Magical thinking is the belief that something that didn’t happen is proof that something you did prevented it from happening and, if you hadn’t taken your action. It would have happened.  It is a magical belief that is shrouded in human history.  Something that might have happened was prevented by an action of ours.  Unfortunately, something that did not happen cannot be used to prove that you prevented it from happening because of your exact actions.  A good example is an old joke:

Q. Why do elephants paint their toenails red?

A.  I don’t know.

Q. It’s so they can hide in Cherry trees.

A. That’s ridiculous!

Q. Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?

A. No, never.

Q. See, it works!

I thought about elephants in cherry trees when Cheney spoke about how “enhanced interrogation” (i.e. torture) resulted in information that saved thousands of lives, if not hundreds of thousands.  I’m afraid that his information came from the same place as WMD or the tie between Sadam Hussein and Al Qaida.  Think about the claim for a moment.  Al Qaida’s attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon resulted in slightly less than 4,000 deaths.  The Luftwaffe blitz on London (1940-41) was estimated to have resulted in less than 50,000 deaths.  The atomic bomb, when it was exploded over Hiroshima, was estimated to have resulted in about 100,000 deaths.  The firebombing of Dresden by virtually the entire RAF was estimated to have resulted in about 135,000 deaths.  Cheney claims that only 3 men were waterboarded.  Yet, from the information gleaned from those three men, the Bush-Cheney administration was able to save us from an attack that would have resulted in more deaths that occurred in the 2 year bombing of London, more deaths than the atomic bomb caused in Hiroshima, and possibly more deaths that occurred in Dresden.  They saved us from all this destruction without saying a word, while they rushed to tell us about Jose Padillo and every minor plot.  What forbearance!  If you believe all of this, I’d like to ask you a question:

Why do elephants paint their toenails red?