Some Other Mother's Son

Richard Cohen asks several stupid questions:

But where I reserve a soupçon of doubt is over the question of whether "enhanced interrogation techniques" actually work. That they do not is a matter of absolute conviction among those on the political left, who seem to think that the CIA tortured suspected terrorists just for the hell of it.

You comfortably situated loudmouthed ponce. The point wasn't that it worked or didn't work. The point wasn't that Jack Bauer sometimes had to torture people to stop a ticking time bomb. That was NEVER the point. It was, on occasion, an addendum to the point which is YOU DO NOT DO THIS EVER, whether it works or not. Not because your enemies don't deserve to get it but because you don't deserve to dish it out. Among "those on the political left," who by the way have been right about everything in the past eight years while you sat on your hands for fear of looking like a pussy, the point wasn't about the efficacy of torture, it was about the rule of law.

Dumbass. I don't care whether the CIA tortured people because they really thought it would work or they really thought there was a ticking time bomb or because it was Tuesday and they were bored and yes, they wanted to do it for the hell of it. I am supremely uninterested in the why of what they did. I'm interested in the what, and the who, and the when, because that's the sort of stuff you need to know to know if they BROKE THE LAW.

Cheney is a one-man credibility gap. In the past, he has said, "We know they [the Iraqis] have biological and chemical weapons," when it turned out we knew nothing of the sort. He insisted that "the evidence is overwhelming" that al-Qaeda had been in high-level contact with Saddam Hussein's regime when the "evidence" was virtually nonexistent. And he repeatedly asserted that Iraq had a menacing nuclear weapons program. As a used-car dealer, he would have no return customers.

Still, every dog has his day, and Cheney is barking up a storm on the efficacy of what can colloquially be called torture. He says he knows of two CIA memos that support his contention that the harsh interrogation methods worked and that many lives were saved. "That's what's in those memos," he told Schieffer. They talk "specifically about different attack planning that was underway and how it was stopped."

You know, I've met people who can't commit to a job, or a house, or a person. People who dither over the menu and fret about what to order at the bar. I know people with commitment issues but I swear to Peanut Butter Jesus that I have never seen anybody as unwilling to commit to a conviction as the premiere "liberal" columnist of the Washington Post.

Cheney sucks and has always been wrong about everything, but maybe he's right about this, so let's give him the benefit of the doubt I do not deign to extend to any of his dreadlocked pot-smoking protester critics, because they're not real men like Dick and me.

Inescapably, it is about life and death -- not ideology, but people hurling themselves from the burning World Trade Center. If Cheney is right, then let the debate begin: What to do about enhanced interrogation methods? Should they be banned across the board, always and forever?

YES.

Next?

In political terms, Cheney has been a free man ever since he eschewed any presidential ambitions. He became the most impolitic of politicians and continues in that role, taking neither a vow of penitence nor a vow of silence in his vice presidential afterlife.

How selfless of him. How kind of Dick to continue to favor us with his impartial insights now that all he has to care about is his immortal, noble soul. It's so sweet, it almost makes me forget how he GOT A LOT OF PEOPLE DEAD AND LIED ABOUT IT. And all he has to care about is that his reputation is now somewhere on the global scale of ick between chlamydia and genocide, so naturally he has no interest in anything but making America better with his magic words.

Kill me now. Really, what the fuck does he have to care? It won't be Richard Cohen's children being waterboarded. It won't be Dick Cheney's children under the lights, in a box with bugs, hooked up to electrodes and made to scream for his amusement and estimation of his manhood. It'll be other people, who they will never have to meet, so it will be perfectly all right for them to continue to talk about how it's noble to torture people and have them deported in secret because their imaginations make it okay. They'll never have to know the cost. I think even if you shoved the bill under their noses, they'd just push it away.

A.

Comments

[phastphil]

Dear Dick
You've tortured the American people enough - Shut the Fuck Up!

[TheOtherWA]

A, once again you take the same emotions I'm feeling and pull the right words from a swirl of thoughts and nail it. And you're damn funny while you're at it.
And all he has to care about is that his reputation is now somewhere on the global scale of ick between chlamydia and genocide...

This whole post is spot on.

[hoppy]

My nightmare is that John Q. Public is listening to Cheney and gradually believing that Cheney is right. That would drive us right back into Hell.

[OkieBlue]

See Tom Tommorrow cartoon today on Salon for the "ticking time bomb scenario".

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2009/05/12/tomo/index.html?source=newsletter

[The Other Sarah]

Here's my problem with this whole scenario: Cohen & his cohort are making "Jack Bauer" -- which is, by the way, a TV SHOW -- into the new operating exemplar for the nation.

This is wrong on so many levels I can't even start to list them all, but as usual Athenae, you're not just on top of the situation, you're giving us the core of it with lava sauce.

Thanks.

[MapleStreet]

Exactly. If you say it enough, the idjots will believe you.,

[pansypoo]

so far fiction is winning. sheeple see it work on TEEVEE.

so far i haven't heard the point that WE DO NOT TORTURE SO OUR SOLDIERS DON'T GET TORTURED, AND IF THEY ARE WE CAN CHARGE THEM.

we are americans, NOT TERRORISTS. the bushevics made us THE BAD GUYS! god gnews SUCK. we are no longer exceptional.

[Nora]

Are we supposed to find it impressive somehow that Cheney feels no need for penitence? Is this supposed to be a sign of how manly he is? He has committed war crimes and he feels no shame about it. To my mind, that makes him a lesser creature, not a greater one.

[The Other Sarah]

begin blogwhore/

There are a couple of posts at Corrente related to this.

/ end blogwhore /

http://www.correntewire.com/even_jesse_ventura_knows_about_torture_it_dont_work

http://www.correntewire.com/buying_lies_richard_cohen_gives_cheney_credit_torture_works

[David Terrenoire]

I'm going to blogwhore, too, A. In my defense, this only the 2nd time.

But I swear I was channeling you when I wrote this post on this very subject. I would be honored if you'd check it out.

www.terrenoire.blogspot.com