It has always been one of my tenets of analysis of the Bush Administration that Dick Cheney is perhaps the most overrated "intellectual" in American public life. There's no doubt he takes himself very seriously indeed, but it's also true that he's nearly always wrong.One of the most oft-cited examples from his errata sheet is his pronouncement that the insurgency was in its "last throes" right at the moment two or three years of nonstop mayhem in Iraq were about to begin, but that's just one of his credits. He was also dead wrong about his "no doubt" statement that Saddam had a nuclear bomb program. On and on. I suppose it's that growling gravitas he brings to all his nuanced utterances, all those prepositional phrases salted away in his long, intricate sentences, that give people the idea he's a trenchant thinker. Compared to Bush, who has trouble describing coherently what day of the week it is, Cheney seems like Sir Isaac Newton, but that's damnation by faint praise.
I'm trying to figure out what he has in mind by essentially admitting his role in ordering the waterboarding torture of Muslim detainees, as he did Monday night in a television interview. Personally, I think he was just stupid to do so. Some analysts, who are prone perhaps to overthinking the issue, suggest that Cheney is forcing Bush's hand on a Presidential pardon. What you might call a preemptory attack on a federal prosecution for offenses under the War Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2441. One devilish problem for the Torture Cabal right now is that the public visibility of such prosecutions seems to be increasing, not fading away as the Advent of Obama approaches. I admit I'm somewhat surprised by that. Maybe it has something to do with overall hard times economically; the American people are in a foul mood and are looking around for someone to take it out on. These are very ominous signs for Bush & Co. These developments are happening very, very close to the end of Bush's term, and at the end of his term he and Cheney will essentially have no power to control the flow of events.
The New York Times in its editorial today calls for investigation, at least, and maybe prosecution of "Pentagon insiders" for war crimes relating to detainee mistreatment. The editors there are such good little Establishment insiders. They just can't quite bring themselves to state the obvious: circumscribing the prosecutions in such a way simply moves the "few bad apples" approach a little farther up the chain of command. No, if the U.S. is going to prosecute "high government officials" for war crimes, then obviously we must include George W. Bush and Richard Cheney as defendants. They stand right at the center of the conspiracy to violate Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. They enthusiastically encouraged, aided and abetted, and most importantly, set the moral tone for, the torture regime of the Bush Administration. It was all part of the sick play-acting of a couple of lifelong noncombatants, one an ex-cheerleader who found a way to look like a hero while carefully avoiding the Vietnam War, and the other a fat chain smoker with a bum ticker who took five deferments so he could pursue his career of wrecking the body politic. And now it's come back to haunt them, the "tough guy" stuff they never imagined would ever trouble their easy retirements.
With Cheney's admissions (even with his inaccurate historical revisions), the choice for the Obama Administration becomes pretty clear. Since my sense about Barack is that he doesn't like unpleasant confrontation, he may secretly hope that Bush pardons everyone (using the Bush-Cheney Retirement pas-de-deux to pull it off), so he can use Cheney's Gambit as a way to finesse the whole situation. The new Attorney General may also point to the Congress-approved retroactive exonerations in the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act as a reason such prosecutions would be futile.
One rationale for avoidance will probably not work: the "press of other business," such as the economic stimulus package. We're in for a long, rough haul in the immediate years ahead, as an unworkable economic structure thrashes and struggles (like an apatosaurus in the La Brea Tar Pits) and attempts to adapt. The American People might need just such a distraction for a couple of years. It's hard to foresee all the permutations, of course; but it might just happen that the Obama Administration, taking a page from Cheney's "improvements" to the Office of the Presidency, decides to rule the pardons ineffective by Executive Order. And those retroactive exonerations? Same treatment. Sure, it's unconstitutional. But so was the suspension of habeas corpus for the Guantanamo prisoners. So was the decision to decide that the Geneva Treaty, entitled to recognition as the supreme law of the land under the Treaty Clause, was a "quaint" relic of another time which did not apply to human beings Bush decided to treat inhumanely.
Cry havoc! and loose the dogs of war. Karma's a bitch, Dick, when those dogs turn around and bite you in the ass.
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