Ethics

Cheney Plays Humpty Dumpty

By Ed Brayton

When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." So said Humpty Dumpty to a bewildered Alice in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. It appears that Dick Cheney believes exactly the same thing as he continues to redefine reality in order to exonerate himself for his war crimes. In an interview with the Mooney Times, Cheney says that waterboarding is not torture because they got lawyers to tell them it wasn't:

"I think there were a total of about 33 who were subjected to enhanced interrogation; only three of those who were subjected to waterboarding," Cheney told the paper, according to a transcript released by the Vice President's office Monday. "Was it torture? I don't believe it was torture. We spent a great deal of time and effort getting legal advice, legal opinion out of the Office of Legal Counsel, which is where you go for those kinds of opinions, from the Department of Justice as to where the red lines were out there in terms of this you can do, this you can't do. The CIA handled itself, I think, very appropriately."

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on December 29, 2008 (boomark / email).