The continuation of the beating of the dead horse...

[kentuck]

I hate to continue to talk about "torture" but it is a necessity. So long as people like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are on TV attempting to persuade the American people of the righteousness of the act of torture, we must continue to fight these people. We cannot go silent and surrender to the forces of evil. We must continue to point out that the brutality and torture preached by these folks, mostly on the GOP side, are not what we want our country to stand for.

The polls show that the majority support torture as the right thing to do under the circumstances. They are uninformed. That is the fault of our media. Torture has been proven not to work. Nothing was accomplished from it. However, we have those that were responsible, on TV, defending their actions as the right thing to do. We cannot permit that to continue. We have to shoot down those arguments, even if it takes forever...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Erect bogeyman, wave the flag, and break out the waterboards and rectal infusers.

Works every time on a gullible, frightened, public.

[fadedrose]

2. The media falls short all the time

They have guests of opposing views on, and they are treated equally, listened to, and thanked.

When one of the guests, or both of them, is not being truthful, it is the job of the host to point that out. Trouble is, guests with colorful histories will avoid being interviewed by that host if they are subjected to being called liers and the ratings of the program will go down without controversial guests.

I'm disappointed that Warrens Citigroup message was hardly paid attention to.

[Fred Sanders]

11. Approving of torture was as much a media creation as Bush and company, of course they defend

their lies and deflect from the sheer evil of it all.

The media should be prosecuted as well.

[immoderate]

3. If it weren't for torture, no one would confess to witchcraft.

It works!

--imm

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

4. Imagine the loss to our proud history of burnings at the stake!

[Kelvin Mace]

5. They don't have to try

they have succeeded. Cheney is now daring us to prosecute him. He just said he is fine torturing the innocent since all that matters is getting the "bad guys".

Cheney will die a free man.

[carla]

16. The Dick

Cheney has never been a free man. Poor dolt is as much a patsy as those he tortured. But he can't be free as long as he denies his responsibility and stands trial. Let him die, just remember to undo his evil with your own life.

[JDPriestly]

18. Cheney may be chained by his failure to take responsibility and stand trial.

Who knows? Maybe he is a sadist who finds great satisfaction in treating others with cruelty. Maybe that is what makes him feel free whether he is or not.

It is good to advise us to undo his evil with our own lives.

But one of the ways that we can undo his evil with our own lives is to demand that he answer for his evil by answering in a courtroom to the evidence of his evil.

It is not enough to relish the idea that poor Cheney is so awful he must be suffering from his wrongdoing.

If we do not take responsibility as a nation for the wrongs he committed or ordered others to commit in our names, in the name and under the legal authority of our government, then we are complicit, we are accomplices in his crimes.

Whether Cheney suffers or is free or is captive or is happy or is sad is completely irrelevant to the issue of deciding whether torture is OK, whether torture can be committed in the name of the USA and the American people.

I say that torture cannot be committed in the name of the United States, in the names of the American people.

I agree with Chemerinsky that Cheney should be tried for conspiring to violate the US laws against torture. Same for all who participated in this scheme.

Cheney's guilt is not about the past. It is very much about the future, what kind of future we want our country to have, what kind of future we want for our children and grandchildren.

[Kelvin Mace]

21. His evil is now the law

so I don't see how we undo it.

[blkmusclmachine]

6. ,

,

[hifiguy]

7. It's all a part of the unceasing RW/Media project to shift the "new normal"

ever rightward. They are already into purely fascist territory but that's not far enough.

[malthaussen]

8. That's because Hitler and Mussolini were amateurs

They are SO primitive, compared to how our better-trained propagandists work. But have you noticed how much political rallies and official video resemble a scene from "Triumph Des Willens?" We've really been going overboard on fascist iconography in this century.

-- Mal

[hifiguy]

12. Indeed they were compared to today's

painstakingly careful, market-researched and focus grouped psyops and 24/7 corporate propaganda that pass as "news" in all of the M$M. Leave the modern day equivalent of "The Eternal Jew" for the Savages and Limbaughs of the world and their dumber-than-dirt, three-toothed imbecile audience. TPTB's target audience is the low-to-middle information sheeple a few steps above the cave trolls of the reich wing and gulling them into accepting The New Fascism (briefly describable as feudal economics enforced by a modern, high-tech fascist power structure) has been the agenda for 20+ years.

And it's working all too well. If there is a great beyond, which I very much doubt, Herr Doktor Goebbels is rubbing his hands together with glee as he looks down on his students, none more so than Roger Ailes, KKKarl Rove and the Koch brothers. The students far surpassed the teacher.

[malthaussen]

14. Bastard feudalism, to put a point on it

Feudal economy and society, however flawed, did carry some legal obligations that went up and down the chain (we'll leave off declaring how much these were honored in the breach). In Bastard Feudalism (which was particularly practiced in jolly olde England), the noble simply kept a retinue of paid retainers who served at pleasure and had no rights to speak of. This is the model for which the modern Libertarian strives, and it is those Libertarians who have done so much to derail this country since coming to power.

-- Mal

[JDPriestly]

19. So true.

[hifiguy]

25. The Divine Rights of Wealth and Capital.

They make their money the old-fashioned way, by extorting it from the peasants at the point of a sword.

[jtuck004]

9. "Torture has been proven not to work" < We don't do it because it works, we do it for fun.

And that's a lot harder to stop.

[spanone]

10. if this goes down the rabbit hole....shame on us. shame on humanity.

[zeemike]

13. This story will last a week or two and then fade away.

A new outrage will take it's place or several...And it will involve Putin, Isis or some big franchise owner saying something to piss us off but we will let it drop.
Just look back...torture and war crimes was before us before with Abu Ghraib, and the information Manning released and they managed to change it from a moral outrage to whether it worked or not just like now...and then gave us a TV show, 24, to convince us it is sometimes necessary if you are really scared.

They can play us like a two dollar banjo.

[maindawg]

15. Under the circumstances?

What circumstances? They demo'd three buildings,dressed up the event with some kind of airplanes and a missile demo'd a wing of the pentagon. There was no plane there. None. There was no plane in PA either.
We were never under attack. Never in any danger. Just like they do today, the corporate media ochestrates the agenda. Our Govt is so corrupt, that we have outright criminals running it who are opperating the puppets[W, the RWNJ caucous along with most of our legislatute.
There was no reason at all to attack the Iraq people.

[Cryptoad]

17. Hah,,,, I read the post title and thought we had another Thread on Comrade Snowden.....

[RoccoR5955]

20. Those damn polls again.

You do know that any well crafted statement could make you agree with ANYTHING, don't you?

This is what has happened with they poll that you saw that states that torture is supported as the right thing to do. You know what, anyone who paid their damn taxes supported torture.

Back right after 9/11, many of my good friends, many of whom I thought were pacifists said to me that they wanted to kill those responsible. These are friends who fought for peace and justice for decades. They were not well informed. It took some time, but they eventually saw the facts, and the lies that were being put out by the administration. (personally, I saw them on day ZERO)
There was even a time where some of these people said to me, "We should attack Iraq." Well when I reminded them that not one of the people allegedly behind the deed was from Iraq, they didn't believe me. They had been lied to for a couple of years, by the mainstream media, and were buying it. It's the same thing with torture. The people will remain uninformed, and think that it was the correct thing to do. Just as are drones, or the US being the world's police.

It is our responsibility to get out the TRUTH of the matter, no matter how much the media wants to spin it.

[AtomicKitten]

22. I'm looking for someone with a strong voice and a microphone

to lay out the case for the American people. Cheney and his goons have the microphone and are undermining the torture report findings. The fact that it is but a piece of the investigative findings in toto (Auntie Em?) should be a real eye-opener. Which American is going to stand up and shout to the rafters? Somebody with gravitas must or we have failed as a nation. Our moral authority will be forever lost.

[H2O Man]

23. Recommended.

I do not consider this -- or your other recent OPs -- to be "beating a dead horse." In fact, it's the exact opposite. What you are talking about is our need to recognize the danger that the Cheney-Bush torture policy has had, in terms of our constitutional democracy.

I definitely have appreciated your sharing your thoughts on this with the DU community.

[Enthusiast]

24. Kicked

and recommended!

[vlyons]

26. It is a deeply misguided sense of justice

Vengence is basically what torture is. It is the very lowest of the low to create some sense of justice, especially when the person being tortured is innocent of the alleged crime. Torture invalidates any modicum of fairness that a court is supposed to provide. No matter how the Cheneys of this world rationalize torture, it is naked vengence extracted by sadists. A higher level of justice is about accountability for crimes proven in a court of law and retribution for those crimes. And an even higher level of justice is about mercy and forgiveness. But don't hold your breath waiting for the Cheneys of this world to show mercy. They are sociopaths.

[SomethingFishy]

27. One of the Christian nut jobs said today that Jesus supports torture..

Because the Prince Of Peace was really a warrior dontcha know...

[calimary]

28. YES. We need to keep talking about torture. We need to keep this story alive.

The nation's about to hit the collective snooze button for the Christmas/New Year's holiday. Programming on the airwaves will be dissolving into "Jingle Bells" and "The Little Drummer Boy." It's up to US to keep this on the front burner. And then we need to be a big fat thorn in the side of the CON majority in the Senate.

[JEB]

29. Kick.

Torture is what is trickling down to the citizens.

[lame54]

30. Instead of talking on t.v. - cheney should have the right to remain silent