Bad judgment is Dick Cheney’s trademark. It was not George Bush who came up with the idea of imposing blanket secrecy on the executive branch when he and Cheney took over. It was not George Bush who conceived of the horrible—and in some cases actually evil—policies that typify this authoritarian presidency, such as detaining “enemy combatants” with no due process and contrary to international law. It was not George Bush who had the idea of using torture during interrogations, and removing restraints on the National Security Agency from collecting intelligence on Americans. These were policies developed by Cheney and his staff, and sold to the president, and then imposed on many who subsequently objected to this authoritarian lawlessness. It was Cheney and his mentor, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who convinced Bush to go to war in Iraq, which is proving to be a protracted calamity. As Colin Powell’s former top aide, Laurence Wilkinson, rather bluntly puts it: In 2002 Cheney must have believed that Iraq was a spawning ground for terrorists, “otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.”[71] Colonel Wilkinson, it appears, has a rather solid take on the vice president’s thinking, for there is no evidence that Cheney believed—or had any basis for such a belief—that Iraq was a spawning ground for terrorism—before we made it into one.
The issue of Dick Cheney’s judgment must be raised because he is the catalyst, architect, and chief proponent of Bush’s authoritarian policies. In fact, Cheney’s authoritarian vice presidency has simply swallowed the president, and Cheney sought to take the office way beyond even Nixon’s imperial presidency, which they had accomplished by the end of the first term.[*]Insidiously, Cheney and his staff are proceeding with strategic moves, largely out of sight, that are undertaken regularly to accomplish his goal, and often at the political expense of the president, which creates periodic, but growing, rifts between the men. These include things like ramming through the White House a presidential signing statement regarding a new law. Rather than vetoing legislation when it arrives at the White House, the White House (read: Cheney and his staff) issues a brief statement giving its interpretation of the new law as it relates to presidential powers. These statements are consistently different from the clear intent of Congress, so Bush and Cheney have, in effect, told Congress to go to hell on the few occasions when the Republican Congress has stood up to the White House. Typical was its response when Senator John McCain (R-AZ) sought to end the use of torture by Americans when interrogating putative terrorists.
George Bush has repeatedly insisted, “We do not torture.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has repeatedly claimed that the United States does not engage in “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.” And CIA director Porter Goss affirms that his agency “does not do torture. Torture does not work.” But no one believes the Bush administration on this issue, and for good reason. When the so-called torture memos prepared by the Department of Justice were leaked—after the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib had surfaced—they revealed that the White House had managed to get the Justice Department to virtually define away torture. As the Economist commented, the words of the Bush administration officials on torture count “for little when the administration has argued, first, that during time of war, the president can make just about anything legal, and, second, that the UN Convention Against Torture does not apply to interrogations of foreign terrorist suspects outside the United States.” Similarly, Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a POW in Vietnam and took pride in the belief that his country would never resort to using such measures, did not believe the Bush administration. In 2004 Congress passed a bipartisan amendment to the defense authorization bill, reaffirming that detainees in U.S. custody could not be subject to torture or cruel treatment as those terms have been previously defined by the U.S. government. “But since last year’s DOD bill,” Senator McCain informed his colleagues, “a strange legal determination was made that the prohibition in the Convention Against Torture against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment does not legally apply to foreigners held outside the United States.” Or, as the senator put it more bluntly, “They can apparently be treated inhumanely.” The Bush/Cheney administration’s reading of the law was pure expediency. Judge Abe Sofaer, who negotiated the torture convention, wrote an op-ed explaining that there was never any intention to limit the torture agreement to American soil. McCain had a powerful case for why his amendments were needed.
In October and November of 2005, Senator McCain offered his amendments to the Defense Department’s authorization bill and its appropriations bill to prohibit the United States from engaging in torture. This was legislation that could not be vetoed without halting the war in Iraq. The first McCain-sponsored amendment was titled “Uniform Standards for the Interrogation of Persons Under the Detention of the Department of Defense.” It simply stated that persons “in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense” can only be interrogated pursuant to the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation (which prohibits torture). The second McCain-sponsored amendment was titled “Prohibition On Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of Persons Under Custody or Control of the United States Government.” This provision required that individuals in the custody of, or under the physical control of, the United States government, regardless of nationality or physical location, not be subjected “to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Amazingly, when Cheney learned of these amendments, he tried to block them. Who could conceive of an American vice president demanding that Congress give the president the authority to torture anyone, under any circumstances? Yet that is exactly what Cheney wanted. Fortunately, Congress—finally—showed some institutional pride and told Cheney that it would not countenance torture, under any circumstances. It was also remarkable that Senate majority leader Bill Frist set aside his Hippocratic Oath and unsuccessfully attempted to use procedures to prevent Senator McCain from offering the amendments. Finally, the White House threatened that President Bush, who had not vetoed a single piece of legislation since assuming office, would do so for any bill that contained McCain’s amendments, even if it meant shutting off funds for the Department of Defense (a move that would have posed no small threat to national security). This threat announced, in effect, that the authorization to torture was more important than the well-being of the nation.
The administration’s public explanation for its opposition to McCain’s amendments, as made by those few willing to promote these actions, bordered on pathetic. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) claimed during the Senate debate on the amendments that they would have a reverse impact, resulting in more torture. Stevens reached this conclusion by claiming that the international teams that pursue terrorists, being aware of restrictions on Americans, would not give the United States custody of terrorists that they found. This contention is so full of holes that it is barely necessary to refute it. Not all groups that search for terrorists are international, and in fact, that is the exception to the rule. And typically, Americans command these undertakings, so the contention that prisoners accused of terrorism would somehow be taken away from America and tortured—against America’s will—by other nations is absurd. In fact, the current practice is exactly the opposite: Through what is called “rendition,” America now allows its own suspects to be turned over to countries that torture with impunity, and that do not honor the kinds of rights the U.S. Constitution guarantees. This practice is also contrary to international law.
71.
Anne Gearan, “Ex-Powell Aide Criticizes Bush on Iraq,” Associated Press (November 29, 2005) at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1129-07.htm.
*
As I suggested in