Larry Johnson argues that cheney does not understand the real world:
I think Dick Cheney has been watching too many Hollywood flicks that glorify torture. He needs, instead, to get on the ground and talk to the folks he is ostensibly trying to empower to torture.
….
If you inflict enough pain on someone they will give you information, but, unless you kill them, they will hold a grudge. As far as the information goes there is no guarantee it will be correct.
What real CIA field officers know from their work with actual sources is that whatever short term benefit can be derived from torture will be offset by the new enemy you have created. It is better to build a relationship of trust, no matter how painstaking, rather than gain a short term benefit that puts you on par with a Nazi concentration camp guard.
Perhaps Johnson underestimates cheney who certainly doesn’t intend that his victims will walk free any time soon. No, they will best end up dead or at worst be stashed away in a secret gulag until the end of the never to end war on terror. If the latter, cheney will be long gone and will have left to our children the task of cleaning his mess.
Read the rest.
Via Talking Points Memo.
Part of me sort of admires Cheney for doing what he thinks it will take to “protect” the U.S. The other part of me thinks that he’s pretty much lost it at this point and would just as soon nuke Syria if he could get away with it.
This shameful debacle brings up some important points. It highlights the obvious shortcomings of the idea that a president does not have to be particularly impressive or wise as long as he can delegate responsibilities to smart people. Wiith the indictment against Scooter Libby and its implications for Dick Cheney, who initially leaked Valerie Plame’s identity, it calls into question the morality of the Vice President’s office and thus the entire administration in both the lead up to the Iraq war and the execution of the continuing struggle.