Cheney Meant Well

It's grasping at straws, I know, but I'm looking for a benign explanation of the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration.

Criminal law says that facts aren't enough to establish guilt. There also has to be mens rea -- a guilty mind. Crooks don't just perform illegal acts; to be convicted, their intent must also be shown to be crooked.

There are plenty of ugly facts about the past eight years already on the table. Prisoners were waterboarded, which is torture by any definition, and videotaped evidence of it was destroyed. The government intercepted the domestic phone calls and emails of millions of Americans without obtaining the court orders legally required to spy on them. The CIA expanded its counterterrorism operations without conducting the mandated briefings of congressional oversight committees.

The list of publicly known illegalities goes on and on, and if a special prosecutor or commission were empowered to look under more rocks, it's a safe bet that more vermin would turn up. What could possibly excuse the failure to investigate such lawbreaking?

Republicans in Congress are charging that CIA director Leon Panetta's shutting down a secret Bush-era program the moment he belatedly was informed of it, and his telling Congress about it less than 24 hours later, is just political theater, an attempt to distract from the controversy over House speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) charge that the CIA had lied to her about waterboarding.

But the media's kneejerk acceptance of this framing, its buying the idea that this dispute is typical Washington posturing, is both lazy and cynical. On Sunday morning, I heard an MSNBC anchor and a reporter from Politico speculate that if Attorney General Eric Holder appoints a special prosecutor, it could be because the president's poll ratings are dropping, and this move would change the subject from Obama's problems to people's reasons for disliking Bush. The TV pair went on to agree that this whole surveillance and torture donnybrook is basically a partisan dispute, as if the rule of law were a left-right issue, as if the meaning of the Constitution were merely in the political eye of the beholder.

For his part, the president says he wants to look forward, not backward. By that standard, there would have been no Nuremberg trials. The president's defenders say that prosecuting Bush-era criminality would take all the oxygen out of the room, that it would deplete his political capital, that it would create a media circus which would distract the public and doom progress on health care, energy and the economy. By that standard, the Iraq war should have so consumed the Bush administration that it would have had no mojo left over to deregulate Wall Street, fire U.S. Attorneys, cut millionaires' taxes, gut clean-air standards, politicize science, theologize policy or put any of the other right-wing notches in its belt.

If our country actually were to shake off its amnesia, what mens rea could possibly spare the architects of our national shame from accountability? "They were told it was legal" -- the 21st century version of "they were only following orders" -- is the low bar that's already been established for torturers. "He only knew what they told him" is the best that can be said for the embubbled Bush, as though ignorance of the facts and of the law were an acceptable criminal defense.

But what of Cheney, who knew the facts and the law? What frame of mind could exculpate him from ordering the CIA not to brief the intelligence committees of Congress and not to inform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court? What mental state could get him off the legal hook for using John Yoo as the Justice Department's secret apologist for torture, surveillance and every other arrogation of presidential power? What thought process could absolve him from ordering kidnappings and secret detentions in Eastern European hellholes, and from passing off to Congress as truth the worthless confessions extracted under torture? What intent could clear him from blowing CIA agent Valerie Plame's covert status, or distorting and falsifying CIA intelligence, or concealing and destroying evidence of his actions?

Here's the best I can do on Cheney's behalf: He meant well, and he knew better. He truly believed that Saddam Hussein was about to give weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda. He was completely convinced that the restrictions that Congress put on the CIA and the NSA starting in the 1970s were dangerous impediments to learning the truth and nailing the bad guys. He had no doubt that if the president did something, it by nature could not be illegal. Laws? He didn't need no stinkin' laws, not when they were written by legislators cravenly unwilling to do what it takes to protect and defend America, and interpreted by judges pathetically incapable of distinguishing good from evil.

He was smarter than us, and he loved his country more than us, and if the Constitution stood in his way, well, who the hell's going to care about a piece of paper when sarin takes out Chicago and anthrax takes out New York and a dirty bomb takes out LA?

But motive is not a legal defense.

Cheney's mens rea was this: I am above the law. And now -- because of the media's ADD and our leaders' lack of will -- the rule of law, the future of health care, and pretty much everything else on the national agenda is being held hostage by the threat of more "Obama's-helping-the-terrorists" screeds from the ex-vice president.

We have all been witnesses to terrible crimes these last eight years. Will we hold Cheney and his ilk accountable for what they did? If we don't, it will be more than a pity. It will itself be another crime.

This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.

UPDATE: Note to self, after reading comments: Irony and sarcasm don't work online -- at least, they don't work when the writer's as ham-handed as me. Plain and simple, here's what I think: Cheney should have been impeached. Now that he's out of office, he should be prosecuted, shamed and described in history textbooks as an arrogant despot who undermined democracy, cost countless lives and caused damage that will take years to undo.

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Comments

[Georgia Timberlake]

If we do not go after Cheney, Bush, Rove and the rest of the cabal....we might as well pack our goods and leave. Without a Constitution, laws, ethics and morals FOR ALL there is not much left. Unless youare a WallStreeter, etc. Hell with all of them

[peterg76]

Cheney: Defender of no-bid contracts from the interference of all that democracy stuff.

[liberalOrgonian]

This article was well written.
"Above the law Cheney, don't need no stinking laws, he knew better, but what the hay."
All these above quotes explain why this country had gone rogue.
With leaders like Cheney, we are surely going to hell in a hand basket.

Why have laws, if the leaders do not believe in them?
Anarchy for all?
Prosecute lawlessness.
No one is above the laws of the land, and Cheney KNEW what he was doing.

[Jay Lewis]

I watched Hardball's host last night, emotionally charged, demanding to know who gave Cheney permission to exert the power he seemed to have while in office. Chris's guests walked around that query in trying to explain Cheney's omnipotence, trying to lay out groundwork for some sense of response. None, of course, could produce an answer, or perhaps were unwilling to venture a guess as to an actual individual, agency, group, faction, etc.

Interesting. Nobody had the alphabet.

Dick Cheney is corporate America made manifest.

Cheney is the image of the corporate world that is uniquely allowed to be seen. One might think of all the CEO's from industry called before Congress. Most Americans were looking at complete strangers, and this is no accident. Reporter Norman Mailer noted that the most powerful in attendance, the richest in the land, were largely unrecognizable to him or most Americans.

Daily, Americans reading or watching the media see frequent mention of lobbyists and politicians, but rarely hear the word 'corporations.' The euphemism for corporation is usually 'lobbyists.' Most Americans don't connect the two. Another, 'vested interests.' These euphemisms are corporate tools passed out to media mechanics.

The prosecution (or lack) of Cheney and his 'vested interests' conceit, his spitting on the Constitution, is the primal lynchpin in addressing the massive wrong America has received. It 'locates' it. This issue is KEY. If Cheney is held to account, corporate America is held to account.

Got a sinking feeling? Me too.

[Liberal2]

"...But the media's kneejerk acceptance of this framing, its buying the idea that this dispute is typical Washington posturing, is both lazy and cynical. On Sunday morning, I heard an MSNBC anchor and a reporter from Politico speculate that if Attorney General Eric Holder appoints a special prosecutor, it could be because the president's poll ratings are dropping, and this move would change the subject from Obama's problems to people's reasons for disliking Bush...."

The explanation for this is Obama spent six months promising to "move beyond" the Bush administration. Now that evidence of their crimes is rising to the surface, the finally unavoidable investigations can be decried as political opportunism.

[TheWanderer]

Leave off the last word and the last letter of the second word.

[RobtBrock]

Mussolini meant well.

[realpolitic]

No, your irony works very well. Cheney does think the ends justify the means. He is one of the many avid conservative war hawks who managed to sit out tthe Vietnam war. For Cheney, consequences are for others.

"By that standard, the Iraq war should have so consumed the Bush administration that it would have had no mojo left over to deregulate Wall Street, fire U.S. Attorneys, cut millionaires' taxes, gut clean-air standards, politicize science, theologize policy or put any of the other right-wing notches in its belt."

Great synopsis of the eight years of hell of the Bush administration. May it never be repeated, only I do not say that with great confidence!

[youknow]

I am so tired, I give up. Like the philosophy Professor asked his class what is worse Ignorance or Apathy? A student answered ( Like I would now ) - I don't know and I don't care. Lets all go to sleep and wither on the vine.

[WYHKTai-Tai]

Cheney's motives are very clear. World domination!
Just google PNAC, (Project for a New American Century) a group he has been with, and helped start back in the '70's with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, when they were young guns working under Gerald Ford.
"We need a 'New Pearl Harbor'. Invade Afghanistan and Iraq, (I think next on the list were Iran and Syria), to get controlling access to the largest Natural Gas reserve in the world, which lies under the 'Stans', Central Asia, They are building the pipeline to it now.
The efficasy, (sp?) of torture has been studied, (by CIA mostly, read "Torture in the 80's", put out by Amnesty International), and shown to produce mostly lies. Very useful if you want your detainees to spit back the lies you told them and want to hear: "Saddam was behind it, Saddam was giving WMD's to AQ..."
I'm sure Our Evil S!th Lord thought what he was doing was GREAT! for America: World Domination for as far into the future as the eye could see,; but at the cost of anyone, (millions of Iraqis, or even Americans) who get in our way. He probably doesn't even tell himself that he, by the way, will personally reap a fortune in the process. I'm sure he prob. feels that that was just incidental.

[lisaman]

Is it just me or does anyone else suspect this is why he was so protective of his emails? And why did Panetta not know about this program for so long? I personally think both Bush and Cheney have more secrets that will come out. If I could name the one thing that Obama has dissapointed me on, it would without any doubt be that he keeps saying, let bygones be bygones. Forgeting the past only makes it easier for others to do what they did. We as American citizens need to stand up and state very loudly THIS IS NOT OK, dangit!

[ssg13565]

I'll trump your mens rea with,

____ The general rule under U.S. law is that "ignorance of the law or a mistake of law is
____ no defense to criminal prosecution." See Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192
____ (1991). There are exceptions to this rule which are sometimes referred to as
____ crimes of "specific intent",

Look it up in Wikipedia.

[Scent]

You are right. Cheney meant well. And still does.

You are most wrong however in believing that that does not mean he is gulity as sin.

You mix up two totally different concepts. And in doing so You would - were You right - totally invalidate any and all laws. Because Cheney meant well for a few super rich and himself. But a massacre of two million iraqis to do something good for those he meant well for means nothing at all. in fact it hightens guilt and does not disprove it. Because the meanest - the lowest form of guilt derives from selfinterest. Murder for passion, grave need, or any other strong feeling is human. Murder for gain, greed, or any base feeling is what laws were invested for to prevent.

Making us safe by lying to us is wrong.
Making the world safe by murdering millions is wrong.
Making people better by making them poorer is wrong. .

All that and more he knew well. He is not stupid. Whatever came from his policies was close to what he wanted to happen. conflict makes him and his friends richer. Poverty makes them richer. War makes them richer. Sickness of countless millions makes them richer. - When everything that feels wrong to us but was result of his actions made him richer that alone is more than an indicator of guilt.

And that he meant good for him and a few others makes it worse not better.

[WritusMaximus]

Dick Cheney's next move is to resurface in Washington DC, not answering questions but working with daughter Liz. He, if Liz is elected for political office, will once again exert influence and power---heck, some may say he is still at it! Liz was on Morning Joe, defending her father like all good daughters should. She never answered the question of whether her dad instructed the CIA to withhold info from Congress (you would expect a firm NO but apparently such an answer would be troublesome), but gave the standard/b­oilerplate­/see-it-co­ming-from-­million-mi­les-away answers like political cover for Pelosi, the law in question leaves it to the executive branch to decide if and when, investigations would damage nation's security, Obama threatens to veto investigations, blah, blah, blah. When asked if she would run for political office, Liz said not right now---translated, "You betcha!" Expect Liz to become a regular on Morning Joe, giving her a large audience. Quite a platform indeed.

Forget about Palin, for Liz is The Woman! How does Palin deal with this new threat????

[robbor]

typical white collar crime excuse

forget the psycho babble rationale

if he does the crime, he does the time