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Dick Cheney is a war criminal. He belongs in prison.
“I was a big supporter of waterboarding,” Cheney crowed Sunday, on ABC’s “This Week,” adding, “I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques … ”
So, what do we do with this information? The former Number Two Honcho in the United States of America has bragged, in public, that the torture buck stopped, or at least paused long enough to be fondled, on his desk.
Here’s what we do with that information: We throw Dick Cheney in prison.
To go on about our collective business, merely to shake our heads and hope it was a one-off (or, more accurately, a several-hundred-off), to call no one to account, does more than set a dangerous precedent: it establishes the shameful, awful, but clearly undeniable fact that we live in a country that tortures.
That’s present tense: We live in a country that tortures. Maybe not right this minute, maybe not tomorrow or a week from Wednesday, but, that’s what we do. The Obama administration claims to have put a stop to it, and they probably have. Well, good for them, and good for us, as far as it goes, which is not very. Until we as a nation, we as a people, make our rejection of this barbarity manifest through the proper workings of our court system, we’re engaging in what used to be called — and should be called again, for my money — just so much chin music: Yeah, we tortured, and a lot of us feel pretty steamed about it, but we’re not going to do it ever, ever again...
“I was a big supporter of waterboarding,” Cheney crowed Sunday, on ABC’s “This Week,” adding, “I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques … ”
So, what do we do with this information? The former Number Two Honcho in the United States of America has bragged, in public, that the torture buck stopped, or at least paused long enough to be fondled, on his desk.
Here’s what we do with that information: We throw Dick Cheney in prison.
To go on about our collective business, merely to shake our heads and hope it was a one-off (or, more accurately, a several-hundred-off), to call no one to account, does more than set a dangerous precedent: it establishes the shameful, awful, but clearly undeniable fact that we live in a country that tortures.
That’s present tense: We live in a country that tortures. Maybe not right this minute, maybe not tomorrow or a week from Wednesday, but, that’s what we do. The Obama administration claims to have put a stop to it, and they probably have. Well, good for them, and good for us, as far as it goes, which is not very. Until we as a nation, we as a people, make our rejection of this barbarity manifest through the proper workings of our court system, we’re engaging in what used to be called — and should be called again, for my money — just so much chin music: Yeah, we tortured, and a lot of us feel pretty steamed about it, but we’re not going to do it ever, ever again...
Read more: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-02-15/columns/arthur-...
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