The Healthy Man does not Torture Others - Generally it Is the Tortured Who Turn into Torturers

Dick Cheney, referred to callously and humorously by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs as "the next most popular member of the Republican cabal (second to Rush Limbaugh)," has been seen more in the two months since leaving office than in the entire eight years he was serving as vice president. He has been defending the former administration's stance on torture vigorously.

When he was asked if he thought Obama has made Americans less safe by suspending military trials for suspected terrorists, announcing he will close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as overseas sites where the CIA has held some detainees, ordering CIA interrogators to abide by the U.S. Army Field Manual regulations for treatment of detainees and denouncing waterboarding as torture, he replied:

"I do. I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11. I think that's a great success story. It was done legally. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles. President Obama campaigned against it all across the country. And now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack."

As ludicrous as that statement is to me, there are people who believe him when he says that and there are people who are truly committed to the idea that the only way America will be safe is to kill them all before they can do anything to us. I am hopeful that one day Cheney will be perched in a courtroom and a lawyer will get him to admit that he indeed ordered the Code Red.

And lo and behold, what did I read in the New York Times? A Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. As of right now, the men soon to be investigated are Alberto Gonzales, former Attorney General; John Yoo, former Justice Department lawyer (who wrote secret legal opinions saying the president had the authority to circumvent the Geneva Conventions); Douglas Feith, former under secretary of defense for policy; William Haynes II, former general counsel for the Department of Defense; Jay Bybee, Mr. Yoo's former boss at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and David Addington, who was the chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Spain has legal jurisdiction under the 1984 Convention Against Torture, which both Spain and the United States are bound to adhere to, because five citizens or residents of Spain were held at Guantánamo Bay and claim they were tortured. While this is mostly a symbolic gesture, it might to lead to action by the United States government against the former administration to at least ascertain the accountability. And if they can ascertain accountability, the truth may actually come out that these lawyers were influenced or coerced to mold legal opinions around political malfeasance.