"Guantanamo State Of Mind"

Jacob Sullum writes for Reason:

In January 2002, the Pentagon began imprisoning men it described as “very hard cases”—“the worst of the worst” terrorists in American custody—at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During the next seven years it released more than 500 of them. “What’s left,” Vice President Dick Cheney declared in the final week of the Bush administration, “is the hard core.” That was a few days before the Pentagon released half a dozen more.

Unless the Bush administration recklessly loosed hundreds of hardened terrorists on the world, its initial descriptions of the detainees were mistaken. That pattern of error reinforces the argument against allowing the executive branch to wield the unchallengeable authority it asserted at Guantanamo.

As President Obama proceeds with his plan to close the prison, he should recognize that Guantanamo is not so much a place as a state of mind. It’s an attitude that says: We know who the bad guys are, and we’re not about to let anyone endanger national security by second-guessing us.

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Cato Takes Cheney To Task On Security

From the Cato Institute:

Recently former Vice President Dick Cheney had the audacity to claim the Obama administration, by reversing President George W. Bush's policy on the harsh interrogation of terrorist suspects, has endangered American lives and opened our country to another terrorist attack. Americans would be best served by ignoring the baseless accusations of the former vice president.

Today, if America is as vulnerable as Cheney claims, the reasons are that the interrogation methods he defends have become a major recruiting tool for terrorists, and that he and his ilk diverted America's resources away from those who attacked us on 9/11 by invading a country that did not. Regrettably, the war in Iraq was a costly distraction for which we are now paying in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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Prominent Iowa blogger and paradigmatic GOP hack Ted Sporer would do well to pay less attention to Fox News and more to the Cato Institute. As would any Republican activist or politician who actually cares about ideas and the truth. But that's a pretty small fraction of them at this point--because the base is not reality-based.

Ted Sporer Gets Off On Torture, Militarism

Here's what Sporer had to say about the following video:

Some one needs to discuss the consequences of the childlike approach to national security by which the Obama Adminstration [sic] is imperilling the United States.

I recommend that this windbag, who seems to be pretty representative of the average Iowa Republican activist at this point, read up on the torture methods Cheney advocates before defending them as a wise national security strategy. Unless of course he doesn't mind coming across as an ignorant fascist.

Update:

Andrew Sullivan continues to do his part to keep the heat on the vicious former vice president:

What people forget about Cheney is his rank incompetence - which he covers up with fear-mongering and sadism. Very few things have enraged me as much recently - not even the thieves and con-artists at AIG - as that disgraceful, repellent, and deeply dishonest CNN interview Cheney gave last Sunday. Truly a low-point in that man's gutter-level conduct of public office.

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Olbermann Takes On Cheney And His Lies

(Via Slog.)

Cheney Attacks Obama For Following The Law

CNN reports:

The Obama administration's new policies on Guantanamo Bay prison and the treatment of detainees makes it more likely a terrorist attack against the United States will succeed, former Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday.

In an interview with Politico, the former vice president issued a stringent defense of the Bush administration's record on the war on terror, and said he worries the President Obama has already made the country more vulnerable.

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said in the interview published Wednesday.

Obama should ignore this, but Holder should get the ball rolling on a criminal investigation into Bush officials' illegal actions. Cheney is obviously trying to goad Obama into a war of words to make any future prosecution look like personal retribution. But this shouldn't be about Cheney or Obama. It should be about the law. Torture is torture. Period.

Update:

Andrew Sullivan shows how America's torture practices under Bush are having serious consequences for our country's relationship with the UK.

Update II:

More from Sullivan, this time on Cheney's inexcusable behavior.

Update III:

Sullivan links to Spencer Ackerman's thorough take down of the nonsense Cheney continues to spew.

An Excellent Reason To Be Thankful This Holiday Season

Despite my serious misgivings about what sort of economic policies the Obama-Biden administration will enact, I'm thrilled to be getting rid of Cheney-Bush and their gang of torture-happy goons.

Out with the old:



And in with the new:



Noon on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 can't come soon enough.