The question was certainly straightforward enough. The answer, though -- the answer left a few threads hanging.
Of course, since the man providing the answer was one Richard B. Cheney, former veep of these United States, you have to expect the occasional bit of obfuscation, misdirection, even on a Sunday morning. After all, if Dick Cheney told us everything, he'd have to kill us. (And he wouldn't lose a minute's sleep over it either.)
Still, it was an answer that only raised more questions.
This is last Sunday on Face the Nation, and CBS's Bob Schieffer is pressing Cheney about the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that were used on certain ostensibly high-value prisoners in U.S. custody. (You can call it "torture" if you like. Everybody with a half-decent dictionary does -- a rather large group that apparently doesn't include Cheney.)
Anyway, at one point in the interview, according to CBS's own transcript, the conversation goes this way:
SCHIEFFER: How much did President Bush know specifically about the methods that were being used? We know that you -- and you have said -- that you approved this...
CHENEY: Right.
SCHIEFFER: ... somewhere down the line. Did President Bush know everything you knew?
As I said, a pretty straightforward question. But the answer? Not so much.
CHENEY: I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew -- he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to the president. He signed off on it.
"Basically"?! The president "basically" authorized it?! He knew "a great deal" about the program?!
It was "a presidential-level decision" that "went to the president"?! And he "signed off on it"?!
That's it?! That's as much as George Bush was involved in one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency?! (It was, technically speaking, his presidency, even if Cheney and Cheney's people tended to ignore that fact when it was more convenient to pretend otherwise.)
Now, there are at least two ways to read Cheney's response. One, that he's trying to keep his former boss -- even to say the word is to laugh -- out of the line of fire. "Plausible deniability" and all that.
Or two, that Cheney's trying to show -- without giving too much away, of course -- that, despite all the rumors to the contrary, he wasn't a totally loose cannon, that everything he did had the president's approval. More or less.
But then there's the third, even more chilling, possibility: that Cheney is being, in his fashion, accurate. Even precise. That George Bush "basically" authorized the torture program -- but no more than "basically." That he knew "a great deal" about the program -- but not everything. (What about the nasty bits? Was he told about the nasty bits?) That this "presidential-level decision" in fact "went to the president," who "signed off on it" -- but did he realize what he was signing? Did he understand its implications?
On those questions, Cheney leaves us -- yet again -- in the dark. But we're certainly free to wonder: What did George Bush know, and how well did he know it? After all, how many times did those lovable cut-ups on M*A*S*H trick their hapless commander into signing something he should never have signed? A line of snappy patter, a pile of distracting documents, a quick application of emotional blackmail -- they were all in the toolkit for putting one over on the big guy.
You don't think that George Bush was at least that hapless in real life? Or that Dick Cheney was at least that resourceful?
Call it the Bush-Cheney administration if you insist, but you're twisting -- torturing? -- the facts. All the evidence suggests that when it really mattered, it was the other way around.
Basically.
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Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com.