God Dick Cheney is an embarrassment. He was on tv this morning saying how fabulous torture is and how he regrets nothing.
The former vice president showed little remorse for the dozens of prisoners who were found to have been wrongfully detained, for the man who died in the program, or for people like Khaled El-Masri — a German citizen who was shipped off to Afghanistan and sodomized in a case of mistaken identity.
“I’d do it again in a minute,” said Cheney.
He also spoke repeatedly of how the program was justified to get the “bastards” who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks.
He’s really that stupid? Or that self-blinded or that warped by his own loyalties? He really thinks the badness of the 9/11 attacks justifies bad things done to other people, including innocent people wrongly detained? He really misses the point by that wide a margin?
About the program’s serious errors — and the abuses that CIA Director John Brennan described as “abhorrent” on Thursday — Cheney said, “I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.”
Spoken like a true war criminal.
The Senate report has led to new calls for former Bush administration or CIA officials to be prosecuted for the torture program they oversaw, but Cheney on Sunday dismissed an appeal from Ben Emmerson, the UN Special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, to reopen inquires.
“I have little respect for the United Nations, or for this individual, who doesn’t have a clue,” said Cheney.
Back atcha, war criminal.
“I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.”
Moral objections aside, we didn’t achieve our objective. We tortured the innocent. We got bad information from the guilty. The report shows that we failed to achieve any important intelligence objective via torture. We provided motivation to islamic radicals. The relatives of innocent victims of our torture and of our drone programs are now converted from neutral to enemies, or from enemies to terrorists. Cheney’s methods were not only immoral, but were also counterproductive.
Cheney’s arrogance is only exceeded by his fatuousness.
patriotism has been redefined (to some extent it was always a negative thing) by 9/11. If you even *think* about the harm that might be caused by the harm your response to terrorism might cause, you’re guilty of not being sufficiently outraged about terrorist attacks. But this shows less a concern for the dead (a concern for lives lost in a terrorist attack should be the product of a mentality that would also find torture reprehensible) and more a type of street justice posturing.
This is the same guy who shot his friend in the face. Why would anyone expect rational behavior from such a nut?
I cannot watch even a few seconds of his smug, disgusting, arrogant face. He’s a war criminal who deserves to spend the rest of his life in chains.
That was an accident. But he’d do it again in a minute.
It’s astounding to me that we could even be having such a conversation in the 21st century, in a nation at the heart of the supposedly civilized West. It is beyond insane that person of prominence can stand up in public, and seriously justify practices that we, not that long ago, would smugly congratulate ourselves at having outgrown, that we would think of only in connection with despised and barbaric regimes like the Third Reich, or medieval despots, or the Inquisition, and not be loudly and universally sneered at, and made a pariah.
David @ 1:
I thought the objective was to torture people.
(Mission accomplished!)
@David #1
I’m not so sure the “our” in our “our objectives” includes more than a handful of rich, powerful, sociopaths. My estimation of his objectives: more fear, more control over oil resources, more military spending, social/societal upheaval in foreign countries, all with the ultimate goal of more power and money for him and his buddies.
With the possible exception of more control over that region’s oil resources, I’d say mission absolutely accomplished.
Well he did get Osama Bin Ladin, didn’t he?
He’s a disgusting coward, who comfortably orders other people to die or waterboard others, while his idea of courage is shooting tame caged birds (and hitting lawyers)
Knowing what an arrogant blimp he is, it’s satisfying to think that history will judge his administration as one of the worst of all time. In terms of nation-destroying ability he’s on par with Lucius Paullus – an epic fuckup of the first degree. WMD in Iraq, forsooth! He probably meant Iran. Or something. Calling him a dipshit is an insult to septic tank workers, who actually do an honest job.
If you or your readers haven’t yet read it, I suggest reading this article from New York magazine: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/12/torture-party-republicans.html
Its worth reading through to the end; this final part in particular:
That last paragraph in particular has made me think. Over the years, I have watched with appalled fascination and bemusement when the various perpetrators of some of the worst crimes against humanity in the past 30 years have both lauded their own actions as murderers or organisers of murderous acts, and claimed their actions were perfectly legitimate and righteous. Whenever any have been brought to task for their actions, they have invariably protested their innocence. They insist that they are guilty of no crimes. So we have the likes of Radovan Karadžić, Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić brought before the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, and angrily – furiously – demand that they’re actions make them heroes, not criminals. In my own country, Ireland, we have similarly had many men who have had no problem telling the world that their violent acts as IRA members were almost entirely honourable, just, and part of a good fight for the Irish people (this particularly disgusts me, as an Irish man whose family was specifically targeted by an IRA bomb in a quiet Dublin suburb, because the IRA wanted to force one of our neighbours to give them money… apparently, the many murders and extortions of Irish people were in our own best interest).
Reading the NY mag article, I realise that Cheney is of the same mindset as those criminals. I am not suggesting that his crimes match those others in scale or depravity, but his self-delusion, grandstanding and warped rationale, his utterly blinkered worldview which refuses to acknowledge any evidence contrary to the mythology fabricated by his own ego, is the same. He is what we might generally refer to as a sociopath. So twisted, so devoid of empathy, and so utterly convinced of his own infallibility that the deliberate inflicting of intense physical and mental pain on others is justified in his eyes just because he wants it to be. He is a disgusting human being.
Cheney’s as sure as himself as Osama Bin Laden was. That’s the problem.
Funny (well, not ‘funny haha”, but funny), I saw the headline “worst of the worst” and immediately thought “Dick Cheney” without knowing what the post was about.
Nice to know great minds think alike. Man should be on trial at The Hague for war crimes.