Cheney's Rotten Apples

In a just world, Larry Wilkerson's bombshell on NPR yesterday (via Froomkin) would be as big as the Pentagon Papers. Now we know, from an eyewitness account: Dick Cheney, together with David Addington, Libby's Libby, sent the word to Rumsfeld, who sent it to the commanders in the field, to regard the Geneva Convention as the Geneva Suggestion.

Wilkerson is no wild-eyed lefty, though brace yourself for watching him smeared by BushCo. He was Colin Powell's chief of staff, and he says there was a visible audit trail from Cheney to the violations of human rights at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. This paper and e-mail trail may yet see the light of day in the media, where Michelle Malkin and her ilk are no doubt already preparing talking points making the national security case for anal rape rooms. (Yes, Fox folks, we know: 9/11 was bad. Terrorism is bad. Even if we're the ones doing it.) But unless one-party rule ends in 2006, do you think there's a chance in hell that Cheney's stooges on the Hill, at Justice, or in the Inspector-General's office at the Pentagon will exercise any oversight?

Oh, and speaking of Colin Powell: Mr. Secretary, you saw that audit trail, too. Don't you think your loyalty act is wearing a little thin? It's not enough to tell Georgetown dinner tables that "they" snookered you into that UN speech -- you know, the one that snookered the rest of us. You don't have to run for President if you want to help your country. But a little bit of public honesty from you, right now, will go a long way toward ending this national nightmare that you enabled.