Cheney Family Torture Values... er, Values Torture

Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz have brought burlesque to the talk show circuit, defending the use of torture like, well, like one of their lives depended on it.  This recent exercise in pro-enhanced interrogation publicity has apparently paid dividends.

Cenk Uygur writes on Kos:  Dick Cheney's PR offensive over the last month actually worked. Barack Obama just crumbled and will follow Cheney's command to not release the new set of detainee abuse pictures... Just talk about torture doesn't really do it for the American people. But when they see pictures, they get it. That's why Bush had to apologize profusely and throw a few low-level soldiers under the bus when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out. You think there would have been anywhere near that level of controversy or accountability (such that it was) without the pictures?

Over ar HuffPo, Bob Cesca explains the real motive behind the Cheney Family's Whirlwind Torture Tour:  Sadly, the complexities and parameters of torture appear to be open for debate these days. But using torture as a means to falsify evidence for war is a far more damning and despicable can of worms. So it stands to reason that Cheney would roll out whatever ammunition he has in order to obfuscate and sidetrack the issue. Including the use of his daughter as a spokesperson. This way, we're all wrapped up in debating whether waterboarding is actually torture, or whether the Bushies kept us safe (they didn't), or, in the case of the cable news talkers, whether or not the Cheney family "closed the deal" with their various TV performances.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson writes:  For the final act of his too-long public career, Cheney seems to have decided to become an Old Faithful of self-serving nonsense. His latest in a series of eruptions came Sunday on "Face the Nation," when he continued to press his revisionist case for torture - and, for good measure, counseled his beloved Republican Party to marginalize itself even further from public opinion and common sense.

Earlier this week, Robinson appeared alongside Liz Cheney on MSNBC's Morning Joe.  Crooks and Liars' David Neiwert describes the segment:  It quickly devolves into crosstalk, and Cheney spends a lot of time filibustering with her talking points, but she never is able to effectively respond to Robinson's chief point:  Legal paperwork is not adequate cover for committing torture, one of the most heinous of all crimes.

I watched that debate - although perhaps "debate" isn't the best way to describe a verbal exchange in which one participant uses reason and the other whoops like a howler monkey.  Robinson was patient and persistant, Liz Cheney was aggressive and peevish. Darth's daughter didn't respond to Robinson's main argument because it fell beyond the scope of the Republican storyline, which is:  Torture is good for the USA - but don't call it torture.  And, if we don't torture these suspects we'll all die.