I concur.

So, to paraphrase you: What gives?

[1] As POTUS Bush has said, multiple times: “I mean what I say.”

[2] Bush told the WH press that “folks” [a category which presumably includes the Unwashed, namely us] should not assume that he will issue pardons on any ‘vast’ or ’sweeping’ basis – implying that to include torture [”we don’ torture”] and programmatic breaches of the 4th amendment.

[3] Then AG Mukasey volunteered in at least one speech and also in response to a question from a reporter that he did not forsee presidential pardons issuing from the Bush admininistration on any ‘vast’ or ’sweeping’ basis, reflecting the implications in the earlier comments from the POTUS.

[4] Then within the fabled gift-giving period preceding Christmas, following months of absence from public view [admittedly during most of which the public was inclined to focus more on those standing for election], Cheney:

[a] in the context of an ongoing lawsuit concerning White House records, caused to be filed a submission that asserts his sole, absolute and unreviewable authority to determine what in ‘his’ possession or in the possession of ‘his office’ qualifies as a “record” under the Presidential Records Act; and

[b] ‘joined’ the POTUS on the Farewell Tour circuit in some sinister concurrent dimension [or, dare it be said, evil parallel universe].

[5] To this point, Bush’s[and by connection to, extension from, and on his own, Cheney’s] record-breaking unpopularity has been sustained for so long and to such depths, that sometime during the election process it overflowed party lines, now streams determinedly on a bipartisan basis through the national mythology, providing a comfortable level of national consensus to the incoming Congress and the incoming administration to pursue at least a number of Bushie crimes as little political cost – and put in the converse at a far greater political cost in ignoring it.

Moreover, I can see how some might counsel that, in this climate, for the president to issue pardons on any vast and/or sweeping basis that overtly or impliedly covers torture and programmatic violation of the 4th amendment would have the effect of teasing a seething bull with a big red cape, and cause a material rise in the risk of post-administration impeachment.

Am *I* saying that? ABSOLUTELY NOT – and Ex Parte Milligan, from the civil war, stands for the direct contrary position (it says not the Executive, not the Legislative and not the Judicial branch, separately or in combination, can disenfranchise the Constitutional limits and protections). But has that argument been made before? Yep, and I think it is what Addington et al were making now. That’s why it caught my eye that the renewals were termed by some report as being military orders. It is what Philibin gets at sideways in his memo that has been released, where he talks about Ex Parte Quirin overrulling Milligan. A conclusion that not on the Republican appointed “liberals” like Souter and Steven rejected, but one that Scalia rejected as well – as a matter of fact, Scalia indicated that he would consider overturning Quirin at least in part.

WHich pretty much brings the circle of Bush saying he was relying on legal advice around and back – if the lawyers were saying it had no basis in law other than his fiat, then that’s not exactly the same thing as saying that he was relying on them, more that they had to do what he said.

Cheney doesn’t get asked about the false confession tortured from Arar, or how that made us safer, or why Canada should cooperate with America if we arbitrarily and without apology kidnap and organize the torture to the point of false confessions, of their citizens.

Cheney doesn’t get asked about the false confessions of the Tipton Three (that includes Rasul, whose case alleging maltreatment has been sent back to the Dist ct to proceed with) and how it would make the country or the nation safer to have three britons tortured into confessing that they were in a picture with Bin Laden, when it only took MI5 a nano-stant to determine that was false.

Cheney didn’t get ask about the torture interrogation of Afghan cab driver Dilawar and how each blow landed on his already pulverized legs made us safer. Or why, when it was discovered that he had nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism and had been turned in by the man who likely WAS behind the attacks, his two fares were nonetheless shipped to GITMO for abuse and to help cover up the torture death.

Cheney didn’t get asked about the “young” detainee described by both Priest and Mayer who was tortured to death by hypothermia and dumped in an unmarked grave and how that made us safer.

Cheney didn’t get asked about the disappeared children of KSM and Aafia Siddiqui – in the later’s case, American children and how their torture would help keep America safe.

The MSM harping on the waterboarding of KSM is very reminescent of the MSM harping on the reference in Gonzales’ memo to the Geneva conventions being “quaint” and completely ignoring and not asking about the admission in the memo that the administration needed to invent a theory to protect them from prosecution under the War Crimes Act.

Yes, waterboarding is torture – but to keep asking about waterboarding of KSM only gets you so far down the line.

Then there was the torture of Errachidi, the bipolar British chef, who we purchased, kidnapped and abused, including YEARS of cumulative isolation, all on accusations that he was an al-Qaeda training camp “general” when, at the times he was accused of running the camp, he was making souffles in Mayfair – how did that keep us safe?

Then there was Kurnaz, who we kidnapped and abused for years based on a couple of hundred pages of – - – EXCULPATORY information, all of which was “classified” so it couldn’t be used to get our “mistake” released. That made us safer how, again?

Then there was Donald Vance, who they attempted to disappear into Iraqi detention facilities and held in abuse there — that made us safer, how?

Cheney needs to be asked to explain how deaths during torture and caused by the torture stil, somehow, don’t qualify as “torture” And how those deaths made us safer. He needs to be asked why interviews that had information necessary to make us safer weren’t videotaped or why, when they were, the tapes were destroyed. He needs to be asked why a CIA agent received a reprimand in their file, chastising them that the torture sessions were not for their “entertainment” Or why kidnapping and abusing Khalid el-Masri made us safer.

Then – you can go on to the Matthew Alexander questions about GITMO and Abu Ghraib killing Americans.

Instead we get wastrels and dilettantes piping the equivalent of journalist muzak into the room with him.

I was missing to that. I had to stop before you got on, though.

He did come off as an arrogant terror-loving asshole, though.