I don’t think Vice President Cheney is lying, I think he is deluded. He has to believe what he has to believe because otherwise he would have to accept the damage he has done to this country. I do have to question your idea that it worked very well when we know it produced false testimony in Colin Powells presentation to the U.N.. I also am fairly certain you are disregarding all of the arm services which rejected this approach to interrogation outright. Then of course there is the question that if it work so well, why did we have to use over 100 times on one detainee? I will remind you that the 2004 CIA inspector general’s investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from agrressive interrogation helped thwart any “specific imminent attacks.” FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn’t think that the techniques disrupted any attacks. Finally the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair said the information “was valuable in some instances”but the “there is no way of knowing wiether the sam information could have been obtained throu other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the worlkd, the damage they have doe to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essentioal to our national security.” These are no my words, but people in positions to know.

One of the fatal flaws in your logic is that if torture is so wonderful, why oh why did we not use it during past wars, heck why don’t we let our police torture. If the argument for its use rests on its effectiveness, then laws and moral principles are not necessary.

I will leave you with one last thought. Col Wilkerson, Colin Powers Chief of Staff when he was the Secretary of Defense, has told how the CIA misled and hid facts in their presentation to prepare Colin Power for his speech to the U.N. We will never know who is telling the truth about the Pelosi briefing, but based upon their history, I am siding with Nancy. And oh by the way Republican lawmaker Peter Hoekstra, a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, has released unclassified portions of the CIA inspector general’s report that he says, show the agency misled the Justice Department and Congress about the shoot down of a plane in 2001, and that CIA officers knew of and condoned violations of procedure. I don’t think any Democrat did their duty back in those early years, but on this one, I am siding with Nancy because the CIA has a history of covering their butts.

This is a really tough little cog in your wheel… but it’s not going to just go away. You can continue to assume that waterboarding never gives us valuable information… and ignore this little bit of evidence… or you could continue to believe that Cheney is SILL LYING. Which raises the question: why would Cheney lie about these memos and the effectiveness of waterboarding? He’s not running for anything anymore… he’s not in power anymore… and he could so easily be PROVEN TO BE A FRAUD!!!! WHY RISK BEING COMPLETLY MARGINALIZED over waterboarding. This leads me to believe that this technique DID work… and worked rather well.

I’m not going to argue with you over international law… from what I understand, terrorists are just like pirates… which is why Obama could order 3 of them to be snipered out of their boat without a hearing or without any constitutional protections. In other words… they don’t REALLY HAVE all these protections you wish they had. Did Obama abandon our “shared values” when he snipered those teenagers? Just curious how selective you are in your outrage here…

Finally, WOW! We have DESIGNED a method of interrogation to produce FALSE RESULTS…. the CIA DESIGNED them this way! WOW, Maybe Pelosi IS telling the truth after all!

Secondly, your argument is NO BETTER (or less circular) than Cheney’s. You don’t think waterboarding is right… because… YOU say so? It’s torture because that’s what YOUR moral sensibilities lead you to conclude? That’s not even an argument, it’s moral superiority loosely disguised as an argument. At least the Bush administration approaches this topic with arguments and with an eye to the law… everyone on the left seems to say that the Bush administration should be held accountable to a bunch of un-written, moral laws they can’t exactly pinpoint or can’t exactly explain… IT JUST IS THAT WAY. Righhhtt… because YOU say so. At least the bush administration had something more to back up their argument than moral superiority.

Just something to think about.