Bounds of debate effectively policed
or
Cheney made my baby cry
Newspoem 12 December 2014
(after Satan)
The Senate's report said the
Bush administration's torture program was
ineffective at gathering useful intelligence.
On an interview with Fox,
Cheney, visibly reddening as he
gathered his intelligence, blurted the
report was "full of crap."
Torture. "I'd do it again
in a minute," he spewed,
although his role was limited
to translating inhuman cruelty into
policy, not working the prisons.
The report may or may
not have mentioned that torturing
people defeats the purpose of
being human, violating something without
which no report can matter.
But we are past that
part of the debate, on
war, on torture. Whether it's
evil. Whether we're evil. Whether
that's a problem for us.
We're also past the other
part of the debate: could
a budget of trillions go
instead toward helping our country?
The only foothold an anti-war,
anti-evil, anti-arms-and-oil-company, pro-American argument can
get is whether evil "works."
Torture. Does it work in
getting information to win war?
War. Does it work in
seizing control of territory to
occupy? Does occupation work in...
...
Too far. There is no
stated agenda in the longest
war in American history, except
to "fight terror." Terror wins.
The report omitted all this,
of course, but this "terrible
piece of work" didn't mention
that torturing people is tremendously
effective at torturing people, that
the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq have been enormously effective
at prolonging war, that killing
people has been inestimably effective
at killing people dead. Capital.
Bang.
Cheney admitted he hadn't read
the report. He said that
Bush "knew all he needed
or wanted to know," while
taking more vacations than any
president in history, overseeing two
wars. Cheney did not go
to prison and was not
tried as a war criminal. Cheney
is clearly endowed with certain
inalienable rights, created equal, more
equal than others, says Fox.