Dick Cheney Defends Torture Because of Terrorist Nuke Threat
Like the Crypt Keeper, Dick Cheney can't resist arising from his coffin to warn us about Teh Terrorist Threat and why the CheneyBush administration was correct in torturing Muslims who were alleged to be planning for our demise. It's all because these terrorists - who show the sophistication to use box cutters to high-jack airplanes and old AK-47s and improvised explosives against our troops in the Middle East - are going to get a nuclear bomb and take out New York City.
Cheney said intercepting calls from overseas and enhanced interrogations of captured al-Qaida helped officials find out what they knew.
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"Now I think the biggest threat of all is the possibility that we'll end up with terrorists, at some point, in the heart of one of our communities, one of our big cities, armed with a nuclear weapon.""When you're dealing with somebody who wants to die for Allah and their promise is that if they do they'll go straight to paradise, then the possibility of a nuclear weapon isn't a deterrent, it's an incentive. And it's my belief if they ever do get their hands on that kind of capability, that they'll use it."
I don't blame the media anymore for jumping on Cheney's statements, because they enjoy the sensationalistic impact his words have on the news market. It's just entertainment to the MSM. They don't have to actually worry about what the government is or isn't doing to address this movie-drama scenario. We in the national security business don't have that luxury.
This senile, old man lost his nerve when AQ hit us on 9/11, and now he sees ghosts and goblins in every corner of the world. It's bad enough that the Republican administration used this threat as an excuse to vastly increase the size of government and its intrusion into our private lives. But I really get annoyed when I hear Democrats repeating this idiotic rhetoric as if there were any rationale to this imaginary scenario. They all see the consequences of a nuclear weapon being detonated in an American city without understanding the extremely small to zero chance of that event ever happening.
Terrorists are the threat, not nuclear terrorism. It's not the greatest security threat to the United States, and it shouldn't be used as an excuse for unprecedented and unchecked government actions. Treat it as it should be treated, a remote but possible threat that can be easily mitigated by a few simple steps: 1) secure radiological and nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 2) work more closely with other nations on steps they can take to safeguard material, and 3) focus intel assets and law enforcement on terrorist groups who seem interested in making deals with nuclear weapon states. Really not that hard, and we ought to treat it more seriously than a scary movie.
