Last week the Department of Justice released memos detailing techniques used for interrogation of terrorism suspects aka torture memos. This decision by President Obama has been lauded by some, but several members of the Bush administration and their supporters have been making the rounds on Fox News and the Sunday talk shows saying it was a huge mistake.

A former Bush administration official told Politico:

"It's damaging because these are techniques that work, and by Obama's action today, we are telling the terrorists what they are. We have laid it all out for our enemies. This is totally unnecessary...Publicizing the techniques does grave damage to our national security by ensuring they can never be used again..."

Jon Stewart took on these men and women last night saying, "Do you really have to waterboard somebody 183 times? Doesn't the efficacy go down? I assume after 90 waterboardings the guy's thinking 'you're not really drowning me.'"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/21/daily-show-takes-on-tortu_n_189356.html

meanwhile …..

"Darth Vader" Cheney showed what he's made of once again, emerging from his notorious DC bunker to also reassert on Fox News that torture works, he approves of torture, he has no regrets that America tortured & 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 CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose job was counterintelligence.) President Obama clearly stated that his new release of memos between the Justice Department & the CIA 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 & 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 & 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 US (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 & 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 & revisits Cheney's advocacy of torture in the media over the years. Astute commentators reacting to Leopold's article have suggested that we call his damn bluff …. release everything. 

Another poster questions what Cheney means in saying he has issued a "formal request to the CIA" - how can anyone no longer in power do that?  A third writes, "let the Democrats [sic] use him as their posterBOY for what is wrong with the repub[licans]" ... And another: "'This guy needs to go away...'  ... to court & to a prison cell. He has publicly confessed to US & 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 & women & 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.

Returning to Leopold's synopsis of Cheney's Fox News interview:

... 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 Darth from his bunker to a different kind of locked compound - say, Corcoran State Prison?

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

A more realistic & legalistic view might be that if it turns out the Cheney is right & torturing people helped save American lives, it changes nothing. Torture is a crime in the United States. Cheney & 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 defence.

Obama is not given the right by the US Constitution to be the judge & jury for torturers, including Bushit & Cheney. Obama & Congress took oaths to uphold the Constitution & the laws of the land. They should remember that they must do this job regardless of whether they think it is divisive or not.

If Obama & the Congress do their jobs of enforcing the law with respect to torture & other Bushit & Cheney war crimes, they will begin unravelling the web of deceit that has supported the Iraq & Afghanistan wars.