I think Lynn Cheney would agree that facts have a well known liberal bias.

You write:
But because torture is now a "values" issue for the right, it is, like abstinence-only sex education, unmoored from the necessities of proving its usefulness in the real world, which is why someone like Liz Cheney is finding herself where she is.

Call me crazy, but I think torture is a values issue, and thus should be abhorred, quite apart from any data that suggests it may be proven to have usefulness in the real world.

Anyone who advocates for EIT (torture) needs a week of it.

In the same article they quote Liz Cheney as claiming that waterboarding isn't torture. I'd like someone to point out to her that we prosecuted people for it after World War II.

The relevant domestic security question is not "Who is 'tough enough' to order underlings to torture someone else in order to keep us safe?"

The relevant question is "Who will keep us safe?"

And sorry, I'm never going to believe it's Dick Cheney, the man who let Osama bin Laden get away.

Cheney and his apologists would like the discussion to be about how tough he is because he ordered people to do things that while they were of questionable utility, were unquestionably horrific and disgusting.

Because otherwise, the discussion would be about things like "uh, why did this loser let Osama bin Laden get away?"

And maybe it would also turn to things like why he pulled our forces off the hunt for bin Laden in order to send them to Iraq. Why we're supposed to believe he made our cities more prepared when he couldn't even deal with a much-anticipated hurricane? Why he utterly failed to secure our harbors or our railways?

Sorry, Dick, you let Osama get away. Color me remarkably unimpressed you tortured a goatherder. Congratulations on being not just an ineffectual loser, but a sadistic ineffectual loser.

And I'm not terribly pleased to see that the modern conservative movement thinks being a sadistic prick makes up for being a failure and a loser.

The Cheneys have embraced a great right-wing tradition in America to celebrate injustices. From Stephen Douglas's celebration of slavery and racism in the Lincoln-Douglas debates to William Buckley's defense of segregation (and implicit defense of lynching in the 1950s), they can always find a crowd that will cheer horrors, as long as the horrors are being inflicted on "the other."

The reason that torture has such value to the right is that it is something that they can do. If you look at most of the policies advocated by conservatives you see that they are utterly counterproductive. Cutting taxes yields a sclerotic debt-ridden economy. Abstinence-only education generates more abortions (among the middle class and wealthier) and babies born to teens (for the poor). Torture doesn't yield accurate actionable intelligence data but rather forces intelligence operatives and others to chase ghosts. But all of these things are things that they can do. Liberals oppose them because they are ineffective or wrong. Conservatives, therefore, make them virtues.

IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF TOUGHNESS. IT IS A QUESTION OF RIGHT and WRONG. To paraphrase Lincoln, if torture is not wrong, then nothing is wrong.

I'm still not sure why anone cares what Liz Cheney says about anything.

Dick Cheney is so tough he took 5 deferments to avoid service during Vietnam. If he thinks EIT dos not equal torture and should be one, let him be the one to do it, on live tv (camera on him) so we can see if he loses his lunch like most people will or enjoys it as the sociopath he apparently is.
Oh, and by the way, by the standards we applied to General Yamashita in the Philippines, if Cheney acknowledges authorizing such actions, then by the precedent we set he is subject to capital punishment. Fortunately for him, most progressives don't believe in the death penalty.

Torture works really well if you are a Sado Masochist. I wonder if Dick Cheney is enjoying his Back Surgery?
OH Excuse Me, he only like it when someone else is in Pain.....
Bottom line Torture doesn't work.

Sometimes the elimination of a leader' allows a more radical subordinate to ascend to power. It isn't an automatically good thing. Residue from the 'Great Men and Battles' view of history I would guess.

Just take "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice" and add 40 years and a soupcon of batshit crazy.

"Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to."

I fuckin' hate Royalty.

Let the biatch run. Run, Liz, run!!!

Ultimately it's a question of competence, and torture is a tool of tyrants, who are the least competent of rulers.

The purpose of torture is to get confessions, not to learn the truth. That's a fact that has been well-known for millennia.

Was it ever the case that Cheney viewed torture as a "necessary evil"? I could probably sympathize a little bit with the likes of Cheney and Addington if I felt that they had pursued torture because they were boxed in with no other choices, if they had actually agonized over the immorality of what they felt they were forced to do by circumstances outside of their control.

Instead every report I've read of Cheney's machinations indicates that he relished the opportunity to play tough guy, the leader burdened with grave responsibilities that no mere citizen can understand. The one who has to make the "tough decisions." They were acting out their Michael Bay movie fantasies.

For the GOP, torture is no longer a "necessary evil." It is a rally cry, a "values" issue like same-sex marriage or abortion. They don't "grudgingly" support torture, they applaud it. They celebrate it.

Their embrace of bellicosity is always about the same thing: their desire to feel they have permission to kill or hurt (or root on other people killing or hurting) people they hate. It's only secondarily about national security, if at all (or, in the domestic area, crime reduction). It's about having societal permission to be brutal (or vicariously brutal). They want their hatreds social sanctioned; they want to watch their enemies suffer; and they want to feel virtuous about it all. That's why 9/11 was the best Christmas present they ever got.

Here is what I find interesting. On the basis of her position on torture, they believe she is qualified to run for office.

Someone asked why they would want her to run for any office. Here's why - they are safe in their assumption that her position on torture means that she adopts all other talking points in the far-right agenda. The rabid voters of the 82nd Chairborne require straight-ticket positions on everything: same-sex marriage, torture, flag burning, abortion, healthcare, etc. They are comfortable knowing that their candidates give that to them.

In other words, articulating a position on one presupposes the rest. They would vote for Liz not because of her position on torture alone, but because they KNOW that her position on torture indicates her position on everything else. That is the function of what has become of the GOP. Voters don't need to ask. They know her position on EVERYTHING by hearing her position on ANY ONE ISSUE.

Love the oxymoron under the banner of this site...

What do you expect from a fascist party? Torture is considered a virtue in its own right. The Inquisition would have agreed.

Abstinence-only sex education should also be abhorred.

Nice to see that Obama's alleged repudiation of torture is not wholehearted enough to actually prosecute anyone for committing the act. Nice to see the press calling him out on it (not). I guess power really does corrupt eh?

anonymous said
"
The relevant domestic security question is not "Who is 'tough enough' to order underlings to torture someone else in order to keep us safe?"

The relevant question is "Who will keep us safe?"

It's not the function of the government "to keep us safe"
The function of the government is supposed to be to protect our liberties.

Not attacking other countries would help in that.

I'm not terribly pleased to see that the modern conservative movement thinks being a sadistic prick makes up for being a failure and a loser.