Jonathan Alter: Cheney’s Tortured Logic -- He wants to redefine the Constitution

[steven johnson]

Cheney's macheavelean rationalizaiton of torture is disgusting as has been the Bush Administration's rationalization for the past 8 years. The notion, "It's not illegal if the president does it," is the stuff of tin horn dictators and megalomaniacs.

If Cheney just proposed torturing logic, that would be easy to tune out.

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(Cheney is) seeking nothing less than a redefinition of the Constitution and the rule of law. The stakes are high. If the Cheney view prevails, it will give comfort to human-rights abusers everywhere, help terrorist recruitment, harm U.S. foreign policy, and set back the prosecution of terrorists by giving defense attorneys more grounds on which to get their clients acquitted.

Two words jumped out at me from Cheney's Fox News interview last week. Chris Wallace asked, "So even in those cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it?" Cheney answered, "I am." That unadorned "I am" was terrifying. Cheney was saying that certain ends justify criminal means. This is a deeply antidemocratic and authoritarian notion. Why even create his bogus legal authorization for "enhanced interrogation techniques" (a way to get around U.S. laws banning torture) if it could be disregarded without consequence?

Paul Van Zyl of the International Center for Transitional Justice makes a case that he's even worse than some well-known authoritarians: "What distinguishes Cheney from Pinochet or Botha is that neither of them ever thought to publicly justify torture. Cheney creates a moral argument for torture. That's a gigantic step back for civilization." Ruthless leaders, with what they consider to be their own existential threats, have new arguments to exploit. Van Zyl, who ran South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, says that if Attorney General Eric Holder had decided not to launch a probe, the message to the world would have been, "Torture is bad, except when it's us."

Even so, I've got some problems with Holder's idea of a special prosecutor. Not because it "distracts from Obama's agenda"; that's a hollow and amoral argument. The problem is that John Durham, who's been assigned the task, will have a hard time refraining from scapegoating a few overzealous CIA interrogators, à la Abu Ghraib. As for the higher ups, as much as I'd like to see Cheney frog-marched out of Jackson Hole and sent to prison for violating his oath, it would set a bad precedent...Grover Norquist, the conservative Leninist, said he approves of Holder's decision because it means that when the Republicans regain control of the government they can prosecute Democrats for their criminal stimulus package. Delightful.

Jonathan Alter: Cheney’s Tortured Logic -- He wants to redefine the Constitution

[lyonn]

1. Maybe justice will be in the history books

There is no doubt that the "W" administration broke Constitutional laws at will. I was just watching repubs from the Cato institute on c-span babble away and yet some there making comments, while defining the virtues of Reagan (choke), admitted that the Iraq war was a war of choice, my words, because there was not ANY evidence that Iraq was a threat to us or anyone.

Even the repubs are scrambling away from the Bush Doctrine years.