Dick Cheney: Darth Sinister

A pattern of increasing desperation on the part of the perpetrators is evident in the ever-unfolding drama over the Bush Administration's torture policies. It should be clear by now why former Vice President Dick Cheney is out in front of a camera seemingly every day now. He is trying to save his tail from the slammer.

The principal question regarding the issue of torture has gone through several stages, each based on the rationalizations or alibis dreamed up by the war criminals themselves in the face of each successive revelation. At first the issue was whether it was happening. After Abu Ghraib that became whether it was the work of a few bad apples. After it became clear senior officials gave the go-ahead the next dodge was whether it was illegal. Of late that one has morphed into whether it was effective. The latest is a question of the date Nancy Pelosi first knew about it for certain.

The one thing these excuses all have in common is their irrelevance to the matter at hand. The United States Constitution, U.S. statutes and the United Nations Charter (as a ratified treaty it has the full force of U.S. law) have all been violated. If we are a nation of laws under the rule of law we cannot pick and choose the laws to follow when it is convenient to do so.

The excuses offered are strikingly reminiscent of the same kinds of sorry devices I heard from adolescent miscreants as a middle school teacher for seventeen years: I didn't know it was against the rules. I was just holding it for somebody else. It was somebody else's fault. You're lucky it wasn't something worse. Everybody else is doing it. So-and-so saw me and didn't say anything. My other teacher said it was okay. This other guy told me to do it.

The more they try to explain and excuse their way out of it the deeper into trouble they get. The more lies they have to tell to cover up previous lies the more obvious everything becomes. What a sinister creep Dick Cheney is. So are his fellow travelers, people like David Addington, John Yoo, David Bybee and so on. They remind me of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and his cabal. The world canot afford a United States of America run by people like that. It is time to clean out the rot--all of it.

Prosecutions of Bush Administraton Figures?

The real question is not whether the U.S. government kidnapped people from foreign countries without extradition, tortured captives, turned others over to third parties for torture, engaged in illegal surveillance of American citizens on U.S. soil, held suspects without due process, and lied about what it was doing. No, none of that is even in question anymore. The real question is, what should we do about the Bush Administration's violations of treaties, laws and the Constitution?

Opinion is divided on the matter. It runs the entire gamut. Representative Henry Waxman would like to send people to jail. Senator Patrick Leahy, Chair of the Judiciary Committee, wants to hold congressional inquiries with the power to grant immunity to those who testify. President Obama says, "no one is above the law," but by saying he wants to, "look forward, not backward" he signals his preference not to delve into these matters. Speaker Pelosi said impeachment and presumably prosecutions are "off the table." They could derail the Democratic legislative agenda. That explains Obama's reluctance, too. They have a lot of big issues to solve and do not want to expend precious political capital. Most Republicans have made it clear they are vehemently opposed to any investigation or proceedings. Some, such as GOP congressional leaders warn it would become a partisan "witch hunt" that would take over our political discourse and irrevocably poison interparty relations. The former president and vice president and the hard core right feel that whatever was done was completely justified on an 'end justifies the means' argument.

Each of these is a valid argument from its own perspective. Congressional investigations would initiate a partisan cat fight. This might well delay or gum up the Obama administration's legislative program. It would certainly spark heated debate over the airwaves and throughout society. But to do nothing is to excuse, condone and perhaps encourage more wrongdoing. What is the right thing to do?

The right approach is to leave Congress and the President out of it and turn the Justice Department loose on it. If crimes have been committed then the place for them is court. Leave the politics to fall where they may.

If these depredations were committed by organized crime or common thugs, what would the response be? Would there be anyone arguing against prosecuting kidnappers, trespassers, peeping toms, identity theft hackers and sadistic torturers? Of course not. To argue the contrary is to accept Richard Nixon's famous dictum, "If the president does it, it's not illegal." The next step after accepting that is totalitarianism.

I felt for a long time that Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon was warranted. The nation had been through a year and a half of debilitating fighting over Watergate. I felt it was time to get it behind us and let the healing begin. I felt being forced to resign was punishment enough for someone as compulsively ambitious as Nixon.

But today I feel I was wrong. Important people in his administration drew the opposite conclusion, that the President's power to do whatever he pleased, legal or not, had been compromised and needed to be restored. Twenty-six years later, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld came back to get to work on that. And George W. Bush fell right into line with them. After all, not even Nixon had to suffer the personal humiliation of prison. Immense power beckoned without personal risk. That is why criminal investigations must go forward. There has to be a personal deterrent for people contemplating serious crimes. Any conservative would normally agree with that.

So no, dispense with congressional investigations. They are toothless and can only detract from the critical reform and recovery legislation the country needs. Keep the current President out of this. Neither does he need distraction from his primary duties and responsibilities. Let the Justice Department under Eric Holder begin building criminal cases. If sufficient evidence turns up, file charges. If former officials are convicted, send them to prison. If the often self-proclaimed greatest democracy in the world shrinks from enforcing its own laws and Constitution against the powerful, then what is it, really?

Cheney's Iraq Role Revealed

Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman has published a book called Angler. In it, he provides an account from a top Republican source that Vice President Dick Cheney told demonstrable lies in order to secure congressional authorization for the Iraq War. While it has long been alleged that Cheney fabricated justifications for the invasion, the report marks the first time a high-ranking Republican source has provided first-person corroboration for the suspicions.

The source is none other than former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas). According to the Los Angeles Times characterization of the book, "Armey had spoken out against the war, and his opposition gave cover to Democrats who feared the political costs of appearing to be weak." Armey reversed his position, however, after a private meeting in Cheney's Capitol office. In that meeting, Cheney assured Armey "that the threat from Iraq actually was more imminent than we want to portray to the public at large."

Cheney went on to describe that Iraq's "ability to miniaturize weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear," had been "substantially refined since the Gulf War," and would soon result in "packages that could be moved even by ground personnel." In other words, the dreaded "suitcase" nuclear bomb. There has never been a shred of U.S. intelligence to indicate Iraq possessed any such capacity.

Armey said he now believes Cheney intentionally misled him by stating, "Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had direct personal ties to al-Qaeda terrorists and was making rapid progress toward a suitcase nuclear weapon." Armey is quoted as summarizing, "Did Dick Cheney...purposely tell me things hew knew to be untrue? I seriously feel that may be the case...Had I known then or believed then what I believe now, I would have publicly opposed the (war) resolution right to the bitter end, and I believe I might have stopped it."

We are now in the home stretch of a highly charged presidential election campaign and so close to the end of Cheney's term that an impeachment trial is politically out of the question. Nonetheless, it would serve the country well to prosecute the Vice President for war crimes once he and President Bush leave office. There needs to be a strong example of serious personal consequences on the record the next time a constitutional officer contemplates committing the nation to a war based on a falsified and fabricated rationale. Over 4,500 Americans are dead as a result of these lies, nearly 1,600 more than were killed by Al-Qaeda operatives at the behest of Osama bin Laden on 9/11. As the President himself might say, it is time for all the evildoers to be brought to justice.