"We had hoped Vice President Cheney would be here tonight. I hope it’s not his back injury that’s keeping him away. Apparently, he hurt it moving some things out of his office. Personally, I had no idea that waterboards were so heavy."
Look, I'm not humorless, and can even find humor in horrible circumstances. And many of the people posting reactions to the linked story appear to kind of miss Lieberman's point.
But Joe, let me put this in a way that you can understand. Certain Jewish jokes can be funny when they're made by Jews, but never when they're made by antisemites. Similarly, there may be times when jokes about torture and waterboarding are funny (for example, when Jon Stewart satirizes the practice), but never when made by someone who effectively endorses the practice ("It is not like putting burning coals on people's bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological"). You cannot make fun of Cheney as a supporter of torture when you yourself lacked the ethical backbone to stand up for what was right, when you provided a platform for that monster to defend the practice. You are complicit in this tragedy. You cannot pretend to stand above it.
Let me shout this out again: These people do not speak for most of us.
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