To fully understand Dick Cheney ~ you must realize that he sees himself as a true patriot and any immoral acts such as rendition and torture are excusable when seen in the light of a patriot who is committed to protecting his country.
Patriotism is obviously Cheney's last refuge ~ which explains his blatant defense of torture within the context that it was necessary to protect the country.
To Cheney, all moral values, human rights violations, blatant lies and deception are inconsequential when compared to his neocon vision of America ~ and can always be justified under the cloak of patriotism.
It was T.D. Allman / Rolling Stone who offered the most penetrating analysis of Cheney entitled THE CURSE OF DICK CHENEY when he wrote in 2004 ~ "Those who have known him over the years remain astounded by what they describe as his almost autistic indifference to the thoughts and feelings of others " http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story?id=6450422
And it is Cheney himself who once said " The Natural State Of Man Is War " so this scoundrel has always been comfortable with war and its human cost and consequences. Thus, his illegal actions and abuse of power, including quite possibly the 9/11 cover-up, are always excusable to himself in the context of a patriot doing what is necessary to preserve executive power and his grand global neocon vision.
The only antidote for this poisonous mindset is the TRUTH and the American Progress Report yesterday took a giant step in that direction.
FEINGOLD SAYS CHENEY IS WRONG, 'NOTHING I HAVE SEEN' IN CIA MEMOS PROVES TORTURE WAS NECESSARY
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, and Matt Duss
http://pr.thinkprogress.org/#utr
" Vice President Cheney has spent the past few weeks on a media blitz defending the Bush administration's authorization of torture. During his media appearances, Cheney repeatedly points to two currently classified CIA memos that he says "showed the success of the effort." During a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing yesterday on Bush's torture regime, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) declared that nothing in those memos suggests that torture was the most effective way to gain information. "Nothing I have seen ~ including the two documents to which former Vice President Cheney has repeatedly referred ~ indicates that the torture techniques authorized by the last administration were necessary, or that they were the best way to get information out of detainees.
"The former vice president is misleading the American people when he says otherwise," Feingold said. Also during the hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) echoed Cheney's defense of torture, saying that "one of the reasons these techniques have survived for about 500 years is apparently they work."
Another dagger of truth in the Cheney bubble of deceit was this last Wednesday evening when Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state, wrote a note to the website The Washington Note ~ in which he added his weight to the gathering testimony that the real purpose of the Bush / Cheney administration torture program was to produce evidence that could be used to justify the Iraq war. http://www.democrats.com/lawrence-wilkerson-drops-an-iraq-torture-bombshell
