He started it!

Apparently Dick Cheney wants to talk about torture. Or, as he calls it, “enhanced interrogation techniques.” And that’s pretty much all he has been doing over the last few weeks. So that’s what I’ll talk about here.

To the definitions of torture let us add the well nigh inescapable appearance of the Grand Old Persecutor himself on TV what seems to be 24/7, though I suppose it’s actually less often than that. On the other hand, now that his daughter Liz has joined the fray . . .

I mean, it wouldn’t be such torture if the former Vice President had at least one or two new things to say on his second, third or even sixteenth appearance, on at least one or maybe two of the TV shows (he does save the talking heads the trouble of presenting new news in what is increasingly becoming infotainment), on even one of the networks.

As it is, viewers by now can almost finish his sentences for him. “We kept America safe for seven and a half years”; “I believe that Barack Obama has made us less safe …”; and, of course, “we did not torture.”

Conventional wisdom seems to have it that he really believes this stuff, so it wouldn’t be right to say that he is deliberately lying here, and George Orwell did address this possibility in Nineteen Eighty Four:

To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed. . .

Orwell wrote this in 1949, so he had some recent history to draw upon. He wasn’t making it up. For example, the United States Office of Strategic Services made an assessment during WWII of Hitler’s methods, including this:

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

I apologize to anyone who is tempted to think I want for a minute to compare Dick Cheney to the man who invaded most of Europe in a quest to dominate the world. No, that’s not where I’m going. I believe Dick Cheney really and truly believes what he’s saying, and that he truly believes the choices made on his watch were in the best interests of America.

And if he doesn’t, then at least he wants us to believe him.

Cynics suggest that he is worried about his own accountability, but I’ll take him at his word, that he is only worried about America.

Call it torture, call it “enhanced interrogation techniques,” call it what you will, most of the respected voices in the intelligence community call it wrong, ineffective, and bad for America’s reputation.

Bob Baer, for example, a former CIA agent who knows a thing or two about it – he underwent torture himself (did you see “Syriana”?) and spoke recently of a close associate who was tortured to death – is absolutely opposed to it; in recent weeks a host of operatives, both intelligence and military, have also spoken out against it from personal knowledge.

I’m going out on a limb here, but it seems to me that most of the folks who support harsh interrogation techniques are people who have never served in the military. Dick Cheney himself managed to get five deferments during the war in Vietnam, and I think it’s safe to say that most of the pro-torture commentators are too young to have seen any action.

But they did watch “24” last night . . .

Speaking of ticking time bombs, I offer this: The President has declared that the United States will not torture. Torture is illegal, period.

So let me leave you with this thought: Imagine you are the President (remember, anyone can be President), and you have a person in custody who is believed to have information that could save the country but could only be gained through torture, which you have declared illegal. What would you do?

Seriously, do you think for a minute that you would hesitate to do whatever is needed? How about, “Damn the torpedos – full speed ahead!”

At a recent press conference President Obama was asked just that question. He reiterated what he had said during the campaign in 2007:

I will do whatever it takes to keep America safe. And there are going to be all sorts of hypotheticals and emergency situations, and I will make that judgment at that time.

So now, will Dick Cheney please finally retire to a ranch in Wyoming, and let the rest of us move on to current crises?