A scientific CNN poll has found that 23% of americans think Dick Cheney has been the worst vice-president in history. Only 1% say he has been the best.
41% rate him as a poor vice president, while 23% say he's been good.
link to poll

Perhaps his low approval rating comes from statements like Cheney said last week in an interview, that sometimes it would be "unethical not to use torture."
link to story

Is there any other source than CNN for this?

Political Figures: C

There's one from Fox News that is somewhat similar. And 2% in that poll "Never heard of him", those are the ones I'd be worried about.

There are times that it would be unethical not to use torture. Try being a little more pragmatic instead of walking lock step with your ideology.

The 2% are those people Jay Leno picks up for his Jaywalking segments.

I have to wonder how many of the people taking the poll could even name more than 4 or 5 vice presidents (or 1 or 2, for that matter). Or their accomplishments or failures. Or the years they served. Or what sort of events were taking place in the world while they were in office.

Not many, if any at all.

mecarr, I take it your against aggressive interrogation techniques? What is your threshold on the number of lives we would be able to save by preventing a terrorist attack versus the degree of torture you would be willing to allow?
Are you aware of information gained from interrogations that have prevented attacks?
If I am wrong let me know. Your post leads me to believe you're against our country protecting it's citizens?

My grandpa was tortured by the Japanese in WW2 after being captured. He won't talk about it but he said he wouldn't wish it on his worse enemy. Call it what you want - aggressive interrogation techniques or whatever - it's torture. It's easy to say you support these aggressive techniques while you sit in your home. Try going to war and experiencing torture. My guess is you'll change your mind.

There are rules of war. This shouldn't be a political thing. It's a matter of right and wrong. And some people decided they were above the law.

The Geneva Convention says no torture. I guess the definition comes down to what constitutes torture. I am not sure what you do when the people you are fighting doesn't abide by the same set of rules.

I think torture is horrible. I don't know how you can torture someone without twisting your self, your soul as it were.

If it would save my kids, I admit I would torture, too.

Obviously, I have mixed feelings about it.

Yep... exactly. That's the big gray area. I'm not going to pretend like I know what it is sitting here at home.

The bipartisan Senate report I referenced in another thread clearly showed the highest levels of the Bush Administration authorized widespread use of torture. And those torture techniques (such as waterboarding) they specifically put into use are the same ones we (the US) used to say were worthy of capital punishment when they were perpetrated by agents of other governments.

Study after study has shown that torture yields a lot of useless information that distracts from any good information. As I've said before, in the extremely unlikely event an interrogator knows with great confidence a detainee has some specific information that can be directly used to stop an attack, the laws against torture might be broken and the interrogator forgiven later in a court or by pardon. Frankly, this administration has zero credibility remaining so I seriously doubt their vague claims they've gotten some useful information from some of the widespread torture they have authorized.

I think it is pretty obvious that the Geneva Conventions erre on the side of caution. I mean for craps sake we got into some hot water for showing a picture of Saddam on TV while he was in captivity, which is not allowed under the Conventions. I think that makes it pretty clear how far the Conventions go.

We have signed onto the Conventions which make it illegal to torture. CIA and FBI experts agree that it is much more effective to talk to detainees and "befrend" them, basically psychologically infiltrating them instead of using pain as a motivator. While I might agree that there may be that 1 in a million time when something useful could come of it and it might save lives, that should never be a matter of US policy and frankly the agent that does it should probably just take one for the team.

Not to mention the fact that we don't want our own military folks tortured. There is the reciprocity effect to consider.

The torture referenced included sleep deprivation, loud music played for long periods, and capitalizing on the muslim's fears of vicious dogs. No bamboo under the fingernails, ouch!
From what I can gather, water boarding was used once or twice and actually allowed us or our allies to prevent a terrorist act.

The Geneva Convention was intended for armed soldiers who adhere to the laws of armed conflict, mainly to forgo intentionally endangering unarmed civilians. The Bush administration determined al Qaeda does not qualify for Geneva protection.They do not meet the standard of the 1949 pact. They are not one of the sovereign nations that signed and obviously have no regard for who they injure or kill. This is where the Senate Armed Services report is WRONG. The Bush administration did not "redefine" the law as stated in the report to allow torture.
Levin and his buddies would have been running for the microphone to blame Bush for not doing enough if we had been attacked during the last seven years.

We're dealing with animals!

I guess they've never heard of Andrew Johnson.

__________________
Still corrupting young minds

Please explain bandnerd.

Andrew Johnson was the VP who succeeded Abraham Lincoln. He was an ardent defender of segregationist policies and vetoed many civil rights bills supported by the Republicans.

Again, we're only hearing this from some Administration officials and right-wing apologists, you know, the folks who have been shown to be incompetent liars over and over and have zero credibility left. I simply don't believe it. Most independent accounts indicate waterboarding has been a lot more widespread than one or two cases, and it's simply head-in-the-sand to believe otherwise at this point. Vague rumblings that it has sometimes stopped nameless attacks are simply not believable from this crew of thugs leaving office disgraced in a few weeks.

Using legal technicalities and dehumanizing the torture victims is a cowardly cop-out to excuse looking the other way while human beings are being tortured, and yes they are human beings. Plus, in many cases, the people who are detained and tortured have not had due process and are only asserted to be terrorists. We know for a fact there have been innocent people turned in by Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis simply looking for some of the cash we were handing out for turning in "terrorists", and other people who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes they end up tortured by our government or its agents. Here's just one example: Ex-Terror Detainee Says U.S. Tortured Him, Tells 60 Minutes He Was Held Underwater, Shocked And Suspended From the Ceiling - CBS News

Even if we could be 100% sure all the people caught up in the Bush administration's hunt from terrorists actually are terrorists, there is considerable good reason not to torture them anyway. As is often reported but always ignored by the sickos who advocate torture, study after study show that it does not provide any reliable information, at least without a lot of bad information getting in the way. And our torture policies have clearly been used by the enemy as a recruiting tool to find more terrorists that are only now reaching the age and experience to try and launch more attacks against the west.

I swear sometimes people can't tell the difference between real life and an episode of "24", and some of those people have been key, powerful decision-makers the last 7 years and 11 months. Thank goodness those types have finally been run out of town by voters.

Torture or not, I can not stand Cheney (and I'm Republican)....His arrogance certainly didn't win him any kudo's....I put him in the same pompas-pool as Les Miles & Pete Carroll.....

Interesting "searched" article I came across....

In the stellar Washington Post exposé on Dick Cheney, the public learned that key presidential aides were often intentionally kept out of the loop on important decisions by the Vice President. For example, President Bush's decision to try detainees in military commissions and strip them of their due process rights was not conveyed to Secretary of State Colin Powell:

"What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001

In addition, the Post reported that a Cheney-commissioned Justice Department memo that advocated the legal justification for torture was kept out of Powell's sight:

On June 8, 2004, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell learned of the two-year-old torture memo for the first time from an article in The Washington Post.

Last night in an interview with Larry King, Powell criticized Cheney, saying, "[He] sometimes went directly to the president and the rest of us weren't aware of what advice he was giving." He also chastised the White House's manner of doing business. "It was not a system where we routinely exposed all points of view," he said.

I wonder how many of those polled could recite more than 5 VP's, let alone actually know what they did or stood for.

That is probably one of the most ignorant and sanctimonious statements I've seen in awhile.

The Third Geneva Convention, Army Field Manual, etc. all render anything "dehumanizing" to an EPW as illegal conduct. I'd say there are a lot of things in that list that the average person wouldn't necessarily consider "torture" that the Conventions would consider "dehumanizing," and therefore illegal (e.g. stripping people naked, bagging them, etc.). To reiterate, the Conventions don't just prohibit the application of physical pain, they go pretty far... it is about maintaining the dignity of the soldier.

You mentioned that the bad guys today are civilians and not soldiers. You know there is a Geneva Convention that covers civilians don't you? It is the Fourth Geneva Convention (as well as something known as Protocol I, which since the 1970s has been considered a fundamental human right by all states participating in the UN). Civilians are granted the same protections. I think this argument that it's okay because today's bad guys aren't really soldiers just isn't valid... it's just political spin that some folks said once upon a time in an attempt to placate the public. That doesn't make it legal.

Remember the origins of a lot of this. The Nazis and the Japanese were notorious for torturing civilians during WWII and that was in fact considered a war crime.

If you disagree, that's fine. I've read the Conventions a while ago, which was very tedious but I was curious, and am very convinced of my opinion. You can argue that I'm incorrect and I'll listen, but I'll probably need to have you rationalize your viewpoint by referring back to the specifics in the convention (as I've done above) to be swayed.

PS - I also take issue with your argument that the Conventions apply only to those nations who are signatories. In fact the Conventions explicitly state within their text that this is not the case -- any signatory is required to adhere to the standards, period. It doesn't matter whether or not your enemy does. It is in the text... you can read it yourself, it's online.

An article just published in "Slate" that goes directly toward this thread: Dick Cheney's unique gift for making hard questions easy and vice versa. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine

And I swear I hadn't read the following article yet when I made my smart-@$$ remark about "24", but it doesn't surprise me one bit: Philippe Sands: Jack Bauer and 24 were hugely popular with interrogators at Guantánamo. Let's hope the new series is more realistic | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Imagine my shock at reading that. Only 27 more days until adults are back in charge.

Adults? Where do people get this stuff? The liberal dems are the most sanctimonious people on the planet and that includes the Christian fundamentalists. They have all the arrogance of the newly saved and none of the self examination required by religious tradition. I shudder at their lack of respect or even understanding of history. They seem to get their information via the internet and TV. For god's sake, talk to an old person or read a book.

Pretty scientific poll. LOL

And we firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, intentionally targeting civilians. In my book, the effects of firebombing population centers, (in Dresden's case, many children had been relocated there on purpose because they figured the allies wouldn't bomb such a historically significant city) has pretty similar physical effects (along the line of creating pain) to torture, e.g., burning the flesh away, cooking people alive, suffocating people.... pretty bad stuff.

The fact is that if the Axis had somehow won out, our leaders would most likely have had to answer for Dresden and Tokyo -- two places, especially the former which were not legitimate military targets and which had very little effect on the ultimate disposition of either conflict.

So your characterization of a war crime on the parts of the Axis should be understood in context with the fact that the Axis lost WWII, and therefore, were being punished equally for being on the wrong side of the conflict as they were for their actual actions.

International law is indeed an interesting thing. Jurisdiction is probably the most interesting aspect of it. If we are a signatory to a treaty, the treaty is, according to our Constitution, the "supreme law of the land," at least until it's not. Congress is free to repudiate treaties, and it's even a fairly open question as to whether the executive has some sort of power to repudiate or cast aside treaties it doesn't want to abide by, especially when it finds some sort of exigent circumstances, e.g., we just caught Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and we think he has vital national security information.

Other interesting arguments can be made re: rendition. In some cases, the United States has not participated in any sort of torture, but instead has given prisoners over to third parties so that information may be extracted. The legality of that act itself is questionable, but that it's at least questionable, for now, I think, shields the practice. It's a pretty glaring loophole, and it opens up a nasty can of legal worms when you start to consider its legality.