For Torture Poster Boy and Advocate Dick Cheney, Darth Vader* Is Too Kind a Nickname

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Christine Bowman

When BuzzFlash ran a spoof of the NCAA basketball playoffs bracket not long ago, the "Race to the Bottom," our readers judged Dick Cheney to be the "Most Evil Republican"** -- for good reason(s). Greedy. Heartless. Power hungry. Never ready to ride gracefully off into the sunset.

This week "Darth Vader" Cheney showed what he's made of once again, emerging from his notorious D.C. bunker to reassert on Fox News that torture works, he approves of torture, he has no regrets that America tortured, and he wants America to keep right on torturing. He even had the gall to suggest that President Obama selectively released memos on the subject of torture -- only the ones that make it look useless. (Where have we heard of the selective release of memos before? Oh, yeah, it was in the Plamegate affair for which Cheney's man Libby was convicted but not jailed. For political reasons, they orchestrated the outing of C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame, whose job was counterintelligence.) President Obama clearly stated that his new release of memos between the Justice Department and the C.I.A. involved only documents that were going to become public soon anyway due to court cases that are in the works.

Yet America's ex-VP is calling for "an honest debate" of torture and wants other documents, which he claims to have seen but as VP chose to keep secret, made public now -- to show what a handy tool torture actually is.

What possible explanation is there for America's elusive, back-room, string-pulling VP to want this "debate" in the open and to want more secrets revealed that document American torture? Could be a strategy to rally the GOP's right wing, always Cheney's personal power base. Or, he is actually convinced that more torture will yield some kind of future benefit for the U.S. (Like our soldiers torturing Abu Ghraib prisoners did? Or our torture of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi did? Under torture he falsely alleged that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were linked, but later recanted. That "intel" helped get us into Iraq.) Or, Cheney is just spinning the story in anticipation of it coming back to bite him legally somewhere down the road.

These are just some hypotheticals that come to mind for Cheney's changed attitude. Now Cheney wants his day in court to advocate for more torture, but mean old President Obama won't give it to him. Or, perhaps the puppet meister sees Congressional investigators or Attorney General Eric Holder or Spanish Judge Garzón lurking in the shadows?

Jason Leopold's detailed report, "Cheney Says Torture Was a 'Success,' Wants Memos Released to Prove It," nicely summarizes the latest Cheney/Fox News tete a tete and revisits Cheney's advocacy of torture in the media over the years. Astute commenters reacting to Leopold's article at BuzzFlash.net have suggested that we "Call his damn bluff. Release everything."  Another poster questions what Cheney means in saying he has issued a "formal requst to the C.I.A." -- how can anyone no longer in power do that?  A third writes, "let the Democrates [sic] use him as their posterBOY for what is wrong with the repub[licans]" ... And another: "'This guy needs to go away...'  ... to court, and to a prison cell. He has publicly confessed to US and International crimes." The lively dialogue keeps going.

Philippe Sands, author of Torture Team, takes a similar bring-it-on tone at The Guardian in "Publish and be damned, Mr Cheney." He shoots down the "administration's claim that the torture of Mohammed al-Qahtani at Guantánamo back in the autumn of 2002 had produced a great deal of useful material. It turns out that it didn't." Continuing, he reports:

On the basis of my conversations with seasoned interrogators, I doubt, however, that it was reliable or particularly useful.

And even if it was, that would not justify the move to torture. As you well know, such acts are never justified in law, under US law or international law. The move to torture has heaped shame on the United States, exposing its servicemen and women and intelligence officers to even greater dangers around world. It has emboldened those who seek to do us harm, serving as the primary tool of recruitment across the globe.

... Cheney added, “I feel very good about what we did. I think it was the right thing to do. If I was faced with those circumstances again, I’d do exactly the same thing.”

Thems is fightin' words! Trouble is, they reflect Dick Cheney's delusional, self-protective, extra-legal perspective. Public servants charged with upholding the law should take note. If they do their job, they'll move Dick Cheney from his bunker to a different kind of locked compound -- say, Corcoran State Prison?

One facetious BuzzFlash.net poster suggests: "Let me spend 3 days with dick. By using varying enhanced interrogation techniques, included (but not limited to) waterboarding, rodents and insect in small enclosed spaces, some dentist's tools, possibly with some dentist help, pair of needle-nose pliers, pack of cigarettes and a lighter, some towels etc., I could get a confession out of dick. I could make him say ANYTHING I wanted to hear. By this token, how is it that torture is effective?"

A more realistic and legalistic one says: "If it turns out the Cheney is right and torturing people helped save American lives, it changes nothing. Torture is a crime in the United States. Cheney and Bush had no legal authority to use it on anyone for any reason. They have admitted to doing it anyway. At their trials any evidence they present attesting to torture having saved American lives will serve as a mitigating factor not an excuse. Last time I checked, 'ends justify the means' arguments did not serve as a legal defense."

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Post Script: Another erstwhile Bush administration spokesperson, Marc A. Thiessen, rushed to join Cheney in advocating for torture. He wrote Tuesday, April 21, 2009 that: "... the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they can -- and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know. This is because of their belief that 'Islam will ultimately dominate the world and that this victory is inevitable.' The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely. This is the secret to the program's success. ... President Obama's decision to release these documents is one of the most dangerous and irresponsible acts ever by an American president during a time of war -- and Americans may die as a result."

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*Maureen Dowd credits George Lucas with the clarification that Darth Vader better describes Bush, whereas Cheney is the evil emperor.

**In case you missed the BuzzFlash Sour Sixteen, here's our promo for contestant (and winner) Dick Cheney: "Running on the heart/pacemaker that will not die, Dick Cheney's Darth Vader routine was strong enough to make him the other #1 seed. Cheney also derives power from longevity, going back to his days of working for Gerald Ford. The money Cheney made off Halliburton while acting as vice president. The votes against Head Start and Nelson Mandela. Going against his own stance on Saddam Hussein from his days as Secretary of Defense. The man-sized safe. This is a lot of evil. We wondered if Cheney would even make it to the event, but as we saw over the weekend on CNN, he hasn't lost a step at being clueless and evil -- even within the same sentence."

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