speech ignored some inconvenient truths

From a story by Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel for McClatchy Newspapers online edition:

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.

In his address to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy organization in Washington, Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."

He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."

In a statement April 21, however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

There is more.

gift that keeps giving

According to my reading of Marc Ambinder's "A Target-Rich Environment", Cheney and Limbaugh are part of the team keeping President Obama's numbers on the higher side:

One of the reasons why Barack Obama's political team is so confident . . . is that even while some of Obama's signature policies are viewed with healthy skepticism, Republicans are still splashing around in a fetid wading pool.

executive assassination ring . . .

Assassination ring?

At a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.”