part two of the washington post series on cheney

updated -- already! -- read
EW on today's installment of
"the angler" for great analysis. . .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

first, although i think EW at the
next hurrah has done a fabulous
job of catching many of the ill-
formed assumptions that permeate
the first in this series (and
do go read the others she wrote,
yesterday, here and here), i still
think this series is going to be
required reading, throughout -- if
only to understand the way many in
the m.s.m. will see cheney, on a "go
forward" basis. that is, i think these
washington post articles will define
cheney for many, many americans.

thus -- on that basis alone -- i would
recommend a very close reading for all
cheney-philes. . . and all libby-philes,
and all no-WMDs-philes. . . shoot, for all
people interested in understanding this ad-
ministration's remaining days. . .

read the full article under the
"wa po" wordmark below, but here is
a snippet:

. . .Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden "torture" and permitted use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.

A backlash beginning in 2004, after reports of abuse leaked out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, brought what appeared to be sharp reversals in courts and Congress -- for both Cheney's claims of executive supremacy and his unyielding defense of what he called "robust interrogation.". . .

[in yesterday's installment, we heard quite a bit about
john yoo's views. much
earlier, i put together
a hopefully-ironic mash-up
of john ashcroft talking
to the federalist society
about "individual liberties",
and contrasted it with the
views espoused by dick cheney
and john yoo. it is above, left.]



the entire series may be accessed
by simply clicking on this link,
and following the links there, in
the above-graphic of the washington post.