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.
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America's government and THE AFTERMATH of their DISASTER.
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...
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.
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.
Have you been waterboarded?
this guy's car dealership.
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.
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.
I will now have to drink strong spirits until that part of my brain that conjures up mental pictures, dies.
Joe Biden is the only antidote to the infliction that is Dick Cheney. Don't you know that? Geesh.