Torture Hypocrisy

The US has egg smeared on its face for its torture policy. Or as the Bush-Cheney regime called it, "enhanced interrogation techniques". I guess it lets them sleep at night if they don't call it torture. In my personal opinion, Bush, Cheney and everyone else that was involved in the torture of any prisoners should be brought up on war crimes charges. But there's little chance of that happening. I am grateful to President Obama for discontinuing the use of torture as an SOP for our military and intelligence agencies. (Although I'm sure some are doing it without his permission. Those types always feel that the end justifies the means no matter what.)

Recently, Dick Cheney went on record as saying that waterboarding should have been an option for the "underwear bomber". He thinks that taking those "techniques' off the table weakens the US ability to get information and therefore, by implication, puts American citizens in danger. (Fearmongering was also a specialty of the Bush-Cheney regime.) Yet expert after expert has testified that torture does not work! Has never worked even when torture was legal!
In modern times, the only thing torture does is endanger American soldiers and citizens who may travel abroad. After all, if the US government can use torture, then they lose the right to claim that others cannot use torture against its citizens.

Yet because of the propaganda put out by the Bush-Cheney regime for 8 years and the continuing propaganda put out by the mouthpieces of the radical right since they were booted out of office, 37% of Americans, whose Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal, whose Constitution says that they are innocent until proven guilty, whose government signed the Geneva Convention, say that in some cases torture is acceptable. An even more appalling 46% say that physical abuse is acceptable under certain circumstances. Tell me, where is the line between physical abuse and torture? After how many hours of sleep deprivation does it become torture? After how many times of forcing someone to stand naked and bound for hours at a time does this "physical abuse" become torture?"

I am disgusted by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush and the policies they put in place. I am disgusted by those pundits who supported (and continue to support) them (all the while making huge amounts of money selling their books and memoirs and syndicating their radio talk shows.) They should all be held legally responsible for war crimes and made to pay restitution not only to those who were tortured but to the families of those who were beheaded or killed out of retaliation for the torture of suspected Al Qaeda members. And for those American citizens who support torture? Let them feel what it's like to be waterboarded just once. I'm sure they'll change their tune.