The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney (Part One)

On December 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a compelling report into the torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody (PDF), based on a detailed analysis of how Chinese torture techniques, which are used in US military schools to train personnel to resist interrogation if captured, were reverse engineered and applied to prisoners captured in the "War on Terror."

The techniques, taught as part of the SERE programs (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) include sleep deprivation, the prolonged use of stress positions, forced nudity, hooding, exposure to extreme temperatures, subjecting prisoners to loud music and flashing lights, "treating them like animals," and, in some cases, the ancient torture technique known as waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning that the torturers of the Spanish Inquisition called "tortura del agua."

The report rejected the conclusions of over a dozen investigations, conducted since the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004, which identified problems concerning the treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo, but which were not authorized to gaze up the chain of command to blame senior officials for approving the use of torture by US forces, and for instigating abusive policies.

This enabled the administration to maintain, as it did with Abu Ghraib, that any abuse was the result of the rogue activities of "a few bad apples," but the Senate Committee report comprehensively demolished this defense. The authors wrote:

The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.

Those singled out for blame include President George W. Bush (for stripping prisoners of the protections of the Geneva Conventions in February 2002, which paved the way for all the abuse that followed), former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney's former legal counsel (and now chief of staff) David Addington, former Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes II, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, former White House general counsel (and later US Attorney General) Alberto Gonzales, former White House deputy counsel Timothy Flanigan, former Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, former Justice Department legal adviser John Yoo, former Guantánamo commanders Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of coalition forces in Iraq.

The one senior official who was not mentioned -- presumably because of the talent for remaining behind the scenes that once earned him the secret service nickname "Backseat" -- was Dick Cheney. However, just four days later, as if to make up for his omission from the report, Cheney was interviewed by ABC News, and took the opportunity to present a detailed defense of the administration's national security policies, throwing down a very public gauntlet to critics of torture, Guantánamo, illegal wiretapping and the invasion of Iraq, and raising fears that he was only doing so because a Presidential pardon is just around the corner.

Cheney's most significant remark was his first admission in public that he was involved in approving the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks (who, it should be noted, claimed responsibility for the attacks before he was captured by US forces). However, the entire interview is worth looking at, as Cheney's version of the truth does not stand up to scrutiny, and features ten lies that should not be allowed to pass without further comment and analysis.

1) On the supposed legality of unauthorized wiretapping

Asked what he thought about suggestions from Barack Obama's transition team that the Bush administration's homeland security policy "has basically been torture and illegal wiretapping, and that they want to undo the central tenets of your anti-terrorist policy," Cheney replied, "They're wrong. On the question of terrorist surveillance, this was always a policy to intercept communications between terrorists, or known terrorists, or so-called 'dirty numbers,' and folks inside the United States, to capture those international communications. It's worked. It's been successful. It's now embodied in the FISA statute that we passed last year, and that Barack Obama voted for, which I think was a good decision on his part. It's a very, very important capability. It is legal. It was legal from the very beginning. It is constitutional, and to claim that it isn't I think is just wrong."

THE LIE: Although the Bush administration secured Congressional approval for the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) in the week after the 9/11 attacks (the founding document of the "War on Terror," which granted the President seemingly open-ended powers "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001"), the approval for the warrantless surveillance of communications to and from the United States that followed on September 25 was neither "legal" nor "constitutional."

In a series on Dick Cheney in the Washington Post last summer, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker explained how, on the day of the 9/11 attacks, Cheney and David Addington swiftly assembled a team that included Timothy Flanigan and John Yoo to begin "contemplating the founding question of the legal revolution to come: What extraordinary powers will the President need for his response?" Gellman and Becker described how Flanigan, with advice from Yoo, drafted the AUMF, and Yoo explained that "they used the broadest possible language because 'this war was so different, you can't predict what might come up'."

In fact, as the authors point out, they "knew very well what would come next: the interception -- without a warrant -- of communications to and from the United States." Although warrantless communications intercepts had been forbidden by federal law since 1978, the administration claimed that they were "justified, in secret, as 'incident to' the authority Congress had just granted" the President, in a memorandum that Yoo finalized on 25 September. Far from being "legal" and "constitutional," therefore, the secret memorandum was the first brazen attempt by the key policy-makers (in the Office of the Vice President and the Pentagon) to use the AUMF as cover for an unprecedented expansion of presidential power that was intended to cut Congress, the judiciary, and all other government departments out of the loop.

2) On the definition of torture

Moving on to the allegations of torture, Cheney said, "On the question of so-called 'torture,' we don't do torture, we never have. It's not something that this administration subscribes to. Again, we proceeded very cautiously; we checked, we had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross. The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful, wouldn't do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal. And any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong."

THE LIE: The claim, "we don't do torture," which President Bush has also peddled on numerous occasions, is an outright lie. The definition of torture, as laid down in the UN Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person." However, in the summer of 2002 (obviously with Cheney's knowledge), John Yoo, with input from Addington, Gonzales and Flanigan, drafted another secret memorandum, issued on August 1 (PDF), which has become known as the "Torture Memo." This extraordinary document -- one of the most legally manipulative in the whole of the "War on Terror" -- drew creatively on historical rulings about torture in countries including Northern Ireland and Bosnia, and attempted to claim that, for the pain inflicted to count as torture, it "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

Last summer, Yoo confirmed that Addington was responsible for another of the memo's radical claims -- that, as Commander in Chief, the President could authorize torture if he felt that it was necessary -- and also confirmed that a second opinion was signed off on August 1, 2002, which, unlike the first (leaked after the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004) has never been made public. An unnamed source cited by Gellman and Becker explained that this second memo contained a long list of techniques approved for use by the CIA, which included waterboarding, but apparently drew the line at threatening to bury a prisoner alive.

As a result, all Cheney's talk of "careful" and "cautious" legal advice is nothing more than a failed attempt to justify redefining torture. Outside of the White House and the Pentagon, it has always been abundantly clear that the SERE techniques (let alone the more extreme methods approved for use by the CIA) are torture, pure and simple, and the Senate Committee's recent report quotes extensively from a number of bodies -- the Air Force, the Defense Department's Criminal Investigative Task Force, the Army's International and Operational Law Division, the Navy and the Marine Corps -- who were opposed to their implementation for this very reason. Others, who took their complaints to the highest levels, were Alberto J. Mora, the head of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and the FBI.

3) On intelligence obtained through torture

Following his defense of the interrogation techniques authorized by the administration, Cheney continued: "Did it produce the desired results? I think it did. I think, for example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was the number three man in al-Qaeda, the man who planned the attacks of 9/11, provided us with a wealth of information. There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything we knew about al-Qaeda came from that one source."

THE LIE: With exquisite timing, Cheney's bombastic pronouncements about the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and its supposed value coincided with the publication, in Vanity Fair, of an article by David Rose, in which a number of senior officials from both the FBI and the CIA directly refuted Cheney's claims. The article, which is worth reading in its entirety, focused primarily on the torture of Abu Zubaydah, Binyam Mohamed and Jose Padilla (which I have discussed at length before), but there were also key insights into the torture of KSM. Although President Bush claimed that KSM had provided "many details of other plots to kill innocent Americans," a former senior CIA official, who read all the interrogation reports from KSM's torture in secret CIA custody, explained that "90 percent of it was total fucking bullshit," and a former Pentagon analyst added, "KSM produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were."

In addition, Cheney's claims about KSM were directly contradicted by Jack Cloonan, a senior FBI operative whose torture-free interrogation of al-Qaeda operatives in the years before 9/11 provides an object lesson in how the administration should have operated afterwards. Disputing the unspecified claims that, as Cheney put it, the interrogation of KSM had produced "a wealth of information," Cloonan said, "The proponents of torture say, 'Look at the body of information that has been obtained by these methods.' But if KSM and Abu Zubaydah did give up stuff, we would have heard the details." Rose added that a former CIA officer asked, "Why can't they say what the good stuff from Abu Zubaydah or KSM is? It's not as if this is sensitive material from a secret, vulnerable source. You're not blowing your source but validating your program. They say they can't do this, even though five or six years have passed, because it's a 'continuing operation.' But has it really taken so long to check it all out?"

However, what was probably the most damning opinion was offered by FBI director Robert Mueller:

I ask Mueller: So far as he is aware, have any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through what the administration still calls "enhanced techniques"?

"I'm really reluctant to answer that," Mueller says. He pauses, looks at an aide, and then says quietly, declining to elaborate: "I don't believe that has been the case."

4) On approval for the use of torture on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

The key elements of Cheney's admission that waterboarding was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and that Cheney believed that this was "appropriate," are as follows:

Jonathan Karl: Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Dick Cheney: I was aware of the program certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do, and I supported it. Jonathan Karl: In hindsight, do you think any of those tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others went too far? Dick Cheney: I don't. Jonathan Karl: And on KSM, one of those tactics, of course, widely reported was waterboarding, and that seems to be a tactic we no longer use. Even that you think was appropriate? Dick Cheney: I do.

THE LIE: Cheney's explanation of how he came to "support" the CIA program that was responsible for the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (and numerous other "high-value detainees") suggests that he was little more than an adviser for a preconceived project. Yet again, nothing could be further from the truth.

To understand why, it is necessary to examine how the "Torture Memos" of August 2002 came about, by looking at the events of November 13, 2001, when, under the cover of his regular weekly meeting with the President, Cheney played the leading role in circulating and gaining approval for a presidential order that authorized the President to seize "terror suspects" anywhere in the world and imprison them as "enemy combatants" without charge or trial, (or, if required, to try them in Military Commissions, which were empowered to accept secret evidence and evidence obtained through torture).

Approved within an hour by only two other figures in the White House -- associate counsel Bradford Berenson, and deputy staff secretary Stuart Bowen, whose objections that it had to be seen by other presidential advisors were only dropped after "rapid, urgent persuasion" that the President "was standing by to sign and that the order was too sensitive to delay" -- the order was the first move in a deliberate ploy to strip prisoners of rights, so that they could be interrogated as the administration saw fit.

This was confirmed the following day, when Cheney told the US Chamber of Commerce that terrorists do not "deserve to be treated as prisoners of war." It took him another ten weeks to persuade the President to agree with him, but in the meantime the pressure to approve the use of torture increased when, shortly after Guantánamo opened, a CIA delegation came to the White House to explain, as John Yoo described it, that they were "going to have some real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees," if interrogators were obliged to confine themselves to treatment permitted by the Geneva Conventions.

While this timeline confirms that CIA representatives pressed for removing the protections of the Geneva Conventions in mid-January 2002, it's also clear that Cheney had a similar plan in mind at least two months earlier. After the CIA visit, Addington wrote another notorious memorandum -- to which the rather less articulate Alberto Gonzales put his name -- in which the Conventions' "strict limits on questioning of enemy prisoners" were seen as hindering attempts "to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists."

This was issued on January 25, and on February 6 Addington provided the President with the words for his next presidential order, which, as Cheney had signaled on November 14, stated that the protections of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners seized in the "War on Terror." The final development came after the capture of Abu Zubaydah on March 28, 2002, when, as John Yoo explained, CIA officials returned to the White House to ask "what the legal limits on interrogation are." As described above, this led to the "Torture Memos" of August 2002, even though the torture of Zubaydah began four months before the memos were issued.

In conclusion, then, although the CIA had some input, the development of the entire program, from November 13, 2001 to August 1, 2002, in which prisoners were defined as "enemy combatants," stripped of all rights so that they could be interrogated, and then set up for torture, was driven not by the CIA but by Cheney and his close advisers.

In Part Two, Andy examines Cheney's lies about Guantánamo and the invasion of Iraq.

Comments

[scooperss]

And? While I respect your right to share this with us, nothing will ever come from it. Our congress will do nothing to hold anyone accountable for anything they might have done illegally in the last 8 years. That's the main reason I vote third party. I don't trust any of them.

[Truby]

Ah, the top ten list.......a great way to trivialize truly abhorrent behavior.

[talibanana]

So what? Our most senior officials lied and circumvented the constitution and our representatives in Congress in order to execute a gross violation of human rights thus greatly endangering our troops and damaging the precious reputation of our country for little if any benefit.

So what? Our enemies have been emboldened and empowered to attack our troops and wound and kill GIs for no discernible reason.

So what? Our country is embarrassed by the ineptitude and utter lack of accountability of those in the highest office that we freely elected, making the whole population of the US culpable in the systematic disregard of universal human rights and International law . . .

So what? We sold our souls for a handful of false promises. So what?

[RedneckDem]

11. Crossing his fingers while taking his oath of office to serve the people.

[RadicalConservative]

So what? Because of the actions of Bush and Chaney, there have been no attacks on U.S. soil since 9-11. No, the anthrax mailings were not an attack. they were murder by some self -serving, attention hungry person.

[mikep007]

Oh so that was thanks to Bush and Cheney. Grasping at straws aren't we?!

[hmmmmm]

fact: no attacks since 2001, its almost been 8 years.
fact: no attacks between the first one ('93) and the second ('01), 8 years
fact: no one was tortured during theClinton administration, so how can you be the least bit positive that the time frame has anything to do with torturing suspected terrorists.

no cause and effect here, my friend.

btw. while some of the anthrax was mailed to journalists and such, the anthrax that was sent to Tom Daschle and other senators at their offices absolutely constitutes and attack.

btw 2. .. Clinton arrested, tried and convicted the bombers from '93. Let me know when Bush/ChenEy can say that about Osama Bin Laden

[RedneckDem]

Didn't OBL basically say he was going to break America financially after 9/11. So, in effect, we did almost everything he wanted us to do (i.e. over react, invade, kill, torture). And now look at us, on the edge of an economic armageddon and we are becoming dispised by more and more people in the world. Good job!!! All for the actions of 19 radicals, part of a larger group of an estimated 18,000 spread across the world. 18,000, as opposed to about 50,000,000 police, military, intelligence and others throughout the world who could have taken them down one by one. Instead we did the equivalent of attacking New York State because thats where OKC bomber Timothy McVeigh was born.
Just because they haven't attacked in the US doesn't mean that others across the world haven't suffered terror attacks, but you really don't care about that, do you? Nor do you understand the connection thereof.... sad little man...

[MarkInIrvine]

Bush et al. off-shored the post-9/11 terrorist attacks by sending our servicemen and women to Iraq where more have died than the number that died in the 9/11murders. When we consider the American and coalition lives that have been irreparably damaged by injury and psychological trauma, the number of casualties resulting from Bush's off-shore program expands hundred-fold; when we include the Iraqi civilians in the casualty lists, the numbers go "off the charts". Bush has not only not made America and the world safer, he is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the creation of new terrorists who hate this country.

[scooperss]

Wow that's some excuse. (sarcasm) You make it sound like there was an attack a day until bush got into office.

[haval2]

He belongs in prison. simple.

[Jazzman323]

The information gathered by waterboarding and wiretapping saved countless American lives. End of story.

[dragger201]

Uh........I think I'll go with Robert Mueller's assessment............

[hmmmmm]

right. because YOU say so. thats good enough for me!




seriously. name one.

[Woodley56]

Mission Accomplished! End of story. No further examination of facts necessary. Also, FDR caused the Great Depression.

[mergina]

Ten life? HAAAAAAAAAAAA! That's a good one. Are you speaking of his first hour in office?

[WilliamP]

Is this a daily column?

[dolphy]

I'll be surprised if he only had ten big lies. Cheney will put Pinocchio to shame.

[TheGreatPumpkin]

I went through SERE training in January of 1998. The whole point of it was simply how to survive torture without revealing any useful information. I was forced to live in a cell barely big enough to turn around in, for a bathroom- I had a coffee can. During the night- they woke us up every hour. We had to stand at the position of attention and when the guard looked in our cell announce, "SIr/Ma'am- the b*tch is here". I was stripped naked and forced to lay on a cold, concrete floor (mind you- this was Spokane, WA). Some of the other people there were forced to strip naked, put in a 5 gallon drum outside and then it was filled with water. I was slapped, punched, kicked and called a wh. ore (my response was "the only wh. ore around here I know of is your mama"- the WRONG thing to say).

My point being- no matter how you slice it, it's torture. And we were trained to give non useful information if the torture got unbearable and we were going to break (and believe me- it got unbearable)... Does the US honestly think that these operatives aren't trained the same way? No- I rather think the more useful way to get information from people is by lowering their guard- not heightening it. Be nice, treat them humanely- get more flies with honey than vinegar.

[Rogan]

Research has shown that your conclusion is correct. The argument that torture might be necessary to draw out short-term urgent tactical information, there's some validity, to that. When you're talking about SOP for all POWs, though, what you want from them, is for them to decide that you're the good guys, and co-operate completely. When someone who knows, is spilling his guts, completely, that includes all of that prisoner's personal analysis and insight, which is the MOST important intelligence material, and none of it will ever come out, under anything close to "torture."

[EtTuBrute]

Likewise - SERE grad, but early 70's, and male instead (special operations, ranger units, etc.). As recently stated by the senior SERE interrogation instructor at Coronado, this is simply a matter of national honor. There are things we, as Americans, just do not do (or did not do) see: (The Rachel Maddow Show for Friday, December 12, 2008)( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28282753/).

One of my closest friends currently staffs the SERE school at Ft. Rucker, and the program is essentially the same as when you and we all went through it in the 70"s or later, with the same objective: to teach you how to survive torture without revealing any useful information; that everyone will break sooner or later; and to teach a method of dealing with that reality in a manner that does not compromise operational security or other valuable national security information. I don"t know if you were subjected to waterboarding, but as one who was, let me tell you that you will tell your interrogators anything, true or not, in order to get the torture to stop.

SERE was developed as a result of the mistreatment of US prisoners at the hands of countries who did not, unlike we did, honor the Geneva conventions (and yes, to my sorrow, the tense is correct). The U.S. military"s manuals on prisoner interrogation were developed over many years of experience with what did and did not work in terms of effective interrogation.

continued "

[EtTuBrute]

continued "

There were sound reasons for avoiding counter-productive physical and mental abuse, since we learned through experience that any information derived that way was compromised and suspect.

Also correct is that our enemies are trained in a similar manner, and can produce identical results: inaccurate or unreliable information provided to interrogators. This produces, at best, delays in gathering accurate intelligence, at worst results in generating counter-productive military action based upon inaccurate information. That can result in US casualties, or in producing negative perceptions of the US which further impedes the military"s ability to perform their mission (not to mention the human costs to both sides). Think of the sales/business adage that one negative experience with business equals ten positive ones (due to human nature and the likelihood that other potential customers will hear of the negative experience).

It also galls me that the almost-universal majority of people occupying positions of public trust who promulgated or defended this policy not only lack military experience, but actively avoided it (and the Rush Limbaugh"s who found a way to medically avoid service) - as Colin Powell noted when he observed that Vietnam was avoided by "the sons of power and privilege". These types of people run our government, representing you & me daily, making decisions that will forever change the way we view, and the rest of the world views, our country.

[proudem]

well written and well said.

[Mercy8 om]

We can not allow these criminals to go free. The people in this country deserve better than that. We can not prosecute anyone for anything in this country if we allow these criminals to get away with their crimes. Since Reagan came into office we have disregarded the middle class and workers and the poor with amazing abandon. We have gone after and prosecuted certain segments of this country with enormous passion. The time has come to put things back into balance. NO ONE SHOULD BE ABOVE THE LAW. and if that means taking down the Democratic leadership for going along to get along then so effing be it. If we don't clean up our act we are never going to survive the changes in this world. We either get real and get real honest or we die. We don't have time for politics as usual because we have demolished our plnaet's environment and our economic well being. If we care at all for our children then the time has come to stop being bad children ourselves and do the right things to set things back into balance.

[billw8017]

I don't think people appreciate how natural democracy is. The great tyrannies abused democratic antecedents. The French had the Estates General, which after being ignored for generations, showed its power in the French Revolution. The Spanish had the Cortes which preserved local autonomy even through the period when Spain had a nominal rule over the most of the world. Scandinavians had their Thing while being lawless pirates who warred and conquered northern France, England, Sicily, Palestine and, of course, Iceland and Greenland.

Powerful institutions almost forgotten because they were supplanted by autocratic governments! Our own democracy is hardly 400 years old. In its time of glory, it may be susceptible to tyrannical over turning.

We must be civil and respectful while being adamant about our rights. The powers-that-be must be restrained without being made desperate. Sure, these powers are as ready to work through the Democrats as the Republicans, but their sway among Republicans is clear. The weakness of the Democrats is not a reason to support Republicans. We move the center of power to the more liberal when we support Democrats. The trick is to work on the Democrats rather than abandoning all hope.

[Woodley56]

Well stated, Bill! Thanks for the historical perspective.

I think the trick is to get strong Democrats elected. Then they won't be labeled as weak. Obama was a good start. It must continue beyond him, though. Hopefully Dean's party-building strategy will continue to bear fruit, as will all the new candidates for office that are Iraq War Vets.

[radical1]

WE CAN NOT LET Bush or Cheney get away with their war crimes, their falcifying of intelligence to get us into war, their recommended torture of prisoners of their war, Obugrave & Gitmo and their constant manufactored lies to keep us in war. As I see it, their worst crimes are what they've done to the people in Iraq, the military of countries taking part in their war and dragging our country to the edge and beyond catrastraphe for their own greedy purposes.. Let's all put and keep pressure on to punish Bush/Cheney and their henchmen.

[billw8017]

After the Civil War, an amnesty was extended to the Confederate leaders and the rebellious states were brought back into the Union. Thousands died in that war as a consequence of their treason -- and, it was treason as clearly defined in the Constitution, but we could forgive. Robert E. Lee, for example, remains a hero to many otherwise patriotic Americans.

Serving the United States must not be allowed to become merely a gate into jail. It really burns me to see Bush and Cheney get away with illegal wars, torture, and lesser violations of law and decency. The fact remains, that the election resolves the government, and Bush has made the effort to effect a graceful transition. These men may never be free to visit Europe or other foreign countries without negotiating with their governments for assurances that they will not be arrested.

That's nice. Let it be enough.

[billw8017]

That is, arrested for capital crimes.

[MBryant]

don't stop with torture and the justification for Iraq.

In Paul O'neill's "The Price of Loyalty" he indicated that even though he and the Federal Reserve Chairman recommended against tax cuts and recommended against the war in Iraq for financial reasons to Cheney. Cheney reported to Bush and the congress that the team was in agreement on these things. O'Neill's resignation came because of his frustration that Bush delegated economic policy to Cheney and Cheney would not listen to dissenting views.

You could write a shorter article: The three truthful stateements of Dick Cheney as Vice President.

[SparkyDash]

Exceptional article, very sobering, thank you. As awful as this subject is, I hope it stays public, with Cheney's name appropriately attached to it, for a long, long time. After reading of these horrific acts, I find it hard to believe that Cheney could sleep at night, and not feel some sense of sadness or remorse. Cheney must have known the gory details of the act of waterboarding (I have and it is horrifying, torture), How does one fully compartmentalize and go about business as usual? Does this man have a soul?