A footnote to my post on torture.

Dick Cheney on Meet the Press

Did you catch Dick Cheney on Meet the Press Sunday, Dec. 14?

His repeated defense of "enhanced interrogation techniques" included…

1. It works.
2. Everything was approved by the President.
3. The Senate panel report was unfair.
4. Those that used actual torture were "rouge operatives."
5. It wasn't nearly as bad as what Al Qaeda did to us on 9/11.

Never once (that I've heard) has anyone defending enhanced interrogation said what they did was torture and that it was just or ethical or a fitting expression of American values.

Consider an analogy.

I take brutal revenge on a school bully. When confronted in the principal's office, I say:

1. It worked, he's not bullying me as much.
2. My dad said I could protect myself.
3. The teachers are exaggerating, I didn't hit him that hard.
4. The times I hit him really hard, I was off school grounds. You can't punish me for that.
5. Anyway, I never hit him as hard as he hit me.

Or, I'm caught cheating. I say:

1. It worked. I passed the test.
2. All my friends do it.
3. The teacher is unfair and makes the tests too hard.
4. This is the only test I cheated on, honest, I had nothing to do with the rest of them.
5. It was only a quiz. You want to see real cheating? You ought to see what goes on during finals.

If Cheney were 12 years old, he'd be in detention for the rest of the year.

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Cheney on Interrogation Tactics: "I Would Do It Again in a Minute"

(This is embedded from NBC but I can't preview while composing.)

Another on Youtube...

[2014-12-14]

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