Granted that the Bush Administration was noteworthy for never, ever, admitting it had made a mistake, this particular article on Dick Cheney's current attitude — as given on "Face the Nation" yesterday — is appalling. In short, real torture was the killing of 3,000 people on 9/11, so if it's not as bad as that, then it's not torture. The real tragedy is if people are released who turn out to be bad guys in the future, so if innocents are captured and tortured and die so that doesn't happen, well, it's okay.
Cheney can't even bring himself to express reluctant regret for what was done. It was by the book, it was done to prevent another 9/11, it wasn't as bad as 9/11, so it was all okay and he'd do it again in a heartbeat. The freezing to death of US prisoner doesn't match 9/11, so it's okay. Waterboarding isn't as bad as decapitation, so it's okay. A quarter of the people captured and tortured were innocent, but some of them weren't, so that's okay.
This is why we don't try to justify torture in "exceptional" circumstances. This is why we don't turn ticking-time-bomb hypotheticals into public policy. Because it's a quick and easy step from there to making some binary "It's not the worst evil you can imagine, so it must therefore be good" call, justifying (even in your own mind) any extreme, and not simply justifying but glorying in it as necessary, heroic, and patriotic.
Dick Cheney Defends the Torture of Innocents
“I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.”
More on Cheney (and other torture supporters) on the Sunday TV circuit: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Gobshites_Cease_To_Be_Funny
Short version: The Japanese raped Nanking and did that whole Bataan Death March, in addition to waterboarding, so even though we prosecuted them for waterboarding, what they did was far worse, so that was okay to accuse them of war crimes, but it's an insult to our brave American torturers to accuse them of war crimes.
Sadly, you can't make this up.
72 hours alone with Darth Cheney, and I’m sure a Iranian policeman could get the truth about the US faking of 9/11.