Cheney Pleads Not Guilty at American Enterprise Institute

You can see why he’d be scared, but those seeking prosecution aren’t trying to punish political disagreements but actual crimes—like the crime of conspiracy to commit torture, a war crime, which is what Cheney was engaged in.

Cheney’s speech at the American Enterprise Institute amounted to a slippery and implausible not guilty plea.

He began with a bad joke about he recently became a trustee at the institute: “What happened was, they were looking for a new member of the board of trustees. and they asked me to head up the search committee.”

Ha, ha.

From there, he had the audacity—something he’s never lacking in—to say that “no on wishes the current Administration more success in defending the country than we do,” meaning, him and George W.

It was an incredible statement, literally, because Cheney is all but praying for another attack on the United States to prove his claim that Obama is making us less safe. And it was noteworthy, also, since Cheney’s former titular boss has remained studiously silent since leaving the White House. It’s doubtful that Bush wanted Cheney invoking his name in this context.

But mostly what came through in this snarky speech was how self-serving it was.

“Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted, in effect, treating political disagreements as a punishable offense, and political opponents as criminals. It’s hard to imagine a worse precedent,” he said.

You can see why he’d be scared, but those seeking prosecution aren’t trying to punish political disagreements but actual crimes—like the crime of conspiracy to commit torture, a war crime, which is what Cheney was engaged in.

And despite a mountain of recent evidence demonstrating that Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted detainees tortured into making confessions about the nonexistent link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, Cheney insisted that, “from the beginning of the program, there was only one focused and all-important purpose. We sought, and we in fact obtained, specific information on terrorists.”

Then, to further turn the Orwellian screw, Cheney insisted that everything was “in full compliance with the Constitution, statues, and treaty obligations.” Or, as he put it in another passage, everything was “legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do.” Or, in another: “The United States has never lost its moral bearings.”

But saying it was so doesn’t make it so.

Most creepy of all, and that’s a redundant adjective when referring to Cheney, he repeatedly said that the torturers “can be proud of their work and proud of the results.” He added, in conclusion, “I will always be grateful to each one of them. . . . I will always admire them and wish them well.”

To heap laurels on torturers is about as authoritarian as you can get.

His words of gratitude could have come straight out of the mouth of Francisco Franco or Augusto Pinochet, who appear to be Dick Cheney’s role model.