I wish I could say I’ve been amazed by how a few of our so-called mainstream media mention the war criminals who have been prosecuted for waterboarding by the U.S. justice system instead of parroting the “ticking time bomb” since torture... uh, crimes against humanity... uh, harsh/enhanced interrogation was not used before 9/11 attacks.

McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay was prescient about the fact the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion and its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.

According to former Colin Powell aide Lawrence Wilkerson, “So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee ‘was compliant’ (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, ‘revealed’ such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop."

(Incidentally, al-Libi just committed suicide in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi.)

Still I am not amazed Stephen F. Hayes and the rest of the Right Wing Noise Machine believe our formerly always hiding VP Dick Cheney is winning the debate despite our nation's loss of honor, credibility, and moral high ground.

Dick Cheney's legacy tour is stirring up a lot of strong feelings and dark humor. For the last three weeks Glenn Beck and the GOP water carriers have been playing what did Nancy Pelosi “know and when did she know it” instead of questioning the veracity of our CIA. Especially since former Senator Bob Graham and Newsmax.com have chronicled errors in the CIA briefing reports about when and what our legislators were told.

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