Secretary of Torture

Do you know this man? You should. He may look like a mild-mannered accountant, but U.S. News and World Report called him “the most powerful man you’ve never heard of.” He may also be the most dangerous man you’ve never heard of. Meet David Addington, Secretary of Torture.

Well, technically, he’s Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and his former legal counsel. As a member of Bush and Cheney’s inner circle “kitchen cabinet”, he has been the “brains” and the driving force behind many of the worst excesses of this administration.

Addington’s perverted legal reckoning is based on the same rationalization once thrown up by Richard Nixon: “When the President does it that means that it is not illegal.” That sort of pretzel logic may satisfy tyrants and boot-licking lackeys who think themselves wise, but the average idiot knows better.

Brilliant idiots, on the other hand, are able to throw up tautological masterpieces that amount to little more than” We don’t do torture because it isn’t torture unless we say it is.” At the very least, Addington and his ilk are guilty of tortured logic.

Though most of the blame has fallen on underlings like John Yoo, Addington is the person primarily responsible for the infamous “Torture Memos” used to justify water-boarding and other torture that has been euphemistically described as Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.

Many of these techniques were based on practices Chinese interrogators used on American soldiers in Korea in the Fifties, practices which we then condemned as torture, practices which any reasonable person would still condemn as torture. On the other hand, few would suggest that Addington is reasonable.

Like Cheney, Addington is a Washington “lifer” who suffered through the ignominy of our failure in Viet Nam, the resignation of Richard Nixon, and the diminution of Presidential powers that came about as a result of Watergate. Since Addington, Cheney and their kind seem to be genetically incapable of accepting the blame for anything ever, they attributed these humiliations to the effete Liberal Media and political cowardice by Congressional Democrats.

As a result, for decades both men have used any means necessary to try to restore the Imperial Presidency. Both deem an Imperial President essential to the nation’s survival in a modern, complicated and dangerous world, and both agree that Cheney is the perfect man for the job. That thought is made even more frightening with this quote from the New Yorker magazine:

"For years, Addington has carried a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his pocket; taped onto the back are photocopies of extra statutes that detail the legal procedures for Presidential succession in times of national emergency..."

It’s ironic, to say the least, that these supposed “strict constructionists” don’t view an Imperial Presidency as a fundamental violation of the Constitution or that the “checks and balances” were devised by the Founders to keep just such a thing from happening. In their twisted minds, the country can’t afford such niceties as “checks and balances” – or privacy or habeas corpus or Geneva Conventions. No, in their view, the law is what the President says it is. One wonders if they would feel the same way with a President Obama.

To give the devil his due, Addington may be diabolical, but he is also brilliant. Despite the fact that the sulphurous smell of his hand is evident on every over-reaching action of this administration, he has left no fingerprints. That’s why only the few who actually pay attention to these matters know who – and what he is.

But Addington’s brilliant disguise seems to be slipping. Perhaps unable to resist the opportunity to express his contempt and disdain for those who summoned him, Addington recently appeared before the House Judiciary Committee. During the hearings, he blustered and bullied his way past questions, disdainful, dismissive and condescending at every turn. But, alas, like a roach exposed to the light, he was forced to retreat to the last refuge of administration scoundrels – executive privilege.

In the end, Addington came off as a sneering, preening, pompous ass straight from Central Casting. He behaved like one of the defendants in the movie Judgment at Nuremberg, acting as if lesser beings had no right to judge his crimes. Ironically, it was the same sort of megalomania evinced by Saddam Hussein during his trial.

While we’re on the subject, whether Addington (and others in this administration) are guilty of war crimes will be for the courts to decide. But it won’t be surprising if we eventually find their names in the court dockets of even our allies.

But Addington has already been convicted by his peers for creating a caustic atmosphere in which torture was justified and wholesale wiretapping was okayed. He is held in contempt by his peers for the legal “reasoning” behind Bush’s more than 750 signing statements, which exempt the President (and whoever he designates) from the law.

All this is perfectly reasonable and rational in Addington’s world, a world in which there is no such thing as a difference of opinion or any loyal opposition, a world in which it is permissible to use any and all means no matter how heinous to humiliate and obliterate those who dare to disagree, a world in which there are only acolytes and enemies, toadies and traitors.

Like the terrorists they so vehemently claim to oppose, these men – who also claim to be realists – live in a fantasy world as though this was another episode of Fox’s potboiler 24, a world in which it’s okay to slice off the occasional finger or gouge out the offending eye of another human being – as long as a plausible claim can be made that doing so is in the interest of “Homeland Security”.

Well, Addington, Cheney and Fox are welcome to that world, a world it’s fair to say they’ve had a hand in creating. But what are the rest of us to do with them?

Not long ago, Addington reached the height of the ridiculous and the nadir of the nefarious when he proffered the utterly illogical argument that the Vice-President is neither in the Executive nor the Legislative branch, but in some supposed nether-world between. It was as if Lewis Carroll had suddenly become Cheney’s adviser.

Well, I say let Addington and Cheney be hoisted on the own petard and pay the price for their perfidy. I say Congress should cut off funds to this invisible empire and let these fools fend for themselves until they find a branch of government willing to claim the Vice-President and his Secretary of Torture.

©2008 Tom Cordle