The Cheney Doctrine (Guest Voice)
The Cheney Doctrine
by Will Durst
I’m sick of torture. And the fact that we’re one of the countries way up there on the J.D. Powers annual “torture reliability” list makes me unwell as well. As does talking AROUND torture. What this country needs is an up-front national referendum on whether we should or shouldn’t be torturing people.
Oh wait. That’s right, we did have one.
Last November 4th.
These aren’t your normal, ordinary everyday forms of torture we’re talking about either: like twelfth in line at a understaffed Starbucks or shuffling through life a Golden State Warriors fan or being forced to watch NBC’s prime-time lineup against your will, I’m referring to real, state-sponsored, “talk or we do something crazy” Jack Bauer-on-steroids kind of stuff.
The big difference being, Kiefer Sutherland’s rascally television torturer gets most of his best results simply by raising his voice. “Are you going to talk?” “Never.” Compelling him to move in real close and yell in the dastardly scoundrel’s face: “ARE YOU GOING TO TALK NOW?” “Okay. Okay. I’ll talk. Just lower your voice. The kids are trying to sleep.”
Now we got Nancy Pelosi and the CIA exchanging torture lying charges. Don’t you hate it when lovers’ spats go public? The Republicans are gleefully sliding into the House Speaker cleats up because she has little of the President’s Teflon coating. To many Americans she’s that great aunt who smiles too much at Thanksgiving and always uses your full name when scolding you for poor quality table manners. “William, only cows chew with their mouths open.”
Even Dick Cheney has gotten into the act with a recent talk-show offensive defending his administration’s torture policies. And as far as everybody in the nation who sees his face being mightily offended, he’s been successful. This is not a partisan thing. A National Journal poll of Republican insiders shows 57 percent of them think he’s hurting the party. So pretty much everybody agrees, Dick Cheney speaking on torture is redundant.
He called the enhanced interrogation techniques used at Gitmo regrettable but necessary. And you got to love that phrase: “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Sounds like instructions on how to turn on the fluorescents at a job interview. He’s not being tortured, he’s being solicited to provide easy answers to exceptionally difficult questions. In bad lighting. And those car-battery cables attached to his nipples are “nervous system awareness amplifiers.”
What I don’t get is how anybody can defend waterboarding a single prisoner 183 times. Operationally, wouldn’t you think the effectiveness would start to wear off after about 60 or 70? What genius kept pushing, “I know we’ve gotten nothing the first couple hundred times here, but I got a hunch, this next time — we’re gold.” Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 183 times, shame on me. As my daddy always said: 183rd time’s the charm.
The best way Dick Cheney could help this country is to creep back to that undisclosed location of his, and maybe take Joe Biden with him. Still haven’t figured out why Cheney is so obsessed with selling the positive merits of torture. Though there is that old axiom about one man’s torture being another man’s S&M turn-on, so maybe that explains more about the Cheney Doctrine than we really need to know. TMI. You want torture? Dick Cheney in fishnets. Try to pry that image out of your mind.
Will Durst is a San Francisco-based political comic who writes sometimes. This is one of them. Copyright ©2009, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate.
The cartoon by John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri, is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
3 Responses to “The Cheney Doctrine (Guest Voice)”
I am adamant that some form of coercion was used on anything-but-war-and-torture Pelosi. Do we really believe that she sat drooling at the prospect of abetting torture?
Lest we forget, the post-911 [convenient] paranoia atmosphere had all sorts of otherwise sane people doing very fearful things…agreeing to stupid invasions of privacy and so on in the name of “staying safe!” *shudder*..
So Dick Cheney knew how to weild terror like a wand, herding the cattle to and fro. Pelosi got caught up in this against her better moral character and judgement.
Go after the kingpins..
There is no excuse for torture, and there is no excuse for lying. Cheney and Pelosi should both get out of the way, retire and resign respectively, so the country can move on with solving its pressing problems.
As for the debate on torture, let's have it. But, let's have it in light of all the facts following a “private” nonpartisan investigation, i.e. not by Congreess and not by the press.
One note to Will, we did not have a referendum on torture last November. I do not concede that the torture issue is what swung the election or that the majority of voters intended for their votes to be counted as an endorsement of every policy Obama proposed during the campaign. They voted against Bush and for “change” in the person of a very articulate and charismatic Barack Obama.
The GOP is loving this- they can move the debate from the illegality and moral pulchritude of torture to place the straw lady, Pelosi on the bonfire. Reframing with argument popsicle sticks.
This country could do without the likes of a lot of these equivocating dipwads. Pelosi, Reid, stfu please.