Human rights for even Anders Breivik

In retrospect, awarding the newly elected Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize was about as smartly ambitious as it gets. Everyone knows humanitarians don’t do it for the reward. A Nobel Prize is wasted if there’s not some eligible sociopath who might be influenced with the pressure to behave themselves. President Obama’s Nobel medal was an experiment in paying it forward. Who knows how much more bloodthirsty Obama might have gotten with his drones had not the Nobel committee tried to extort him with its higher expectations? The Nobel award givers took a lot of ribbing for their foolishness from those of us who weren’t idealist enough. AND SO IT COMES AS NO SURPRISE when Norway’s mass murdering overachiever Anders Breivik sued his jailers for abusing his human rights because he wasn’t getting sufficient visitors in his cushy prison suite, that the Norwegian supreme court would rule Breivik was right.

Of course they did. If you’re not going to give a death sentence to a crazed bigot who guns down 76 children, if you’re not going to throw him in a hole but instead give him a spacious accommodation, if instead of a life sentence you let him pursue university studies and limit his incarceration to twenty some years, then you don’t want to isolate your prisoner from human contact if it might appear even as a semblance of solitary confinement. Because lesser cultures do that.

Lesser capitalist flagship states isolate, execute and torture. I so appreciate that Norway wants to set a high bar, but I despair that the land of Guantanamo and waterboarding and indefinite detention and ILLEGAL detention and rendition and extrajudicial assassination and no habeus corpus can’t even see this bar to reach it.

US use of torture on POWs should stop

The U.S. has a long history of torturing its POWs. Torture of POWs is used by many other countries. However its use is denied by many U.S. authorities or government officials. The definition of torture put simply is to cause pain, emotionally, physically, or psychologically. Torture is used to terrify enemies, and hardly ever gains information.

Some examples of the U.S. A. military use of torture on P.O.W.s

Che Guevara
Che Guevara was murdered on October 9, 1967 in Bolivia. He was tortured and killed by Bolivian soldiers trained and equipped by CIA operatives. Che was told he was going to be killed by Felix Rodriguez. He was shot in the legs several times, and put into a dirty schoolhouse. His arms and feet were tied while he lay in the dirt. He lay by the bodies of his dead Guerrilla fighters. The USA tried to cover up his deliberate murder by shooting him in the legs to make it look like he died in battle. He was never given a trial. He was shot nine times.

Philippines war
The Philippine war was a war fought by Filipino revolutionaries and the USA. Waterboarding was one of the main techniques used by the CIA. It was used on Extra Judiciar prisoners.The department of Justice authorized this. Sleep Deprivation and de-sensorizing among other things was used. The use of solitary confinement and confusion is used frequently, prisoners are made to wear blindfolds to cause confusion and panic. Medical treatment is also refused. Bribery, and threats are used to force a confession.

Korean War
The Korean war was fought between South and North Korea. The US occupied the south, while the soviet troops occupied the North.

Vietnam War
Prisoners were put in Tiger cages. Lime was dumped on them, and water was dumped on them after.

Central America
In Nicaragua Somoza tortured people by putting them in cages with lions. Somoza was a dictator backed up by the US military. In Argentina children of communist parents were stolen, while their parents were tortured and killed.

School of The Americas
The CIA distributes an interrogation manual which shows torture techniques to use during interrogations. The manual was used by the CIA to train US-supported Latin American militaries at this school.

Abu Ghraib Prison
Torture has been recently used in Abu Ghraib prison, located in Iraq. Some of the main forms of torture used here are rape, sodomy, water boarding among many others. Military Intelligence has been present during these procedures, and highly encourages it. A prison guard said prisoners receive snake bites for minimum mis-behavior. In the AD. seg units prisoners are dumped into poop and pee.

Afghanistan war
The US invaded, tortured and suffocated thousands of POWs to death.

Officials claim that Torture must be used to gain information. During the presidency of George W. Bush some U.S government officials said that they believed water boarding was not a form of torture. In 2002 the Office of Legal Counsel stated that water boarding wasn’t a form of torture. The OLC said that the reason water boarding was not thought of as a torture was that “In order for pain or suffering to rise to the level of torture, that statute requires it to be severe & water boarding did not cause severe pain or suffering either physically or mentally.” Even though water boarding causes the victim to believe he/she is being drowned.

Torture hardly ever gains information but instead is used to terrorize people so they don’t resist, or to force a confession. Torture is used in interrogations by cops, being put in handcuffs that are to tight is also a less painful form of torture. During the st. Patrick Parade a couple of years ago the police stopped the parade and threw older people on the ground, an old lady was dragged across the pavement and put into handcuffs. She died a couple of months later.

People say that the US doesn’t torture people, because supposedly it is better than that.The fact of the matter is that the USA is the biggest user of torture in the world. It has and will continue to torture its POWs while everyone here says the USA government and military does not torture and has never tortures POWs.

What are US Special Forces doing in the Philippines? Killing Filipinos.


At a recent party, I ran into a friend who mentioned her son was in the Philippines. “He’s in the Special Forces,” she explained tentatively in view of her audience, adding disarmingly “who knows what they are doing there.” I couldn’t help but snap back “They’re killing Filipinos is what they’re doing.”

I instantly regretted my cheap shot but spent the ensuing days rationalizing why the Philippines in particular should not have to abide American shoulder-shrugging.

What right has civil society to insulate itself from the unpleasant details about how it maintains order?

If her soldier had been deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, I would have held my tongue, in the context of unrelated festivity at least. Whether you support the current occupations or not, the violent facts about who’s doing what are not disputed, generally. I’ve no business facing off with a lone mother who more than likely has mixed feelings about the wars, although put on parade it’s a different story.

Perhaps too, other US interventions prompt only vague comprehension of their nature, of the true evil which our country is perpetrating. But we can say the same thing about commercial enterprises which comprise the capitalist global onslaught. None of it party talk.

Few examples match the longevity of US imperial atrocities in the Philippines. There our public ignorance has no right to be ambivalent.

US military activities in the Philippines may as well be the Indian Wars for all the American public understands them, as racist and despotic, and ongoing. Our specialists have been exterminating Filipino insurgents for over a century. When we are not committing the atrocities ourselves, our military advisers are directing them for what has never risen above a client state. The rebels of Mindanao have been trying to fight off foreign occupation since the original Spanish invaders. They are the Philippines’ indigenous Taliban, and we keep trying to put them down.

The insignia of the 4rth Cavalry still commemorates what we call the “Battle of Bud Dajo” but what was in reality a massacre. where US Marines scaled an extinct crater to mount machine guns to fire into a Moro village and exterminate thousands of men, women and children.

The antiwar, anti-imperialist movement of the early 1900s knew the barbarity which our boys were visiting on the Filipinos. It was US soldiers who popularized “waterboarding” there. But since the facade of granting the islands their independence after WWII, Americans have absolved themselves of what is an ongoing occupation.

Will this be the future of Afghanistan’s puppet regime? Continued suppression of the Afghan’s efforts to fight for their liberty?

Bush wants to torture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed again

Bush stands behind torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, says he’d “do it again to save lives.” Yesterday, former President Bush spoke at the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, MI, where he said that had no regrets about waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed 9/11 mastermind, and would do it again.

According to Fox 17 in Grand Rapids, Bush “didn’t allow cameras inside for the event,” but reporters caught his remarks:

“Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed … I’d do it again to save lives.”

Waterboarding Mohammed 183 times didn’t save any lives. In fact, Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he gave false information to the CIA after withstanding torture. Additionally, a former Special Operations interrogator who worked in Iraq has stated that waterboarding has actually cost American lives:

“The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001.”

Bush will never be prosecuted for committing this crime he has now admitted to, because the Democrats, too support the use of government torture against Pentagon held POWs.

US soldiers in Cuba before Guantanamo

Life magazine cover showing US marines waterboardingWould you believe this is an issue of Life Magazine dated May 22, 1902? That’s water boarding! How is it that US military spokesmen now pretend our forces learned waterboarding from Korean prisons?

The cartoon on its cover depicts US marines waterboarding a captive in their effort to pacify the Cubans they’d just “liberated” from the Spanish. Watching in the background are the traditional western colonizers, often criticized by us for the brutality with which they repressed their foreign territories.

Between them, the Prussian tells the Brit:

“THOSE PIOUS YANKEES CAN’T THROW STONES AT US ANY MORE.”

Cartoons of US soldiers waterboarding a Cuban rebelThere it is in closeup. The arms bound at the elbows, the hands pinned, pressure applied to the stomach, a gun held to the poor Cuban’s head, a funnel put into his mouth, and water poured from a bucket marked “U.S. ARMY.”

Why be bothered by horrors of detainees

Con Son Prison Vietnam 1951President Obama is blocking the release of further detainee abuse photos. Would more images of outrages committed against US detainees inflame sentiment against US troops? No doubt. Would more of such photos add nothing to the national dialog? Well… If you consider that the media is still vacillating on the definition of waterboarding, torturers and the lawyers who sanctioned torture are being exempted from prosecution, and war criminals like Dick Cheney are bragging about their participation, maybe there’s room for more dialog.

Journalist Seymour Hersh has seen the additional photographs. He’s even recounted the videos of young Iraqi boy detainees being raped by their captors. Hersh described that the most haunting aspect were the boys’ screams. Barack Obama doesn’t want the American conscience haunted by any such brutalities.

Sean Hannity & the Global War OF Terror

The quicker we get Sean Hannity waterboarded the better. But we can hope for better than merely shutting him up about whether or not waterboarding is torture. Let’s figure out WHAT we can waterboard him for!

Is there a secret we want to extract from Sean Hannity? Or is there just something he’s done for which America could feel comfort in exacting redress? Wouldn’t that be the real point of torture? And actually, not to draw Hannity’s blood, but to extrude the shit from his colleagues looking on, who might fancy themselves next, O’Reilly, Limbaugh, et al.

I understand Hannity already has a volunteer to administer the procedure, what we really need is the person to direct it. To issue the thumbs up or thumbs down, irrationally, to heighten the torment.

Hannity has volunteered to subject himself to what he considers no more than fraternity hazing. Olberman has offered $1,000 for ever second Hannity lasts. Which I predict will be calculated in fragments of the first second. A subject of waterboarding can hold his breath, but the torturers will start the clock by forcefully expelling that reserve. Waterboarding begins when the victim gasps for air, and inhales water instead.

The media debate around waterboarding asks two questions. Is waterboarding torture? And does torture work? Both questions are flawed. The first is simply an insult, the second is misdirected.

Perhaps the average American is disconnect enough from reality to question whether the unimaginable can be. If you’ve never stepped into the sea, you can speculate that water is not really wet. Fast-food eating television viewers can wonder, does the stove burn?

Does torture work? Of course it does. To wonder if torture is an effective method of interrogation is to get the question entirely wrong.

In one debate about the efficacy of torture, the FBI claims the with one terror suspect they were making gains with psychological methods until the CIA seized custody in order to give the waterboard a try. Apparently with no success, after which the FBI had another promising run interrupted by another CIA inter-department rendition. Sound like the ol’ good agency, bad agency interrogation ploy to you?

Ignored in the torture efficacy assessment is the absence of a control sample. Did the subject have anything to reveal? How unfair to judge an interrogator if his subject doen’t have a secret to crack. And even that misses the point. What is the purpose of torture? Is it to extract information, such as learning of ticking time-bombs to save innocent lives, or is it about preemptive subjugation of people?

To torture someone is to terrorize them with their own helplessness under the thumb of brutal inhumanity. Torture is directed less against the terrorized subject themselves, than the public looking on. Torture is terror. It get the predicate reversed in the phrase “Global War On Terror.” Terror is the subject not the object; actually the objective. It’s the Global War OF Terror. In our GWOT, torture is an important weapon in the US arsonal, and of course it works. Against brave people, it “works” solely to provoke them.

The truth comes out about how actually the US government tortured its POWs

Sept. 11 planner waterboarded 183 times: report, but this is a little bit different than the US government officials’ lies about how they used torture on Pentagon held POWs, is it not?

We ask, because the apologists for US government torture use have always tried to paint a picture of themselves using only supposedly limited and necessary tortures, needed and used only to protect the larger US common society from baddies. In such, they have mimicked the Israeli government’s murderous actions against Palestinians, too, where all the Israeli government abuse is qualified as being merely a restrained and rational program of protection for endangered Jewish people. But the truth actually in both cases is that both the Israeli and US governments are engaging in their own form of terrorism against people they have tried to deligitimize as supposedly not being subject to international laws of humanity and human decency.

Barack to pardon Bush for his crimes against humanity and now we can fry others

‘While the Obama administration is turning its back on some Bush administration practices, Panetta said there is no intention to hold CIA officers responsible for the policy they were told to carry out. CIA interrogators who used waterboarding or other harsh techniques against prisoners with the permission of the White House should not be prosecuted, he said.’

Do not be misled in that Obama says he is going to stop renditions. Obama plans to keep the US troops in other peoples’ countries and many of the ‘natives’ will get turned over to others for torture, ‘rendition flights’ or not. CIA nominee says no ‘extraordinary rendition’- Panetta wants CIA to find bin Laden; says don’t prosecute waterboarders

Torture is a Violent Sex Crime

To Clarify My Statement About Cheney

It’s an Extreme manifestation of Sadism, the perverts who do the waterboarding, AND THOSE WHO, LIKE BUSH AND CHENEY, SUPPORT IT, are more than just Technically or Figuratively Rapists.

They become aroused by the infliction of pain, especially on other persons.
It’s a symptom also of Sociopathy.
So is using fireworks to kill frogs, which George Bush laughingly admitted.
So is Shooting Tame Animals For Pleasure, which is what Richard Cheney was doing when he and his equally perverted drunken corrupt lawyer friend were doing when he shot the guy in the face.

His “friend” /slash/sex partner, like a good little Masochist, apologized for being shot.

The only people who can effectively and efficiently use torture are people who Enjoy Doing It.

Like Cheney.
Such people are Emotionally Unstable to say the very least, and DEFINITELY NOT the type of person or persons who should be placed in any position of trust, any position of power, and most certainly not in a position of National Defense.

Instead of condemning such horrendous crimes, one of our “special friends” threatened to Report Me to the FBI for condemning Cheney’s Perverted Cowardly Torture Fetish for what it truly is.

Cowards run in packs.

Maybe Cheney will invite him to a screening of the video of ME being tortured.

Let him lick the floor afterward.

George W. McCain: Because facing reality is just too scary.

McCain makes stateside Berliner speech
The McCain transmogrification into a ZombieCon has accelerated, he now supports a bill to end affirmative action, a bill he previously opposed.

It all depends on McCain’s definition of “success.” Today 75 people were killed, and 300 wounded, in suicide attacks in Iraq. The only thing the S[pl]urge has succeeded at is pumping another hundred billion of your future tax dollars into the accounts of the war profiteers.

You say Silverado, I say Silverstate. McCain’s son, Andrew, has suddenly resigned from the boards of two failing banks. Maybe his middle name is “Neil?”

Disabled American Veterans cancels Cheney invite, after he all but demands waterboarding of guests.

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) says America can’t afford to keep giving Bush blank checks for the war. Wow, he must really think we are stupid, since Democrats are the ones who keep giving an endless supply of blank checks to Bush.

Murder in Jesus name. NeoChristian terrorist kills 2, wounds 7, in church shooting.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes July 28, thomasmc.com.

The many methods of US military torture

Waterboarding 1) Isolation 2) Simulated drowning or ‘waterboarding’ 3) Sexual humiliation and/or rape 4) Forced positioning 5) Sleep deprivation 6) Refusal to allow legal representation 7) Refusal to state the ‘evidence’ being used against prisoners
8 ) Refusal to classify POWs as being actual POWs instead of criminal prisoners 9) Trying POWs as if they were civilians, even though they are being tried in military courts 10) Refusing to inform families of POWs that their relatives are in custody

Hey, that’s quite a few methods of US government use of torture, is it not? And to think that they are still trying to pretend that they are not using torture! And to think that the United Nations has taken no actions against the US government for using torture! And to think that the local peace group here in Colorado Springs, the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, still has not found itself capable of asking the city council to pass a city resolution against the US government use of torture! Sad…

BTW, that photo is a picture of US troops ‘waterboarding’ a POW in Vietnam. You can click on the photo to see those American faces better. They’ve always used torture on POWs from other countries, so why support them? Why support the US troops in doing what they do?

Too much ado about torture?

Our panties are in a twist over a mere “torture flap?”
“This debate seems a little silly given the threat we face?”
These GIs in Vietnam were drummed out of the service for this waterboarding caught on camera.
This is waterboarding. It’s confusing I know, no board, no restraints, no bathtub, no dunking chair, etc. Just a rag and water to simulate drowning. To induce drowning actually, by forcing the subject to inhale water into the lungs. Plus ca change, MAIS plus ce N’est PAS la meme chose: these GIs were courtmartialed for getting caught on camera using water torture, on this captured Vietcong.

Red faced provocateur John Gibson had this to say on his Fox News show, about what he called “the torture flap:”

One: The entire torture flap involves three people who were subjected to harsh interrogation techniques for a grand total of less than three minutes. Call it torture if you want, but it was quick and there were darn few people subjected to it.

Two: Each procedure from slapping to waterboarding was specifically approved by Washington, and those people applying these techniques were restrained from approaching anything any sane person might consider too far or too much.

Third: Many of the people who are screaming bloody murder about it now and wanting investigations were advised what was happening and either approved or acquiesced.

Got that? You know it is happening, you understand what it is, YOU are being held accountable. Gibson can fall back and say you “acquiesced” to his preposterous rationalization.

“Waterboarding” has been considered “torture” for 500 years. There’s no “flap” about torture. The dictionary doesn’t define “torture” as ambiguously acceptable. Being made to tolerate a chilled room without a blanket is torture. TRY IT. Or do you fall in Gibson’s category of “any sane person” who would reject such restrictions on our interrogation methods as “too much?”

Here’s how a French journalist described his waterboarding in Algeria:

The rag was soaked rapidly. Water flowed everywhere: in my mouth, in my nose, all over my face. But for a while I could still breathe in some small gulps of air. I tried, by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I could. But I couldn’t hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me. In spite of myself, all the muscles of my body struggled uselessly to save me from suffocation. In spite of myself, the fingers of both my hands shook uncontrollably. “That’s it! He’s going to talk,” said a voice.

The water stopped running and they took away the rag. I was able to breathe. In the gloom, I saw the lieutenants and the captain, who, with a cigarette between his lips, was hitting my stomach with his fist to make me throw out the water I had swallowed.

Destroying the evidence of US government torture of POWs

Our despicable national government has just admitted that it destroyed the video taping of its use of torture on prisoners held at the Guantanamo concentration camp for US captured POWs. See article… CIA destroyed video of ‘waterboarding’ al-Qaida detainees

What a group of liars and hypocrites the Bush Administration has assembled at the head of power in the US. First they deny that torture is being advocated, then they say that certain torture methods are in their eyes not actual torture, and then they destroy the evidence of the torture actually already being used on POWs in their hands.

And our local governments follow this type of misleadership straight on down the line. Don’t believe that? Then go and try to get a municipal resolution passed stating local opposition to the US use of torture in our domestic jails and military concentration camps. See what the reaction would be like down at the city council meetings here in Colorado Springs?

Speaking of torture…. do you know that the El Paso County has its school police force equipped with taser guns at middle schools and high schools? Do you know that the city police of Colorado Springs has used these devices on people already, even as some divisions of the United Nations says there is strong evidence that these weapons are being used as instruments of torture in an increasing manner?

Just recently I saw the downtown post office flying the black POW/MIA flag that became so promoted by the US Right Wing post Vietnam War. Apparently the concern about POWs is pretty damn selective in the US.

When is the US public going to say enough is enough about our government using torture on US held POWs, as it has been doing? Are we all too damn scared now to have POW/MIA bumperstickers on our cars and/ or a flag that demands that all human beings have rights to ethical treatment… even if the US government authorities presume them guilty of some crime or other?

We need some symbols like this, and they need to be flown from government buildings in place of that garbage accusing the Vietnam government of torturing US soldiers in secret. The Right Wingers in charge of our municipality prefer to promote war and the use of torture on US held POWs instead of speaking out for human decency though. And currently this city hasn’t had enough local citizens oppose this city government-military-industrial complex led by Mayor Lionel Rivera and his corporate backers like Lockheed, et al.

The people who ordered destroyed the tapes of the water boarding of POWs held by the US military are war criminals and need to be jailed and tried for their crime of destroying evidence. And then they need to be jailed for ordering the torture of POWs in the first place. Are Americans proud to have a government like this? All of us should be deeply ashamed for not doing more to stop these thugs. Get out and make your voice heard! Go to the local government meetings held downtown and put some pressure on the local officials to stop going along with it all.

Homeland Security Dept’s new puke ray

The LIGHT EMITTING DIODE INTERRUPTOR can double as a flashlight
All sorts of new toys for the police to torture and abuse people with are now coming into use to supplement the taser. The puke ray is perhaps going to be too messy and not torturous enough for our delicate and fastidious ‘peace officers’ to prefer though.

The video didn’t really mention this, but the weapon is designed to make victims throw up all over themselves while wretching from the vertigo induced by the police’s puke ray.

But perhaps donut eating cops can hit their targets better with this device than they can with mere pepper spray? And there is still the old fashioned police dogs to abuse people with.

And maybe they’ll soon bring back the rack, impalement, and crucifixion soon? Not to mention waterboarding… None of this is ‘torture’ though when it’s used on others, and not used on those who make it legal. It is merely ‘uncomfortable’.

Oh! They have brought back waterboarding already. Never mind. My lobotomy.

Torturing the universities, future feminine possibilities for Colorado College

Pity the universities these days. They have become wildlife havens for America’s torturers. Southern Methodist University in Dallas is to house the papers of the head torturer advocate of them all, George W. Bush, in his ‘presidential library’. Stanford gets Donald Rumsfield. And now the University of Florida took it upon itself to take up the media rehabilitation program of Alberto Gonzalez. Whoopee, Students!

Here at home the local rag, The Gazette, today continued in its campaign to pretend that Global Warming is nothing to be concerned about, health care for all is too expensive to be implemented in the US, and YES, that water boarding is ‘uncomfortable, not torture’. So what, since at least local students have the ‘liberal’ Colorado College to find refuge in, right?

No, this local institution has graduated Dick Cheney’s wife and both his daughters, too (Lynn, Elizabeth, and Mary). And the college’s board of directors has Suzanne Woolsey , wife of super neo con advocate of fighting a continual, decades long ‘world war’ against the Muslim World, exCIA Head James Woolsey, sitting in as Vice Chair of the Colorado College Board of Trustees, emphasis on VICE.

These women folk ‘belonging to’ such noted torturers and torture advocates, Dick Cheney and James Woolsey, make it just right, that Colorado College and its Department of Political Science should house a proposed ‘Library of Women That Love Torturers’. There, we could see the love letters between these prominent ladies and their torturer husbands, dads, and lovers!

It would be a credit for the local military community’s institutions, too! Visit the Air Force Academy, then step over to Colorado College to see the more feminine side of US militarism, and women who love the torturers behind it. Other cities have their water parks, but Colorado Springs could have their waterboarding park!

Maybe our mayor, Lionel Rivera, and the entire city council will get behind this idea? We can only propose… but Colorado College should not let itself fall behind in the academic love affair with noted American torturers! Now can it? Maybe it could open up by next Halloween?

Waterboarding not dunking

Click here to see the actual waterboardVice-president Cheney has just explicitly admitted that US interrogators use waterboarding as a method of interrogation. The decision to use it is a “no brainer” Cheney says, it’s not torture, referring to the practice as more like dunking.

Probably we all conjure images of the wooden see-saw at the water’s edge, where the Puritans sought confessions from witches. Others I guess envision the dunking booth at the school fair.

Neither would be correct. David Corn features an updated description of waterboarding, sent him from Jonah Blank, a former senior editor of US News and World Report. Blank attached pictures from the Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, now a museum commemorating the Khymer Rouge attrocities. It’s the former site of a notorious torture facility. Of the many torture methods used by the Khymer Rouge, only two instruments are diplayed to represent the worst. Both involve water torture. One of them is the waterboard.

Water torture goes way back, and Dick Cheney of Halliburton and of the USofA are upholding its fine tradition.