Well, some of the Abu Graib pics are now available on the web, courtesy of the Sydney Herald Trib. Thank you, Juan Cole.

And speaking of tribunals, Col. Wilkerson is out there speaking the truth, both to Darth and the White House, simultaneously. Don't you just love what he had to say to Rachel?

Why are you posting to this site? People here have been sticking knives, swords, staves, spears, into Joe Lieberman as fast as they could, as often as they could. For them Reagan is the arch-fiend. The last thing they're interested in is compromise. They are MOST DEFINITELY heretic hunters.

Actually, I know why. Your article stinks of phoniness. All you're interested in is winning.

Lieberman's a pretty bad example of a heretic. A heretic speaks with great regard for truth, justice and all the higher ideals. Galileo was a heretic. Socrates was a heretic. Lieberman is no heretic. He's a traitor.

The Republicans are currently toast, and irrelevant. Why is so much space being devoted here to talking about them? There are dozens of actual, vital policy issues to address. Join the real world discussion Mr. Begala.

Turning torture into a mere policy dispute, continuing rendition, reviving military commissions, giving more trillions to Wall Street with unlimited executive compensation and no taxpayer upside, expanding Bush's state secrecy claims, interfering in a UK lawsuit by a torture victim, failure to push for cramdown, inaction on DADT, taking single payer off the table and issuing permits for mountain top removal. Plus Rick fucking Warren.

Sorry, Paul, that's not progressive. Not by a longshot. And you damn well know it. Peddle your Kool-Aid somewhere else, you worthless shill.

This clown is the one of the most partisan hacks on the boob tube presently. It would behoove anyone interested in improving the GOP to do the polar opposite of what Begala suggests.

The GOP needs to hone their message, which is low taxes and smaller government. Pretending to be Democrats and pandering to everything under the sun including a constant move to the left has destroyed their image and them. Bush, a neocon, was spending like a drunken Democrat and that brought ruin to the party. They need to jettison all dead weight. That will bring back voters and win elections and not the useless tripe that Begala "suggests".

This practical vs. principled debate is absurd: Dick Cheney shrewdly positioned himself as a man with no political ambitions, and then engineered his own anointment as Vice to one of the weakest Presidents in US history. It was a power grab of epic proportions, one in which Cheney, the man with no ambition, was simultaneously empowered to wield executive power unparalleled by many presidents, while telling the nation what he told Pat Leahy whenever crossed (assuming you could elicit a comment at all). Louis XIV would've been jealous. The height of absurdity is that Cheney is now going around insisting that the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" kept Ameirca safe for 7-1/2 years, all the while ignoring the first 6 months of his watch, when all the warning signs of the plot which perpetrated the worst attack in its history on US were studiously and arrogantly ignored. The truth is more mundane: this man of "principle" is furiously laboring to rehabilitate his reputation, or waht's left of it. My favorite tactic is his call for release of CIA memos detailing the "success" of torture in defending us against terrorism. The irony here would be delectable were it not for the reality that Cheney knew at the time he called for their release that there was no way in hell the CIA would comply with such a request -- just think of the precedent! (Imagine what Cheney's response might have been a year ago; he who had his only specially-designed stamp for labelling documents classified). Given this almost certain refusal by the CIA, Cheney can now allege, without fear of contradiction, that these memos substantiate his point, setting aside, of course, the whole moral, ethical dimension of this "debate". So please, spare me any notion that Cheney is acting on principle. At best he's trying to salvage his reputation; worse he's trying to avoid prosecution or worst, still trying to exert his odious influence on national policy.

ordinary,

if torture is as effective as you say why isn't it in standard use throughout the world, and why doesn't our FBI use it when questioning terror
susects?

I have yet to hear of any proof, other than what Cheney claims , that torture used by the Bush gang
produced anything that was beneficial, so I guess the Bush/Cheney gang couldn't find any "highly experienced professionals".

I don't think Cheney or Limbaugh's behavior have anything to do with principles--neither of them have any. Limbaugh is motivated by ratings and his ego, and Cheney's trying to stay out of jail.

"At precisely the time when they need to nurture new leaders, Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh are sucking up all the oxygen - and, believe me, these two really do suck."

Well said.

Jeff Jacoby, conservative Op-Ed writer for the Boston Globe, wrote a piece this past week beating the drum for the Cheney attack on Colin Powell. Basically it was why should we moderate and become more like...ugh Democrats? To that I have to say that it was 25 years of lurching to the right, purging the traditional Rockefeller Republicans of the northeast, that brought the Republican party to where it is today, one in which the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin are considered mainstream. So, they should moderate... a lot, to get back to where their mainstream once was. If they did, and the rabid right moved out of the mainsteam to the fringes where the rabid usually live, that party could attract a lot of votes. Think about it.