It's torture apologist Sunday on the bobble head shows this weekend with every network allowing at least one or more of these guys to pollute our airways and attempt to justify or dismiss the findings in the Senate torture report.
Cheney dared to venture out beyond the generally safe confines of Fox "news" and did a twenty minute long interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press this morning, and most of what he said is not new. He's unrepentant about what they did, still lying and claiming it prevented attacks and still changing the subject any time someone actually tries to pin him down on something he doesn't want to discuss or answer to.
This little bit of revisionist history was something new. Apparently in Cheney-world, we didn't prosecute the Japanese for waterboarding. It was for "other stuff."
TODD: When you say waterboarding is not torture, then why did we prosecute Japanese soldiers during World War II for waterboarding?
CHENEY: For a lot of stuff, not for waterboarding... and they did a lot of other stuff. To draw some kind of moral equivalent between waterboarding, judged by our Justice Department not to be torture and what the Japanese did with the Bataan March and the slaughter of thousands of Americans, with the rape of Nanking and all the other crimes they committed, that's an outrage.
It's a really cheap shot Chuck to even try to draw a parallel between the Japanese who were prosecuted for war crimes after World War II and what we did with the waterboarding of three individuals, all of whom were guilty and participate in the 9-11 attacks.
No Dick, that's what we call a softball question when there's no real follow up after you lie to Chuck Todd's face. Todd then asked Cheney about them making sure this was not done on U.S. soil to avoid the legal implications for their actions, which Cheney of course just blew off.
TODD: Is there a reason these interrogations didn't happen on U.S. soil? Was there a concern that maybe these folks would get legal protections from the United States and that's why it was done at black sites?
CHENEY: We didn't read them their Miranda rights either. These are not American citizens. They are unlawful combatants. They are terrorists. They are people who have committed unlawful acts of war against the American people and we put them in places where we could proceed with the interrogation program and find out what they knew so we could protect the country against further attacks. And it worked.
Here's to hoping the lot of them can't travel anywhere outside of the United States. If we're not going to clean up our own mess, maybe someone else finally will.
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