Six Degrees of Separation

It ain't personal.
We don't like you, but it ain't personal
--Dick Powell, Murder My Sweet
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Since Ranger last left the topic of Dick Cheney, let's re-visit John Walker Lindh [The American Taliban] and draw a connection.

Lindh was a rifleman for the Taliban, and no proof was given that he engaged in terrorist activity. Nonetheless, he was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for violating the embargo against the Taliban. Twenty years for carrying a rifle and fighting the Northern Alliance. So much for the freedom of religion in the U.S. Onward Christian Soldiers.

Lindh was shot, tortured, humiliated, kept in solitary confinement, denied medical care and generally treated as if the freedom of America hinged upon his skinny ineffectual ass.

And ineffectual, if not skinny, asses is where we join up with one-each Dick Cheney. Cheney outed CIA operative Valerie Plame, lied about intelligence data and continues to do so, told the CIA to lie or omit facts from their congressional testimony, facilitated torture, assassinations, secret prisons and illegal rendition programs, which included child kidnapping, and more. Just another day at the creepy Veep's office.

The question is: Who is the bigger criminal? Which deserves a 20-year prison sentence? If justice were served, Lindh would be pardoned and Cheney placed in immediate detention, minus habeas corpus.

It would be fair, but it won't happen because America is living its own real-time version of Lost.