Cheney v. The United States
In an effort to be “fair and balanced,” to coin a phrase, I decided to listen to former Vice President Cheney’s response to Obama’s speech on the President’s handling of terrorism, torture, etc. I nearly turned off the tube when Cheney opened with a very un-vice presidential comment to the effect that “one could tell Obama came from the Senate rather than the Congress where one has to observe the five-minute rule.” Thus assured that this former Congressman would keep to five minutes, I decided to listen.
Ironically and regrettably, he droned on (or gas bagged as the case may be) for 20 minutes-plus defending his administration’s use of torture, repeating that Obama was making our country vulnerable to attack, etc., etc., etc. Never once did Cheney acknowledge that Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with September 11th, and by starting this unfortunate war against Iraq and keeping our country’s eye off the ball on Al Qaeda, Osama bin laden is still on the loose, the Iranians were emboldened to develop nuclear capabilities, the Israeli-Palestinian situation further deteriorated, the economy fell into an abyss, and our nation’s standing and stature in the world equally slid into a deep hole. As to the last point, and as someone who has had the great fortune of travelling internationally throughout my life, I found it sad indeed to have to be defensive about my country (as contrasted with the having to defend my country) while visiting my son, who lives in Italy.
Just as ironic as Cheney’s gas-bagging away was his new-found desire to actually talk to the public, and his castigating the very open and transparent Obama as, in effect, hiding the ball from the American public. “Release those memos, he bellowed, that demonstrate that torture led to the garnering of information that saved hundreds of thousands of American lives.” As Veep, he was the king of “don’t ask (about anything we do and certainly) don’t tell,” anything he did. Remember his energy summit early in the first GW Bush administration? That was the one that included his pals at Halliburton and Enron and excluded all other interested parties and resulted in a one-sided policy. Among other things, this policy concluded that global warming was a myth, and that the coal-fired plant polluters should just pollute away while he fiddled, as it were.
Most tragic of all, Cheney and his Neocon cohorts care not a whit for our Constitution or the fact that our country is predicated on law, not the vagaries of the moment or the emotions of men. These are the same activist “Constitutionalists” that brought us the “unitary theory of the executive branch,” which, in plain speak, means that the executive branch of the government can do whatever it wants with impunity, and that the legislative and judicial branches – established by our founding fathers as a check and balance against the tyranny of a monarch-type President — be damned. It must be appalling to Cheney that having spent eight years trying to figure out how to maneuver his way around the Constitution and our laws, Obama has embraced them. This Constitutional scholar turned politician, now President, knows that our laws protect the weak from the oppression of the strong and powerful.
Perhaps Cheney never studied the other shameful times in our country’s past when fear-mongering drove our country to violate our laws and our values. One only has to drive up California highway 395 to see Manzanar, a stark reminder of when we illegally interned Japanese American citizens during World War II and confiscated their property.
What is most perplexing is that Cheney continues to defend water-boarding. Not only is water-boarding torture, thus against the law (indeed our country prosecuted Japanese post WWII who engaged in this practice against Americans and we prosecuted an American who used it again a Filipino) it doesn’t work. No less a patriot than Viet Nam POW and Presidential candidate John McCain has repeated this on innumerable occasions. Torture leads to prisoners saying what the torturers want to hear to get them to stop. McCain should know – he was subjected to it. This week, a former FBI agent testified before Congress that he was able to elicit information from terrorists that allowed our country to prevent future attacks, not because he tortured the prisoners, but because this agent was able to speak the prisoners’ language and to use his powers of verbal persuasion.
And then, there is that minor disruption of the conservative-packed Supreme Court that had the temerity to rule against his administration’s handling of the so-called enemy combatants. In a handful of Supreme Court rulings from 2006 and beyond, the highest court in the land ruled that the executive branch could not, and would not, strip away entirely all of the rights accorded the accused in our Constitution. Whether at “war” or in times of peace, the Constitution affords the accused “due process under the law,” which means, variously, that:
- the accused are entitled to know what the charges are against them;
- that they are entitled to representation/defense;
- that the defendant has access to (some of the government’s) witnesses; and
- they cannot be held indefinitely with neither charges being brought, or hearings being held.
Why has Cheney emerged from his cave; why is he speaking out now? In short, why is Cheney doing this? I su
ppose it would be simple-minded and hackneyed to say that he is doing this to write or dictate his and Bush’s legacy.
Far more chilling than that, it appears that Cheney really believes his own press.
by Diana Peterson-More
Diana Peterson-More is a Pasadena resident, lawyer, businessperson and community activist. DPMOEG@aol.com
This appeared originally in the Thursday, May 28th edition of the Pasadena Weekly.
Loading ...
