Cheney: Confessed war criminal?

Some liberals want to put former Vice President Dick Cheney on trial for war crimes for advocating torture, but Cheney doesn't appear worried. In his Sunday interview on ABC's "This Week," Cheney said that in the Bush administration, he "was a big supporter of waterboarding," and thinks it should still be used, when necessary, to get information from terrorism suspects. But with President Obama and many legal experts saying waterboarding is torture under U.S. and international law, did Cheney just write the opening statement for the prosecution in a war-crimes tribunal? (Watch Dick Cheney talk about waterboarding)

Cheney sealed his own conviction: Waterboarding is "torture," by definition and law, says Andrew Sullivan in The Atlantic. So Cheney "just confessed to a war crime," the penalty for which is either death or life in prison. "These are not my opinions and they are not hyperbole. They are legal facts," and the only question is if Cheney will be convicted of his war crimes "in his lifetime or posthumously"?

"Cheney: 'I was a big supporter of waterboarding'"

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Maybe Obama's the real war criminal: Obama wants to claim "the moral high ground" by ending "enhanced interrogation" tactics, says Marc Thiessen in Foreign Policy. But his escalation of Predator drone attacks kills innocent women and children, along with terrorists. That's hardly "morally superior" to Cheney's approach, especially considering that "dead terrorists can't tell you their plans to strike America."

"Dead terrorists tell no tales"

Bush was too wimpy for Cheney, too: Why is this difficult for Cheney apologists to grasp? asks Jay Bookman in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "The United States is not a war zone," and Cheney's desire to torture even terrorism suspects, like the Christmas Day bomber, who are caught in the U.S. is illegal and unconstitutional. Even George W. Bush eventually rejected the "morally bankrupt and strategically disastrous Cheney approach."

"Cheney wants to abandon rule of law, Constitution"

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