I don't disagree :) I read somewhere, and looked but can't find it now, that Stephanie Romanov ("Lilah") loved doing the scene where she shot Billy because it was "the only chance she got to be a hero."

But it's interesting that you bring this up, because I see this line - and this scene - as one that is equally cruel and empowering. If you take the entire context of the line:

Cordelia: I have to find Billy.

Lilah: And I'm gonna help you why?

Cordelia: You know that guy that you hired to hack into my visions? What he did to me? What it felt like? I was cut, my face disfigured, and burning with pain every second not knowing if it was gonna end or just get worse til I died.

Lilah: So you think I owe you ...

Cordelia: It's not the pain. It's the helplessness. The certainty that there is nothing you can do to stop it, that your life can be thrown away in an instant by someone else. He doesn't care. He'll beat you down until you stay down because he doesn't even think of you as alive. No woman should ever have to go through that. And no woman strong enough to wear the mantle of "vicious bitch" would ever put up with it. Where is Billy going?

It's empowering, sure. It certainly did the job. By shaming Lilah, with a thinly veiled undercurrent of "how the hell could you let this happen to you," with a pointed reminder of the things that "he" did - which ends up referring to Billy, but begins by referring to the guy who did all these things at Lilah's direction. I think it was intended to be empowering, which it was. But it was certainly also intended to shame her at a vulnerable moment, reminding her of her complicity and rebuking her for not being the "bitch" that Cordelia is (the "bitch" who stands up to abusers, as in "Rm w/a Vu").

All of which is to say, it's hardly along the lines of "you're the one, Buffy" or "it'll choke on me." :P It's a very empowering line. But also a rather cruel scene. Cruelty for the sake of goading someone into right action, that is.