Just listening to Dick Cheney usually is enough to get any normal person hot under the collar. So if the unseasonably cool temperatures have got you shivering, check out the transcripts of these two radio interviews the Vice President had today with Sean Hannity and Scott Hennen.
In the former, Cheney has the gall to say that Democratic politicans who charge him and George Bush with being "liars" are undermining the war effort and "I think what it does is it encourages our adversaries", al Qaida. No word from him, however, on whether the charge is true.
Yet Hannity at his worst cannot hold a candle to the raw and stupid Hennen. From start to finish, Hennen's interview with Cheney is vile. It truly beggars belief. I suspect that you will not want to miss this one -- if only for Cheney's assertion that "things are going along swimmingly" with American policy.
I won't ruin the fun by describing the full contents of this horror show. But here is one segment that deserves to be singled out.
Q I've heard from a lot of listeners -- that's what we do for a living, talk to good folks in the Heartland every day -- and I've talked to as many who want an increased military presence in Iraq as want us out, which seems to be the larger debate, at least coming from the left -- cut and run, get out of there. One fax said, when you talk to the Vice President, ask him when shock and awe is coming back to Iraq. Let's finish the job once and for all.
And terrorist interrogations and that debate is another example. And I've had people call and say, please, let the Vice President know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we're all for it, if it saves American lives. Again, this debate seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you agree?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I do agree. ...
Q Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President "for torture." We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that.
And thanks to the leadership of the President now, and the action of the Congress, we have that authority, and we are able to continue [the] program.
The mind boggles. The Vice President agrees that we should go back to inflicting an intense aerial bombardment on Iraq, though we now occupy the country? For the purpose of...? He accepts the description of water-boarding as "dunking" prisoners? He's claiming that water-boarding is both a "no-brainer" and not torture? He's admitting that the Torture Bill just signed into law by George Bush will be used to continue the water-boarding?
The one thing that would have made sense in this circumstance is of course the very thing that Cheney does not utter: "Mr. Hennen, you're a fruitcake."
These are the kind of nuts to whom Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld have been giving interviews over the years. As I've discussed in the past, they reach past and around the saner part of the American populace to address their base by means of these weird radio talk-show hosts. You'll rarely see or hear any of the triumvirate being interviewed by respectable journalists. But the nuts, however obscure, however ill-informed, they have their own keys to the White House.
At your leisure, run down the lists of the interviews that the White House and Dept. of Defense websites link to. You'll be gobsmacked at the number of idiots whom Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld can make time to talk to.
Update 10/26/06 13:23
I see that McClatchy News has now picked up the story about Cheney's comments on water-boarding in the interview with Hennen. Subsequently, several other bloggers have noticed the interview and are commenting...for example, Glenn Greenwald.
Comments
Add Comment