I want to see Dems rebut him often and forcefully, and say on TV, in venues that people actually watch, like CNN, FOX, and MSNBC that Cheney used torture to find justification for getting us into the Iraq war. Let's have that discussion instead of his lies and red herrings. If we won't prosecute him in the courts, we can at least make sure everyone hears the truth in other ways.

This is a person who creates a reality that fits in with his predetermined worldview/philosophy with no regard whatsoever for the facts on the ground. The facts on the ground become malleable in his world - anything that supports his previously arrived at conclusion (including facts that have been cherrypicked/manipulated) is highlighted, and anything that goes against it is shunted off to the side if not suppressed.

This is a man who had his underlings whisper off the record to NY Times columnists about aluminum tubes, and then went on TV talk shows a few days later and claimed the resulting article in the NY Times as proof of the danger Hussein posed to the US.  

He is a sociopath, in other words.

What I'm wondering is, why does he still have a platform from which to spew his deceptions?  At this point, why does anyone take anything he has to say seriously at all?  He should be a joke and a laughing stock.  

The simpler answer is because he set up a system that allowed him to - a closed loop that guaranteed that whatever he wanted to do, there was someone to approve it, and little oversight to prevent it.  The scary thing - as if torture itself is not scary enough - is that all that power was just allowed to stay resident in the executive branch, and we now have to hope that whoever is wielding it is inclined to be benevolent and not malevolent.  Hope is not, however, much of a plan.

So, is Cheney helping or hurting?  Guess it depends on what your tolerance for pain is.  I don't think it helps the cause of the American values, about which Obama waxes poetic, to have the former VP and torture-maven extraordinaire publicly, or via ubiquitous sources, express his pleasure with some of Obama's decisions.  

And it can't be good when someone who professed to wanting transparency and accountability as a candidate is now, as president, on the same page with Dick Cheney, who also doesn't think we need to revisit the decisions of the last eight years.  Obama should not even want to be in the Library of Congress with Dick Cheney, much less on the same page.

Part 1: Unraveling the Web of Deceit

Part 2: Dark Beginnings

Part 3: Component of Empire

Part 4 yet to come.