I have a theory about why Dick Cheney has been all over television since he left office. He, more than any other person, knows about the darkest secrets of the Bush Administration; he knows all the wet and bloody details and his newfound fondness for interviews and public speeches is a kind of preemptive defense of those awful things. He’s selling a catchall defense (we did what was necessary/doing these things kept America safe/I would do them again) that can be applied no matter what kind of twisted evil shenanigans come out next. I doubt very much that I’m the first person to think of this theory and I have no real evidence to support it, it just fits the facts.
On Friday, McClatchy added new weight to the simple and explosive allegation that Cheney ordered prisoners tortured to try and bolster the case for invading Iraq:
The head of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo from 2002-2005 confirmed to McClatchy that in late 2002 and early 2003, intelligence officials were tasked to find, among other things, Iraq-al Qaida ties, which were a central pillar of the Bush administration’s case for its March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“I’m aware of the fact that in late 2002, early 2003, that (the alleged al Qaida-Iraq link) was an interest on the intelligence side,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Brittain Mallow, a former military criminal investigator. “That was something they were tasked to look at.”
But wait, there’s more. Not only did they torture guys to get them to confess to something that didn’t exist, Cheney then cited those torture induced false confessions in an interview in early 2004 (when he was running for office):
The Rocky Mountain News asked Cheney in a Jan. 9, 2004, interview if he stood by his claims that Saddam’s regime had maintained a “relationship” with al Qaida, raising the danger that Iraq might give the group chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to attack the U.S.
“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Cheney replied.
[…]
“The (al Qaida-Iraq) links go back,” he said. “We know for example from interrogating detainees in Guantanamo that al Qaida sent individuals to Baghdad to be trained in C.W. and B.W. technology, chemical and biological weapons technology. These are all matters that are there for anybody who wants to look at it.”
That’s a devastatingly open and shut case. No relationship ever existed and even if it had there were neither chemical nor biological weapons in Iraq with which to be trained.
What this and other stories like it are cementing is the easy to understand idea that torture and the Iraq invasion are intimately linked. It’s a simple story, the Bush Administration needed to justify their war of choice, they tortured some guys to help produce evidence, and then they cited their in-house bullshit in public. It’s easy to understand, it’s becoming increasingly easy to prove, and it’s the kind of simple narrative that can be quickly explained to the distracted public.
Cheney, of course, knows all of this. (He probably also knows about even more horrible stuff that hasn’t yet become public.) Whatever else may be said about him, Cheney isn’t stupid, and he’s certainly aware that without the full power of the Executive Branch trying to keep a lid on things even more vile deeds are going to see the light of day. In short, Dick Cheney knows he did a bunch of illegal things, he knows that proof exists, and he knows that he is very indictable. Television is the best place for him because the torture story is now so simple that anyone can understand it. Muddying the waters by crowing about national security is the only line of defense he has left.
End note:
You know who looks increasingly better the more we find out about the Bush Administration? John Kerry. 2004 was never going to be an easy election for the Democrats, for a whole host of reasons, but I don’t think Kerry, or anyone else for that matter, understood or even suspected just what they were up against. I mean, Cheney, whose name was on all the bumper stickers, was ordering men tortured to produce false information which he ended up using against Kerry and company. Political tricks are one thing, but nobody was prepared to combat that kind of ferociousness.
