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Dick Cheney confessed to a war crime. Prosecute him.


On ABC News last weekend, former Vice President Dick Cheney confessed to playing a key role in the commission of war crimes during the Bush administration.

"I was a big supporter of waterboarding," boasted Cheney.

Waterboarding is torture and a war crime. The UN Convention on Torture, the Geneva Conventions, the Red Cross, and constitutional governments around the globe agree on this point of law. More to the point, Attorney General Eric Holder has stated publicly that waterboarding is torture. Cheney's confession legally obligates Holder to prosecute him.

Cheney apologists will no doubt turn a blind eye to this. But this is the law, plain and simple. The case has been laid out in detail by Andrew Sullivan1, Glenn Greenwald2, and Scott Horton3.

By publicly confessing his role in illegal U.S torture programs, Cheney has created an extraordinary opportunity to hold the Bush administration accountable for its crimes. One that must not -- and indeed legally cannot -- be ignored.

Dick Cheney's taunting
Tuesday, Feb 16, 2010 11:17 EST
By Glenn Greenwald



(updated below)

Dick Cheney went on ABC News this weekend and boasted of the role he played in ordering the waterboarding of detainees. Andrew Sullivan has written several posts accurately describing this statement as a "confession of committing a war crime on national television." Harper's Scott Horton identifies the specific criminal statute Cheney confessed he violated, makes clear that -- as the Attorney General himself previously said -- there is no reasonable debate possible regarding the criminality of waterboarding under U.S. and international law (notwithstanding the efforts of Politico and friends to pretend otherwise), and then asks: "What prosecutor can look away when a perpetrator mocks the law itself and revels in his role in violating it?"

In general, people who commit felonies avoid publicly confessing to having done so, and they especially avoid mocking the authorities who fail to act. One thing Dick Cheney is not is stupid, and yet he's doing exactly that. Indeed, he's gradually escalated his boasting about having done so throughout the year. Why? Because he knows there will never be any repercussions, that he will never be prosecuted no matter how blatantly he admits to these serious crimes. He's taunting the Obama administration and the DOJ: not only will I not hide or apologize, but I will proudly tout and defend my role in these crimes, because I know you will do absolutely nothing about it, even though the Attorney General and the President themselves said that the act to which I'm confessing is a felony. Does anyone doubt that Cheney's assessment is right? And isn't that, rather obviously, a monumental indictment of most everything?

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I'll be participating in two events in New York City next week, both open to the public. On Thursday, February 25, at 6:00 p.m., I'll be speaking at NYU School of Law's Center on Law and Security, about civil liberties and related matters, with NYU Law Professor Stephen Holmes moderating the event and with a substantial Q-and-A session afterward; information is here. The same week, I'll be on two truly excellent panels as part of the New School's Conference, "Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy." Ticket information and all of the panels are here, and you'll see why I'm excited about participating in this Conference if you look at the agenda.

UPDATE: What would stop a future President (or even the current one) from re-authorizing waterboarding and the other Bush/Cheney torture techniques if he decided he wanted to? Given that both the Bush and Obama administrations have succeeded thus far in blocking all judicial adjudications of the legality of these "policies," and given that the torture architects are feted on TV and given major newspaper columns, what impediments exist to prevent their re-implementation?

Indurrago wrote:fatman, maybe they should water-board him to death? One thing that annoyed me about Cheney is how he suddenly doesn't know how to shut-up only after he left the white house as VP.