Cheney justifies torture, blames Iraq war on Iraqis

In interview with Jim Lehrer. Really pretty much more of the same there. I will be so glad to see these people finally gone. Only a few more days.

Cheney:

I can tell you what the policy was; I can tell you that we had all the legal authorization to do it, including the sign-off of the Justice Department. I can tell you it produced phenomenal results for us, and that a great many Americans are alive today because we did all that. And I think those are the important considerations.

This is total crap, as anyone knows who's read anything about what the interrogators themselves (such as Matthew Alexander [pseud.]), or reliable investigative journalists such as Jane Mayer (The Dark Side), have said and shown. For example, it is now established beyond any reasonable dispute that virtually everything obtained from torturing the infamous Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was totally useless and false. (That's what you always get from torture, as any reasonable human being with a smattering of historical education knows). And just this week we learn that many if not almost all of the trials of actual terrorists held at Guantanamo are so compromised that convictions will likely be impossible; these people will have to be released eventually. And why? Because the Bush administration fucked it up so badly. That's why. There's no other reason.

The self-justification of these incompetent fools is literally sickening.