Torturing Cheney

Jury selection in the trial of former administration official Lewis "Scooter" Libby begins on Tuesday, and Vice President Dick Cheney is expected to testify at the trial.

But you don't really think he's going to say anything, do you? Certainly not the truth. I mean, he'll have lawyers and everything. He'll use whatever means he can within the law to avoid telling the truth about who ordered the leaking of the name of a CIA agent to the press in order to discredit a man the adminstration thought was an opponent.

So if he's not going to talk, what do you say we help the process along a little bit?

After all, the Vice President himself has given us a template for how to deal with situations like this: if the guy won't talk, there are ways and means of persuading him that talking might be a good idea. And given that this is a CIA matter, I'm sure the CIA would be happy to use some of these methods to find out who was the one who ordered Libby to rat out one of their own, don't you think?

Some of these methods were laid out in a November 18, 2005 piece by ABC News:

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?

But my personal favorite of all these techniques (which liberal pansies tend to call "torture") comes from an account of one detainee who was held in Afghanistan:

"They would not let you rest, day or night. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Don't sleep. Don't lie on the floor," one prisoner said through a translator. The detainees were also forced to listen to rap artist Eminem's "Slim Shady" album. The music was so foreign to them it made them frantic, sources said.

Ah, yes. How exquisite. How appropriate. I think a little waterboarding combined with a little Eminem would get the Vice President to open up, don't you?

It's a shame that we can't subject Cheney to the same kind of treatment he so gleefully approves of for others. I'll bet we'd find out quite a bit about the inner workings of this criminal adminstration if we could.

Tom Moran