In the few months since he left office, George Bush has faded away as best he could; perhaps finally tired of making a fool out of himself, he has kept an extremely low profile and appears to be enjoying life as a private citizen again.  Dick Cheney, on the other hand, who as Vice President had basically the worst job approval rating since Stalin, has taken it upon himself to mend the deep and searing wounds of the Republican Party, which, incidentally, occurred under his watch.  Furthermore, he just can’t seem to find the right side of an argument, and he’s making a lot of noise when I think the best thing he could do is, ironically, mimic GW.  I think former New Yorker editor Tina Brown said it best:

….Is Dick Cheney running for President?  I mean, there’s a vacuum out there and maybe he thinks he’s the guy to fill it…. In some ways, I kind of admire this kind of crazy jihad, this one man, kind of, hate-fest that he runs on cable shows. I mean, I guess he feels he has to defend what he did.  At least he’s not chicken to do that. 

His antics of late include: stating that Obama has made the country less safe by closing Guantanamo Bay, defending prior used “harsh interrogation techniques,” and most recently, suggesting that Rush Limbaugh is a more valuable member to the Republican party than former 4-star general Colin Powell.  Unfortunately for humanity, as disapproved of as Cheney is, there are plenty of people who fall in line with his dogma. 

For example, The New York Times today had a full page ad bought by a group who calls themselves Torture Truth Project, but are really part of the conservative watchdog collection, terribly titled, Accuracy in the Media.  At the top of the page is the word TORTURE, in huge letters.  Below it is an open letter to the liberal elite-media, imploring them to “Stop Misleading the World that Our Country Condones Torture.”  What comes next is possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in print.  While demanding that reporters stop using the word torture, they list the 14 interrogation methods used during the war: 

Sleep deprivation… Dietary manipulation… Abdominal slaps… Facial slaps… Attention grasps… Facial holds… Forced nudity… Water dousing… Stress positions not designed to produce pain… Cramped confinement in a dark space… Confinement with insects such as a caterpillar… Pushing against a wall… Wall standing… Pouring water on a person’s face to induce the feeling of drowning (waterboarding).  

Ok, how about this Dick… you sit through these “techniques” (sans nudity) and if  you come out alive at the end, we’ll call it interrogation.