17.5.09

on Cheney's positions about Obama and torture

...even on the outside chance Cheney is right that torture, warrantless wiretapping and dismantling of habeas corpus make us safer.......so what?

Who ever promised it would be safe to be an American? It was not safe for the Founding Fathers or the colonists to wage revolution. It was not safe for Lincoln to fight for the Union. Do we really want to be the first generation of Americans to be too scared to stand up for the Constitution?

The Constitution only stands so long as Americans are willing to die for it. What Cheney proposes, an American populace with so little courage that they would cast aside the Constitution to save their necks, is the lowest form of treason.

— 10K walker, New York


George Lucas had it right when asked if Cheney was Darth Vadar. He responded that Cheney was more evil than Vadar, who had been turned to the dark side, but retained an awareness of of its evil. No, Cheney is that much darker, unambiguously evil figure---the Emperor of Evil himself. Cue the Death Star music!

— calyban, Fairfax, California


Cheney and Bush were bin Laden's most valuable force multipliers. I truly believe Cheney was mentally incompetent to serve in office, although that apparently put him right in the center of the Bell curve for GOP leadership.

For at least seven years, this country stopped being the United States, and became Vichy America. Until we take an honest accounting, the social, economic and political forces which took us there remain.

I'm not interested in retribution. I want to see us recover and thrive again. I want my media and airwaves back. I want corporate brand names erased from public places and bowl games. I want pharmaceutical companies to quit marketing and start discovering. I want banking to be boring again, and creative financing to be erased from the face of the earth. I want work and innovation to be the way we make a living.

I guess I want the Reagan revolution to be understood for the hubris it really was.

— Steve R, Phoenix, AZ


Cheney is behaving the way he is because he knows that he is culpable for America's use of torture. The only way to distract Americans from this simple statement of fact - and to escape indictment - is to wrap himself and his actions in patriotism.

How shallow, yet how effective. The discussion has shifted away from whether or not torture is wrong and criminal (it is) to whether or not we should torture people to protect our country (ironic).

I hope that Cheney's sleight of hand, which so effectively coerced us into the war in Iraq, is brought to light by the media, government investigations, and prosecutions.

— Pangaea, NYC


Power is so hard to give up. When you amass it like this it rots your mind and hardens your heart. I wouldn't be too shocked if I heard that Cheney ate his dogs for dinner the day our troops finally withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving his Halliburton stranded and his Brown and Root digging holes with their tongues for a so-called pipeline.

That presidency was all about fuel, and we are reaping those benefits with a 50-year-old infrastructure, a broken health care system, a retrograde education and rampant foreclosures.

Those were the easiest 8 years. No need to make improvements and become more cultured and open-minded. We were attacked and that was the end of progress.

We betrayed our grandchildren. We crushed their eco-system, stomped on two sovereign countries, then treated the Europeans like maggots. "Call them 'Liberty Fries!'" - was the rant of the day.

The 43rd Presidency was the oil industry commodity. Ironically, gas is cheap and we hardly manufacture cars worth driving with it.

But let's not be so pessimistic. Despite those Dark Ages of Bushisms, Cheneyisms and Cronyism, a brilliant man emerged, took over the White House, mended our economy, closed Guantánamo, befriended the Iranians and the Cubans and much much more. He even built a library dedicated to the first 100 days! And possibly placed those "radicals" like Tom DeLay and Gonzalez behind bars.

Power is so fleeting. Cheney is witless scared and has to come out and ruin the honeymoon for all of us. "We are so unsafe" , so exposed, so unprotected, it's as if the only friend he had in the world were a criminal: Scooter Libby.

But where is Cheney getting his intelligence?

— Jackie, Austin


Former Gov Jesse Ventura said it best on Larry King the other night - Give me a water board Dick Cheney and 1 hour and I will have Cheney confessing to the Sharon Tate murders - But I don't think it would take a hour - more like 1 minute

— Michael, Hastings MN

No comments:

Blog Archive