{"id":191844,"date":"2009-06-17T23:06:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-18T04:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/17\/calling-cheneys-bluff\/"},"modified":"2009-06-17T23:06:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-18T04:06:00","slug":"calling-cheneys-bluff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/17\/calling-cheneys-bluff\/","title":{"rendered":"Calling Cheney&#8217;s Bluff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a 2004 report by the CIA on torture, the so called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/theplumline.whorunsgov.com\/torture\/is-cia-supressing-holy-grail-torture-report-that-would-undercut-cheney\/\">Holy Grail<\/a>,&#8221; (also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/06\/16\/AR2009061603516.html?hpid=topnews\">here<\/a>) and, according to Congressional sources who have seen the classified document, it completely demolishes Dick Cheney&#8217;s arguments.<\/p>\n<p>It shows what we already know: Torture does not work, and torture <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">did<\/span> not work.<\/p>\n<p>This should be released, but Obama and His Clueless Minions<sup>\u2122<\/sup>, will try everything possible to prevent it, because the more evidence that comes out, the greater the push for prosecutions, because it will show <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">what<\/span> was done, and that Bush and His Evil Minions<sup>\u2122<\/sup> were told that it did not work.<\/p>\n<p>The Obama administration believes that he needs bipartisan support to implement his agenda, and that prosecutions and investigations of Cheney\/Rumsfeld\/etc. will prevent this.<\/p>\n<p>The truth is that neither Social Security or Medicare\/Medicaid passed with very few Republican votes(<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">none<\/span> in the case of Social Security), and the benefits of these programs are legion.<\/p>\n<p>The other fact is that the big items on Obama&#8217;s agenda would require <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Republicans to cut their own throats to support him<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Republican support of new financial regulation and stimulus would require them declare that their guiding governmental philosophy since Reagan is a failure, and Republican support for a good public healthcare option would add at least 20 years to their time in the minority, because <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">everyone in the United States would see the personal benefit to &#8220;big government&#8221;<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Simply put, it is not realistic to expect people to commit suicide for you, particularly when they are your <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">opposition<\/span>, but Obama continues to work for this, because, he believes that reasonable discourse and his eloquence will work.<\/p>\n<p>This is a delusion.  Not only do today&#8217;s Republicans not understand the concept of loyal opposition, it is not <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">reasonable<\/span> for them to support him, because the political fallout is all negative for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a 2004 report by the CIA on torture, the so called &#8220;Holy Grail,&#8221; (also here) and, according to Congressional sources who have seen the classified document, it completely demolishes Dick Cheney&#8217;s arguments. It shows what we already know: Torture does not work, and torture did not work. This should be released, but Obama &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[978,1168,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-torture","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191844"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}