Dick Cheney is a war criminal. The lie nurtured by corporate media that torture “kept us safe” won’t mask Cheney’s criminality no matter how many Sunday news shows he parades around on. Besides, he failed us on 9/11.
Torture is a war crime. It is explicitly stated in the U.N. Convention Against Torture, the Geneva Convention and the U.S. Constitution. It is absolute and unequivocal. Under section 2340A of the United States Code, there is a 20-year prison sentence for one infraction and a possible death sentence if torture results in death.
A Human Rights Watch report states: “Approximately 100 detainees, including CIA-held detainees, have died during U.S. interrogations, and some are known to have been tortured to death.” Additionally, newly released memos implicate Cheney in the waterboarding of detainees to extract false confessions tying Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida to justify the Iraq war. Cheney should be worried.
Unfortunately, instead of portraying the documented abuses that have occurred as war crimes warranting accountability and condemnation, the media portrays the monstrosity and abomination of torture as some kind of casual debate. The framing goes something like this: “Does torture work, or doesn’t it? Should we use it or not use it as a national policy? Let’s talk about it.”
The first tactic of tyrannical dictators is to convince their people that it is in their best interest to suspend civil liberties and torture people in order to protect the country from external and internal threats. This is Cheney’s national soul-rotting mantra. America must reject it – unequivocally.
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