Cheney: Torture is a "no-brainer"

By Heraclitus

Not to suggest that there's anything more important than kinky passages in Jim Webb's fiction (passages that even Michelle Malkin doesn't want to talk about, for crying out loud), but you may have heard that beloved VP Dick Cheney has declared the practice of waterboarding suspected terrorists a "no-brainer." Cheney then, however, in the next breath goes on to assert that "we don't torture." Of course, this is the same game the Bushies have been playing for a while now, claiming that they aren't using torture, while at the same time refusing to say what exactly they are doing. "We don't discuss techniques," as Bush told Bill O'Reilly, who actually did a first-rate job of exposing Bush on this question.

The White House, of course, is strenuously denying that Cheney's comment can be construed as support for torture, since the US government isn't torturing anyone (but why not, if it's a "no-brainer"?). Tony Snow's denials promted the following remark from Andrew Sullivan:

Lies; lies, and more lies. At the heart of this election is whether the American people should support people who have contempt for the most basic of American liberties, who have suspended habeas corpus for the indefinite future and who think it is a "no-brainer", in this respect, to adopt the moral interrogation standards of the Khmer Rouge.

This should not be a partisan issue or even a political issue. It is a civic responsibility. Vote Democrat or abstain.

It wasn't that long ago that Sullivan was about as militant a presence as you would find on the right-wing blogosphere, sort of a more nuanced, well-informed and literate Glenn Reynolds. How far he's come in, what, three years? It's too bad his case is so rare, but it also says a lot about what's really motivating the various GOP cheerleaders and pundits.