By Mitchel Olszak



Former Vice President Dick Cheney is making headlines, defending what objective analysis would categorize as the indefensible:

The Bush administration’s conduct in its war against terror.

In doing so, Cheney has opened up a two-front strategy — similar to George W. Bush’s dual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The former vice president seeks to rationalize the Bush administration’s actions, while attacking key policies of the Obama White House.

Cheney, who never missed a chance to scare the American people while in office, continues in this vein with his criticism of President Obama. In short, he claims new policies being pursued by this administration will make the nation less safe and open us up to additional terrorist attacks, like the one that occurred on his watch.

The ex-vice president spices up his speeches with dire warnings of nuclear-armed terrorists, and an Obama administration that will somehow allow them to enter the U.S., courtesy of a ban on waterboarding and other forms of torture.

As a propagandist, Cheney knows the drill. If you can scare people, you can distract them. If you’re fearful of a world where the government can’t torture, then you’ll be inclined to overlook a few key details.

For instance, there is absolutely no evidence that waterboarding or other practices of this sort produced meaningful results. Cheney says they did, but he’s lied to the American people in the past.

On the other hand, FBI interrogators — who refused to participate in waterboarding because of its perceived illegality — argued that key information already had been obtained from terrorists through traditional, non-violent means.

The result of torture was that suspects told their captors anything and everything, with no means of assessing its accuracy. And when the torture was done, the terrorists were less inclined to cooperate in a meaningful way.

Cheney won’t tell you that, because it doesn’t fit into his worldview. That’s the one where a handful of unquestioned elites within the U.S. government impose security policies on the entire planet. That’s how it worked when he was in office.

And how did that work out?

Well, America somehow concluded that Saddam Hussein and his crumbling regime posed a clear and present danger to the Western world. So instead of pursuing Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida ilk to our full abilities, we diverted substantial military resources to Iraq.

Saddam may be gone, but our problems in Iraq linger. Factions there remain highly suspicious of each other. The notion of a harmonious, stable and democratic regime in Iraq is a fairy tale.

As for Afghanistan — which was largely forgotten by a Bush administration obsessed with Iraq — the situation there has deteriorated. The Taliban is spreading into Pakistan, the U.S.-backed government is corrupt and incompetent and the opium trade is booming.

That’s the legacy Cheney and company have left us.

And let’s not forget how the Bush administration smeared America’s image around the globe.

Just recently, Obama felt obliged to block the release of photos of abused prisoners in Iraq. He did so at the urging of the Pentagon, which feared publishing the photos would produce even more animosity against the U.S. presence in Iraq.

So Obama must cover up the shameful American conduct that the Bush administration encouraged.

And Cheney has the nerve to criticize the current administration?