Glenn, quoting Krauthammer: "Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. . . . The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. . . ."

That's quite neat how Krauthammer asserts that torture is an "impermissable evil," (which is indisputable), yet so easily finds the two exceptions...the first of which has never happened and the second of which can be applied to so many situations that it becomes a virtual free pass to, uh, permit "impermissable (sic) evil."

Is Krauthammer really this stupid? Does he think we are really this stupid? Can he be, if not stupid, so cynical as to believe such odious horseshit will sway rational minds?

Actually, I think Krauthammer and Cheney and the brigade of torture apologists and "it's unpleasant but sometimes necessary" propagandists are shrewd enough to know their rhetoric is transparently free of logic or sense, is patently dishonest, yet they also know--or hope--that if they disseminate their mendacities in a multi-voiced barrage of coordinated repetition and frequency, their rhetoric will act as an obfuscating mist clouding the real issue that torture is actually, as they say but do not really mean, an impermissable evil, a crime in all cases.

"The notion that we can bomb and kill innocents in the name of self-defense (drone attacks in Pakistan), yet cannot torture to defend Americans, is indefensible, . . . from a moral perspective."

Correct. And because he is ordering the use of drones to drop bombs in Pakistan, Obama joins Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al in the ranks of war criminals. (This is aside from his complicity in their previous war crimes in not advocating investigation and prosecution of them...which he is legally bound to do.)

I have no doubt Ms. Cheney's father would rather be fishing in Wyoming. However, given that he is guilty of planning and committing war crimes--launching an aggressive war and inflicting torture on prisoners--he's got to spend his retirement time obfuscating and dissembling, spreading his rhetoric like a cloud in hopes he can either sway opinion his way or at least so confuse the issues of the crimes involved that forward momentum to mounting investigations may be stopped, or at least seriously impeded.

Like all criminals, he's got to set up his alibis and try to tamper with the jury!

You said, "Perhaps the President doesn't realize this, but the vast majority of Americans are disgusted and ashamed that we tortured people."

I'm sorry to say I don't believe "the vast majority" of Americans are disgusted or ashamed. I think many don't have any awareness that we have tortured, or they don't believe it, or they don't care, or they support it, or they think "it's over, let it go." My own mother, a retired nurse and very warm, loving person, but a conservative Republican, thinks I should "just let it go" when I continue to discuss criminal sanctions against the Bush administration for their crimes. First, she doesn't believe crimes or torture were committed; second, she thinks, "it's in the past, it's over, you should just be happy we have someone new in office." Frankly, although she thinks she's well-informed, she doesn't know what's really going on as she gets her news primarily from Fox and from her very poor daily paper in Florida.

I think, sadly, most Americans don't want to "look backward." Either they're in the minority who supported Bush and don't accept any crimes were committed, or they are Obama supporters who are so high on their president they just want to bask in the glory of the change they think he will deliver, or they are simply uninvolved either way. It is a minority view that we should prosecute Bush, Cheney, et al. for their crimes, and as time passes, momentum for an investigation will likely peter out.

I feel more than ever now that the hour I stood in line on a brisk November New York City day to vote for a candidate I knew had no chance to win--Ralph Nader--was not an hour ill-spent. Once Obama betrayed his former position with regards to the revised FISA law and retroactive legal immunity conferred upon the telecoms for their participation in illegal evesdropping, I knew he was someone I could never vote for...I knew he was a hollow candidate and a hollow man.