Method to Cheney's Madness

Former Vice-President Dick Cheney has re-surfaced offering his usual mix of slick distortions, outright lies and utter insanity following the announcement that Attorney General Eric Holder will re-open cases of abuse of detainees. publius offers an interesting take on Obsidian Wings.

I don't think that "winning" the torture debate is his actual goal. To me, the goal of his recent charm offensive is simply to kick up enough dirt to force a "draw." That is, he wants to politicize the torture debate as much as possible -- to transform a profound debate about our country's values into just another everyday Republican/Democratic partisan squabble that makes people throw up their hands and despair of knowing "the truth."

If you've noticed, Cheney tends to pop up in the aftermath of damning evidence. We just (re)learned, for instance, that our CIA agents murdered detainees, choked them, and threatened to rape their wives. Normally, you would think these revelations would give pause to even the most ardent Cheney supporters. But then Cheney comes along, and tries to reframe the whole story. His intended audience isn't the nation as a whole, but conservatives. He wants to make sure that they view these stories through partisan-tinted lenses. In short, Cheney wants to transform what should a broad consensus against torture into a "he said/she said" partisan squabble. And if most conservative blogs are any guide, he's probably been successful.

Dick Cheney is the worst sort of political con man. His distortions are carefully crafted and artfully worded. He is relentlessly disingenuous. He employs a shameless double standard, slamming his opponents for the very things that he does routinely. He is arrogant and deluded enough to believe his own BS with complete conviction. He is helped immeasurably by a cowed and incompetent news media that dutifully reports his garbage without a shred of critical analysis. This gives his fictions a credibility that they do not deserve.

--Ballard Burgher