I've kept meaning to write a post about Dick Cheney's remarks and, now, Robert Gibbs's response (oh, how I love Robert Gibbs!), but I'm not really sure what I would say. At this point it seems obvious that Cheney, regardless of what you can say about him, really is a believer in all this rendition/"enhanced interrogation" garbage. It has been wondered why Cheney was such a bastard in office when his record prior to 9/11 did not suggest it, and my theory is that we are all imbued with basic humanity. We all know right and wrong. Aside from sociopaths (and I don't think Cheney is one), doing bad things weighs heavily upon us, and the only way to make it better is by owning up and asking forgiveness. Otherwise, you just get a chip on your shoulder.
Dick Cheney ordered an unnecessary war. He championed torture. He backed spying on Americans, holding Americans indefinitely without trial, and extraordinary rendition of terror suspects to terror-supporting dictatorships. He was responsible for tossing aside centuries of treasured progress on human rights issues. One imagines that these things weigh heavily on him, and rather than facing up to his shameful performance in office, it appears he'd rather try to keep stoking the fires of fear so that all of this will seem reasonable to others. Ultimately, though, that he'd bother to go on an interview on television in a country where nearly everyone hates his guts bespeaks a great deal either of bravado or delusion, and not even the end of his term in office would dissuade him from his self-appointed role of the nation's Chief Torture Evangelist. One senses, though, that this is more about Cheney seeking vindication than anything else, only he lacks the PR savvy to pull it off. One suspects that he's also trying to convince himself, and what could be more convincing than a terror attack? This is largely speculative, going off of what I've heard the man say and what I've read of him in The Dark Side among other places, but he (and Bush) strike me as being far less rock-solid and secure than they put on.
