and always uses your full name when scolding you for poor quality table manners. "William, only cows chew with their mouths open."

Even Dick Cheney has gotten into the act with a recent talk show offensive defending his administration's torture policies. And as far as everybody in the nation who sees his face being mightily offended, he's been successful. This is not a partisan thing. A National Journal poll of Republican insiders shows 57% of them think he's hurting the party. So pretty much everybody agrees, Dick Cheney speaking on torture is redundant.

He called the enhanced interrogation techniques used at Gitmo regrettable but necessary. And you got to love that phrase: "enhanced interrogation techniques." Sounds like instructions on how to turn on the fluorescents at a job interview. He's not being tortured, he's being solicited to provide easy answers to exceptionally difficult questions. In bad lighting. And those car battery cables attached to his nipples are "nervous system awareness amplifiers."

What I don't get is how anybody can defend waterboarding a single prisoner 183 times. Operationally, wouldn't you think the effectiveness would start to wear off after about 60 or 70? What genius kept pushing, "I know we've gotten nothing the first couple hundred times here, but I got a hunch, this next time- we're gold.." Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 183 times, shame on me. As my daddy always said: 183rd time's the charm.

The best way Dick Cheney could help this country is to creep back to that undisclosed location of his, and maybe take Joe Biden with him. Still haven't figured out why Cheney is so obsessed with selling the positive merits of torture. Though there is that old axiom about one man's torture being another man's S&M turn- on, so maybe that explains more about the Cheney Doctrine than we really need to know. TMI. You want torture? Dick Cheney in fishnets. Try to pry that image out of your mind.

Will Durst is a San Francisco based political comic who writes sometimes. This is one of them.
Check out his Rooftop Comedy minutes: http://www.rooftopcomedy.com/shows/BurstOfDurst

Comments

[larry278]

Can we get Biden & Cheney to disappear into the same isolated bunker? The idea has possibilities. Since we have seen Obama's changes after 100 days-we know that it isn't going to get any better. How about Obama & W disappearing into the same hiding place? Central Tn is between Dallas & Chicago. Set up W & Obama's refuge there to be fair to both of them.

[darker]

REAL TORTURE is having Bush-Cheney ruining
America's government and THE AFTERMATH of their DISASTER.

[johnco]

Funny, now the right is harping on:

Biden gave away the store. He told everyone that, there was a Bunker under the Naval Observatory, the Vice Presidents house.

Ever since Cheney moved in, there have been strange noises,coming from there. A black limo was always going back there, and the VP was in an "undisclosed location".

Duh...

If he wasn't there, you could always try his old house, 2 miles from CIA headquarters in Langley.

It seems that Dick was at his best doing the Doctor Stangelove impression at the Inauguration...

[Aaror]

Either we can be the shining city on the hill, or we can torture (waterboarding, walling, sleep deprivation past medical safety limits, etc, it is all torture).
If we torture, we lose all moral standing, and can no longer serve as an example to anyone who seeks to be good.
We are now an example to Iran, North Korea, and Russia, not to people seeking Freedom, Democracy, and Justice for all.

[Pyfagorus]

Exactly. If we're too dumb, lazy, frightened, and ill-principled to figure out how to protect ourselves without resorting to torture, then that protection is something we don't deserve.

[Endangered]

The real horror of waterboarding is that they used Iraqi water. Anyone who has traveled outside the industrial world knows that 24 hours spent in an under lit third world bathroom expelling an ill-advised roadside snack or tainted burrito can break the spirit of the strongest. Absent microbes you only have the effect of a winter motorcycle ride in Seattle.

[wingnutslayer]

I would love for Dick Cheney to continue reminding Americans about his incompetent, inhuman rule. Two items there are no defense for and he can snarl until he's blue in the face, they epitomize just what Cheney is. First Halliburton with its no-bid, no competence contracts made possible by ex-CEO Cheney's position as crony-appointer in chief. I'm still waiting for the investigations into that. Second, Donald Rumsfeld, how can anyone seriously listen to a defense of Cheney's mentor and partner in crime? He failed everyone, his political allies on the one hand, the troops on the other, the American people in between. So what if Cheney insults Colin Powell, he insulted him by allowing Rumsfeld to run roughshod over our military and not listening to anything Powell, one of our best military minds, had to say. Why anyone in their right mind would want this total failure as a human being to represent them is beyond my reasoning. Maybe failure is in this year, at least if you're a Republican.

[Aaror]

Remember, Cheney worked for Rumsfield in the Nixon administration. they have just been trying to rehabilitate Nixon by making a worse president to compare him too.

[ignorantwillyharper]

They did a good job.

[Garybot]

I love the way you are all still so stuck in the past. Could it be you're too afraid to look around at the thing that are happening now. Just was listening to a story about a car dealer on Long Island who has just been informed that his dealership will be no longer needed. He is by far the most successful one in the area, but we're going to keep less efficient, less successful ones.
He is having is business that he has worked for for decades being stolen by the Obama administration. Wake up people - it can to anyone now.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

What?
Have you been waterboarded?

[dogman44]

Explain the convoluted logic you used to come to the conclusion that Obama "stole"
this guy's car dealership.

[onedirector]

The real smoking gun is the fact that Republicans under Cheney, Limbaugh, Scarborouth, Hannity and others are convincing people that Torture is acceptable.

[sugarmoes]

cheney's obsessed with it because he needs to make it generally accepted that torture was a.o.k. so he doesn't get put on trial and sent to prison.

torture was certainly a crime and certainly specifically ordered from up on high.

the even bigger crime was starting the iraq war in the first place. a war that they had to lie about in order to get people to support it.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Well and simply put.

[andycan]

CHENEY AND SADDAM


Read Naomi Klein's Shock Therapy and you will learn that there is a long tradition of using torture by US authorities. In a sense, Cheney did everyone a favour by bringing it all out in the open.

The danger lies in that people's senssibilities become blunted and torture also becomes an acceptable practice as it was in the Middle Ages... or under Saddam Hussein.

In fact, Cheney's name should be pronounced in the same breath as that of Saddam Hussein. They're both about oil and torture.

I can understand that Cheney still inspires terror in the Republican party and outside of it, but Americans should for once remember that they were held to be a courageous people and deal with this
individual according to his deserts. They seem to be as submissive now as Cheney actually wanted them to become.

[guard]

It should be obvious why Cheney is "obsessed with selling the positive merits of torture". If he comes down hard enough for torture, it blurs the discussion to the right, thus making it appear to be somehow less of a crime. That is, he is trying to preempt his own criminal conviction by loudly pleading not guilty before he is charged. Unfortunately it might be working. Some commentators are already admiring him for "sticking to his guns", "standing up for what he believes in"., etc. In reality he is simply employing a cheap but effective rhetorical trick.

[wmfor]

Has O. J. found the real killers yet?

[Angelaaaa]

Thank you William, for your consideration in the last two sentences. That was most kind.

I will now have to drink strong spirits until that part of my brain that conjures up mental pictures, dies.

[slg]

Cheapen it all you want, it's a stunning acceptance of depraved acts that drove the stake into the heart of a once better Country.

[LizM]

Oh, man...you had me - on the verge of becoming an instant fan, even - until..."and maybe take Joe Biden with him."!? What on earth did you intend to imply with that comedy-busting remark? Don't answer that!

Joe Biden is the only antidote to the infliction that is Dick Cheney. Don't you know that? Geesh.