It seems Dick Cheney just likes to torture people. And he brought his lust for pain to the White House. Where he tortured millions with his very undisclosed presence. He will no doubt pardon himself somehow. Or rewrite the constitution to make torture illegal for people not named Dick Cheney. You see the word Dick Cheney and Torture and Indicted, and you naturally think about Guantanimo Bay or some other black site somewhere. You think of the War on Terror. You don’t automatically think of a private prison in South Texas, where prisoners are allowed to murder other prisoners while the guards stand by and watch. Or maybe you do. I don’t really know anything about you. And you don’t think about a morally bankrupt evildoer who sits on the board taking advantage of his morally bankrupt attorney general to obstruct justice in pursuit of private profit. (The very existence of private prisons should make your skin crawl. Also, isn’t it obvious that you don’t want Dick Cheney on a board of any business you don’t want to flounder in a sea of corporate malfeasance?)
It’s a good bet Dick Cheney will get away with it. He is the most powerful public criminal in the “civilized” world, even if he isn’t The Decider. (That would be Bush. Though even that is misleading. He should call himself the non-decider. He doesn’t make decisions. He ignores them, then goes and burns brush…)
I don’t know how forgiving Obama is. So far he has shown a largesse when it comes to forgiveness. But some things should neither be forgiven nor forgotten. Nixon was forgiven. Ford was forgiven for the forgiving, but it took two decades of laying low and playing golf. I personally think that the ends don’t always justify the means, no matter how many people you get around you who will tell you it’s so. Torture doesn’t make us safer. It certainly doesn’t make our troops safer. And it’s really bad for public relations. It also makes our non-stop statements about “freedom” and “democracy” and “peace” seem more hollow than is acceptable even by the cynical. No. To move forward from the last eight years, this administration needs to feel some sort of reckoning. If the auto industry can get stomped to death by congress, then so should the people who enabled and helped realize their failure. Bush and Cheney should be punished. They should be beaten with soap wrapped in towels. They should be thrown into the ring with Hulk Hogan and a nest of pit vipers. They should be forced to room with Mike Tyson. Or sent to South Texas to waste away and endure the very treatment they so gleefully take joy in.
