Dick Cheney's Last Throes

European reaction to visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's statements on torture can be summed up in lead commentary Wednesday in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, among the most widely respected German newspapers. Under the headline "Justice la Rice," the editor "translated" her message into these words: "The end justifies the means and terrorism can be fought with borderline methods on the outer edges of legality." He added:

"Rice came to Germany to begin a new era. She has resoundingly failed to do so. Injustice remains injustice, and a wrong policy remains a wrong policy. On this basis you cannot re-launch the trans-Atlantic relationship."

There was no mushroom cloud, but Rice is radioactive nonetheless. No matter how much she and the embedded reporters traveling with her tried to spin her words, they are falling on deaf ears in Europe. Even here at home, the administration is encountering unusual skepticism in the heretofore-domesticated media.

The normally sleepy editorial side of the Washington Post, for example, found it possible to lead its first editorial Friday by reminding readers that Rice broke no new ground in claiming Wednesday that US personnel -- "wherever they are" -- are prohibited from using cruel or inhuman interrogation techniques. This is hardly a profile in courage for the Post: The president's spokesman, Scott McClellan, had already told reporters that Rice was merely expressing existing policy.

Trouble on the Home Front

With attention riveted on the cause celebre occasioned by revelations concerning CIA-run prisons abroad, kidnapping, and "extraordinary renditions" of captives to torture-prone foreign countries -- and the predictably neuralgic reaction among our allies -- it is easy to miss the likely political fallout here at home.

Vice President Dick Cheney, whose unbridled chutzpah has led him to take public and well as private credit for being the intellectual author of US policy on torture, has become such a glaring liability that his tenure may be short-lived. There is a growing possibility that the vice president will resign at the turn of the year "for reasons of health," and that his partner-in-crime -- in what Colin Powell's former chief of staff at the State Department, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, has labeled the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" -- will choose to retire to his home in Taos early next year.

Never in the 60 years since World War II has an American secretary of state been received with such hostility by our erstwhile friends in Europe. In one sense, it can be seen as poetic justice that Rice, who as national security adviser to the president never heard a Cheney suggestion she didn't like, is taking the heat, while the vice president hides behind her skirts. Poetic justice for Cheney himself, though, may be just around the corner.

It is no secret that Cheney bears primary responsibility for making our country a pariah among nations by punching a gaping hole in the (until now) absolute ban on torture under international and US law. Under international treaties, including treaties ratified by the US Senate and thus the supreme law of the land, civilized societies have long since prohibited practices widely recognized as torture. No matter. At the instigation of the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal, the inherent human right to physical integrity and personal dignity has become an early casualty of the US "war on terror."

We did not need Col. Wilkerson to tell us that. What he has revealed in tracing responsibility for the US rogue policy on torture to the office of the vice president and Rumsfeld merely confirmed much of what is already known, but reported meagerly -- if at all -- in US media.

Just five days after 9/11, the vice president told Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press:

"We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side ... a lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies ... it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective."

At that same time President George W. Bush reportedly issued instructions to the CIA to take a no-holds-barred approach when interrogating suspected terrorists and, according to counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, used colorful language to impress his attitude upon Clarke and Rumsfeld: "I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass." The head of the Counter-terrorism Center at the CIA conveyed the atmosphere quite well when he testified to Congress that after 9/11 "the gloves were off."