The incompetence of the Bush-Cheney administration allowed the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to happen. The facts are
easily documented. The Bush-Cheney team was asleep at the wheel, ignored screaming sirens, and failed to prevent the worst ever attack on American soil. For that alone, they should live throughout history in infamy and ignominy. But that was only the beginning. And for Dick Cheney itself, the undermining of American national security continues.
Dick Cheney isn't just a torture apologist, he's complicit in torture occurring. The entire world knows this. Anyone with a conscience knows this. Dick Cheney belongs on trial, given a fair chance to defend himself in national and international courts of law, and if found guilty, he should be subject to appropriate legal sanctions. The same sanctions to which any otherwise anonymous criminal convicted of similar crimes would be subject. Anyone who cares about the very concept of justice knows this.
Right-wing blowholes and their enablers in the American mass media have made a big to-do out of the release of the heavily redacted and only partially investigated Senate report on torture, but not for the reasons they should. They claim that the release of the heavily redacted and only partially investigated Senate report on torture undermines national security. I wrote about it on Sunday, but it needs reiterating: it is not the release of information about the torture that undermines national security, it is that the torture happened in the first place. And now it is that those responsible for the torture are not being held accountable. Dick Cheney goes on TV and says he'd do it again. With the whole world watching.
Let's be clear: the entire world knows there was torture, the entire world knows that Dick Cheney was one of those primarily responsible for the torture regime, and the entire world knows that he is a free man, living in luxury. What does it do to America's standing in the world when the American mass media give Dick Cheney and his ilk repeated opportunities to spew their bile on internationally broadcast television? What does it do to America's standing in the world when the American mass media continue to demonstrate that in the United States those responsible for torture are treated with deference and respect, are given public fora to tout openly their support for what they have done and state clearly that they would do it again, and at times are even openly supported for doing so?
This isn't about free speech, it is about responsibility. By treating torture as a subject worthy of political debate, by treating those responsible for torture as worthy of explaining themselves and their rationales for torture rather than as criminal psychopaths, the American mass media is itself debased. Torture is not debatable. Those responsible for torture deserve neither deference nor respect, and the only place appropriate for them to explain themselves and their deranged rationales is in courts of national and international law. By giving Dick Cheney and his ilk air time, and by treating them as worthy of deference and respect, the American mass media projects to the entire world just how debased it is, and by projection, just how debased the United States has become. The world is watching. The American mass media has the legal right, but by treating Dick Cheney and his ilk with deference and respect, the American mass media undermines national security.