And why?  Because our esteemed president has exempted from accountability all those who designed and carried out these policies, even though I do not believe his powers are so all-encompassing that he can do that.

We were the ones that condemed regimes around the world for torture, rendition, surveillance cameras and wiretapping. Now we have a former vice president bragging about tortune on national television. Unreal.

In northern Marjah, an armored column came under fire from at least three separate sniper teams, slowing its progress. One of the teams came within ... 50 meters and started firing.

Troops braced for the estimated ... four-kilometer march to link up with U.S. and Afghan troops who had been airdropped into the town. [totaling 15,000] Small squads of Taliban snipers initiated firefights throughout the day in an attempt to draw coalition forces into a larger ambush.[...]

(I elided most of the conversions from metric). So here's a perfect illustration of the craggy environment favoring the sniper, combined with why excusing torture was always wrong. Late in the article, one of the troops is quoted:

"... [I]t's so hard to fight a war like this," said Lance Corp. Travis Anderson ... "They're using our rules of engagement against us," he said, stating that his platoon had repeatedly seen men dropping their guns into ditches before walking away to melt among civilians.

The article also describes region as "a Taliban logistical center and a base for the lucrative opium trade that finances the insurgency."

As much as the spokesman below tried to put a positive spin on this for the chickenhawks back home, no amount of numbers crunching -- and then dialing back -- can erase the plain fact that the snipers were able to get within a fraction of the US/NATO margin of error, and that the platoon still had to travel ~80 times the distance that one (later untraceable) sniper team could get with the platoon and then melt into the civilian population.

The situation also provides the Taliban with superior intelligence in that they're dealing with quantifiables, while Zazai can only guess and assume.

Brig. Gen. Sher Mohammad Zazai [said] Afghan and NATO forces have largely contained the insurgents and succeeded in gaining trust from residents ... "Soon we will have Marjah cleared of enemies" [...]

However, the mission faced a setback on Sunday when two U.S. rockets slammed into a home outside Marjah, killing 12 civilians. NATO said Monday that the rockets missed their target by about 600 meters ... NATO had earlier said the rockets missed their target by just 300 meters.

... "Literally every time we stand up, we take rounds," warned one Marine over the radio.

Marines said their ability to fight back has been tightly constrained by strict new rules of engagement that make their job more difficult and dangerous. Under the rules, troops cannot fire at people unless they commit a hostile act or show hostile intent. ... (Snipers harass US, Afghan troops moving in Marjah By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, AP, Feb 15, 2010)

Except those "new" rules are anything but. They were shredded in the haste to attack Iraq, without a thought given to how this painted a bullseye on troops when the two quoted above were barely out of middle school.

You can't just suit up and open fire indiscriminately (or hire paramilitary thugs to do so for 9 years) no matter how many times Cheney goes on TV and snarls out another "So?" when trapped in a lie.

I'm deeply sorry to talk about this in "playbook" terms. I'm a pacifist. The classic martial arts (and Art of War) were developed for self-defense rather than brute conquest. Terrain, intel and tech will always favor the resistance.

unless you have video of cheney personally torturing someone, or documentation authorizing him to authorize it, and then documentation where he did authorize it, you got nothing.