Do you recall this memorable scene in the movie A Few Good Men? It appears Dick Cheney is now playing Jack Nicholson's character Colonel Jessep. The BBC's headline is "President George W Bush 'knew everything' about CIA interrogation." Of course, this isn't the first time Cheney and Bush have openly stated they authorized torture. Bush came right out and said he authorized torture years ago in his 2010 memoir Decision Points. It's as if Tom Cruise was speaking about Cheney all along: "I think he wants to say it. I think he's pissed off that he's gotta hide from this. I think he wants to say that he made a command decision and that's the end of it."
Former US President George W Bush was "fully informed" about CIA interrogation techniques condemned in a Senate report, his vice-president says.
Speaking to Fox News, Dick Cheney said Mr Bush "knew everything he needed to know" about the programme, and the report was "full of crap".
The CIA has defended its use of methods such as waterboarding on terror suspects after the 9/11 attacks.
The Senate report said the agency misled politicians about the programme.
But the former Republican vice-president dismissed this, saying: "The notion that the committee is trying to peddle that somehow the agency was operating on a rogue basis and that we weren't being told - that the president wasn't being told - is a flat-out lie."
In the interview on Thursday, Mr Cheney said the report was "deeply flawed" and a "terrible piece of work", although he admitted he had not read the whole document.
President Bush "knew everything he needed to know, and wanted to know" about CIA interrogation, he said. "He knew the techniques... there was no effort on my part to keep it from him.
"He was fully informed."
Dianne Feinstein, the head of the investigation that led to the torture report is no Lieutenant Kaffee. But if this isn't a perfect example of real life imitating Hollywood, I don't know what is. Makes me shudder.
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. - Carl Sagan
And let's not forget that Nazis called their torture “enhanced interrogation” too, in which they used exactly the same methods. Hey, if the shoe fits...