Dick Cheny is setting the stage to run for president in four years. God help us all.

*gasp* Could we be so lucky? Could the GOP be so clueless, sticking with the poster child for 8 years of failed neo-con policies? It would almost certainly cause the party to wither away completely, joining the Whigs in the ashcan of American history.

But I can hear it now -- criticism of torture will STILL be called "quaint" by Cheney and his ilk.

Cheney is trying to brainwash the American people into believing that torture is a "family value". I'm relieved to see many are not buying it.

..would it not stand to reason that any American citizen or non-citizen could become a subject of torture?

Are you sure that we haven't already reached that point?

They* have already established that the can all we're waiting for is for them to want to do it and it will happen. The lack of accountability to the law has been established and now we're at their mercy.

It can even happen at 1st & Pike.

* - we all know who "they" are, but it seems to be a different "they" for each of us.

in a chicken basket!

When there are no consequences for those who devise and implement torture policy, human beings will torture.

President Obama, with the full force of the Democratic Party Leadership, continues to assert that crimes involving torture, at any level, do not rise to the level of prosecution.

Add it up, people.

All the pretty talk about transparency and rule of law is just that: talk.

Actions speak louder than words.

Barack Obama is a fraud.

year old ladies, including my still sharp-as-a-tack mother, who did not vote for McCain because they deemed him too old. Several of these women, again including my mother, have had husbands die protracted deaths due to heart disease. They won't be voting for the Evil Angry Dick, either.

We need a prosecutor, hearings, trials, and convictions. Maybe then the Republicans will understand that THEY LOST. The majority of voting citizens in this country have rejected them, and THEY LOST.

And as for McCain, I am sad for him, that now he must repudiate his own life experience to stay within the good graces of his irrelevant party.

How about addressing the here and now? Maybe it's time read up on Obama's (mis)handling of the torture issue, which is being discussed at length - and in depth - right here on Salon in Glenn Greenwald's blog. Cheney isn't president, Obama is, and if you were reading Greenwald regularly, you'd realize the problem is not just what happened yesterday, but very much what is and isn't happening today directly because of the current occupant of the White House. Unloading on the Republicans might feel good, it might be justified, but it also serves as a handy way to ignore what looks to be going terribly wrong on the Democratic side of the aisle.

Flaky liberals are so fixated by their intense hatred for the former administration, that they're showing more concern for the criminals --the Terrorists, than the people who kept them safe after 9-11. Get a grip, people, you are the ones who need help. Seriously. You should be concerned that Obama's promising things that he has no idea how to carry out; you should be concerned this administration is spending hundreds of thousands of your taxdollars to fly airplanes over NY to get promotional pictures; you should be concerned that the Speaker of the House is lying to cover her ass; you should be concerned that thousands of dead people, some who don't even have SSN#'s, are getting stimulus checks in the mail, etc., etc. This administration is already out of control and it hasn't even been six months yet.

Re: "Seriously. You should be concerned that Obama's promising things that he has no idea how to carry out;"

You mean promises such as bringing in Osama bin Laden "dead or alive"?

Or is that, as usual, DIFFERENT?

Until they begin addressing the torture that "we" have committed, this is just a bullshit exercise in "look at the bad people over there, they're so much worse."

Worse than a distraction, it's a hypocritical embarrassment.

His military thug squad Black shirts are brutalizng prisoners at Gitmo under Obama. Breaking bones,gouging eyes, squeezing testicles,spraying them with chemicals, smearing feces and urinating on them. IRF teams they are called.They sodomize and force petrol and benzene up their anuses. While Obama says "this is the best way to protect our country-(Not releasing videos) while upholding our deeply held values" What values? Is is family values to torture Obama? You have Bush lipstick-"we do not torture" another lie.CIA lies about torture. Hey Obushma the videos have been released on TV in Australia-and al Jazeera news,many of us have viewed them on line.

Remember McCain saying Saddam was the Antrax supplier. Propaganda Lying to the American people is treason.