What if Cheney's Right?
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, May 12, 2009Blogger Alert: I have written a column in defense of Dick Cheney. I know how upsetting this will be to some Cheney critics, and I count myself as one, who think -- in respectful paraphrase of what Mary McCarthy said about Lillian Hellman -- that everything he says is a lie, including the ands and the thes. Yet I have to wonder whether what he is saying now is the truth -- i.e., torture works.
Why do you have to wonder? Because it's Cheney?
My understanding is, none of those defending torture have any working experience as an interrogator. I don't know anyone with working experience as an interrogator that defends torture. Before 9/11 the consensus was that torture does not work. What changed? Everything, right?
Wrong.
Human nature has not changed. If torture didn't work on 9/10, it didn't work on 9/12.
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The Problem with Liberals
"I have written a column in defense of Dick Cheney. I know how upsetting this will be to some Cheney critics, and I count myself as one..."
I am not a devotee of Chairman Mao but the older I get the more I think he was right about liberals being a corrosive element in political struggles.