Torquemada II -- Dick Cheney's embrace of Cruelty

When is torture torture? Apparently it's when severe cruelty goes to the point of being extreme. That sounds like a very fine line!!!

Dick Cheney is a man who loves power, secrecy, and apparently isn't squeamish when it comes to inflicting pain -- all in the name of national security. According to Washington Post reporters, back in 2002, the CIA came to the White House and asked to define the limits on what was acceptable in coercing information. The response was a directive from the President that left enough ambiguity to permit just about anything. This line of thought, we're told, was influenced by the Vice President's own counsel, David Addington.

We're told that Addington was an advocate of pushing the limits and essentially exempted the President from treaty obligations:

The vice president's lawyer advocated what was considered the memo's most radical claim: that the president may authorize any interrogation method, even if it crosses the line into torture. U.S. and treaty laws forbidding any person to "commit torture," that passage stated, "do not apply" to the commander in chief, because Congress "may no more regulate the President's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct
troop movements on the battlefield."

In time techniques utilized by the CIA, including "water-boarding" migrated to the military, despite reservations by some of the legal persons involved.

Since then Cheney has continued to push the envelope on interrogation practices and claiming that neither courts nor Congress can limit the President's "war making" authority. In other words, he's the decider and no one can say different. Cheney's position has been turned back several times by the Supreme Court, but he's not changed his mind.

He believes dangerous times require such things, my view is that his positions have made the world more dangerous and they undermine the nation's moral authority!

And so once again I say: Dick must go!!