Dick Cheney has declared the influential senate report on torture as ‘full of crap’. This blog believes Mr Cheney to have a mixed reputation in the United States, but in the rest of the world he is hated and reviled for his contribution, as one of the most powerful vice presidents ever, to the flawed invasion of Iraq on a false premise with the terrible aftermath of chaos and suffering as the outcome of the mystical War on Terror. But what he went on to say is potentially seismic.
He asserted that the report’s conclusion that the White House did not know what the CIA were doing to prisoners is wrong and that the president knew everything. Mr Cheney never did give a toss what others thought of his views or indeed his actions. But to declare the the President of the United States was complicit in torture will, if true, eventually have repercussions of extraordinary gravity.
We need to say no more than that.