"Remarkably Successful"

[via Democracy Now! Headlines]

Jonathan Karl: “Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?”

Dick Cheney: “I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared. That is, the agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it. There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything we knew about al-Qaeda came from that one source. So it’s been a remarkably successful effort. I think the results speak for themselves.”

Jonathan Karl: “In hindsight, do you think any of those tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others went too far?”

Dick Cheney : “I don’t.”

Jonathan Karl: “And on KSM, one of those tactics, of course, widely reported was waterboarding. And that seems to be a tactic we no longer use. Even that, you think was appropriate?”

Dick Cheney: “I do.”

Just to be clear here, Cheney has just cheerfully admitted, and for the first time, that he was directly involved with the approval of torture and he still thinks this was a successful and appropriate tactic. Of course, torture is actually never "successful" (and I'm not just speaking of the endlessly documented untrustworthiness of information acquired under torture but also the contribution approval of such tactics inevitably has on the unraveling of legitimate law enforcement across the board) and never "appropriate" in a legitimate law-abiding democracy, whatever else it happens to be. And Dick Cheney is just some kind of unfathomably broken and dangerous person who should be prosecuted immediately for war crimes.