Let's recap

Don't read Glenn Greenwald's take on Dick Cheney unless you have a strong stomach. Realizing that our VP jokes with idiot Republicans about waterboarding people when we prosecuted Japanese in WW2 for the very same tactic is disheartening.

Oh, and don't forget that other countries are now modeling their torture treatment on US and giving themselves permission to do more, not less.

Watching Bill Maher last night and was reminded that conservatives (those who defend torture) ALL treat the issue as if all of these people have a ticking time bomb under New York City. That is the only way they can approach this moral issue. But they refuse to address the actual moral environment they have created--one where a President can snap up an American citizen as enemy combatant and also determine how to define torture. One where those detainees can be waterboarded, forced to suffer fake burials and hypothermia, whether they are innocent or guilty. And how will we know?

It is a sickening, disheartening thing. We have become the Soviet Union and conservatives are clapping. Back to Greenwald and our Veep:

Hennen [talk show host and "interviewer"] and Cheney also shared their affection for waterboarding. Hennen told Cheney: "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" and Hennen asked: "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" In reply to the latter question, Cheney replied: "It's a no-brainer for me" -- a statement understood, reasonably, to be the first open acknowledgement by a senior Bush official that we use waterboarding -- and Cheney agreed with Hennen that the torture debate "seems a little silly given the threat we face."

These are our leaders. This is what they have done to us.