Cheney on Hannity

Darth was on Hannity's show, and was his usual splendidly blunt self. Here's his take on KSM coming to Manhattan, among other things..



The seminal moment was probably this:

Hannity: Do you think part of this is to put our CIA on trial; to put you on trial; to put president Bush on trial. Or maybe if it's not designed to do that, ultimately will that happen?

Cheney: (with sly smile) I don't know. I don't know if that's a motive for them or not. It could be. It could be that Holder expects to be able to use this to go back and sort of review in depth the Bush Cheney policies in terms of what we did in terms of to prevent attacks against the United States. I think that's a loser for them...

It's stunning that a former Vice President would even remotely consider the possibility of this. The idea alone suggests KSM (or the govt prosecution) would be expected to dump a whole lot of sensitive data out on the public to prime the pump since they would need a popular buy-in to proceed. That brings to mind Holder's comment about using evidence nobody else has seen before.

In possibly related news, the administration is arguing for the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by terrorist Jose Padilla against former Justice Dept lawyer John Yoo over his findings on enhanced interrogation and confinement. Not because they believe he's necessarily innocent, but because they think any punishment would be more appropriate coming through the Justice department or the bar as opposed to advocacy cases in the courts.

This same premise basically holds true for all federal employees regarding judgment calls so it's not surprising they didn't want the precedent going forward. It does seem to put Yoo back in the hands of Holder, though.