In the ongoing series of interviews in which he desperately tries to defend the idea that his torture regime was legal, Dick Cheney’s rhetoric is becoming increasingly dark and paranoid:
“We fail to recognize the fact that we’re alone out there in terms of trying to achieve the objective of forcing the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons,” Cheney said…
The former Vice President characterized the Iranian goal in negotiations on ending that country’s nuclear program as mere stalling for time, and the Europeans as trying to “restrain the U.S.” from military action.
“Everybody’s in a giant conspiracy to achieve a different objective than the one we want to achieve,” Cheney said.
The negotiations are “bound to fail unless we are perceived as very credible” in threatening military action against Iran, he said.
“Most of the other nations out there are willing to live with a nuclear-armed Iran” he said, citing France, Germany and the United Kingdom in particular.
It’s clear from the half-dozen or so interviews Cheney and his daughter Liz have given in the past few weeks that the Cheneys are desperate to prevent any sort of investigation in the torture program Cheney and other top Bush administration officials designed and implemented in 2002.
What may be less clear is the true extent to which Cheney was involved in the day-to-day operation of torture activities. A new report out today indicates that Cheney suggested waterboarding an Iraqi official whom he believed to have knowledge of a connection between al Qaeda and the Saddam Hussein regime.
