Andrew Sullivan on Cheney, torture, and the GOP's big problem

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I have long admired Andrew Sullivan for his vehement stance on -- that is, against -- torture and its enablers in the Bush Administration, from Bush and Cheney right on down. It should come as no surprise, then, that I think he's right on here:

The least popular vice-president in memory is not helping the Republicans regroup - according to this piece from the Hill. But Cheney is not giving these disgraceful and classless interviews to help the GOP. He's giving them because it is beginning to dawn on him that he is in very serious trouble - legally, politically, historically. As the full details of his obsession with the torture program emerge, and as the gruesome nature of the actual torture becomes clearer, he knows he will go down in history as a war criminal, defined for all time as the man who took America and the West to the dark side with no easy way back. He's trying to prevent that with the usual bluff and bravado. But even Bush isn't buying all of it any longer.

It seems to me that what we need is simply more disclosure of all the government knows about what Cheney and Bush did.

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Cheney is out there hurting his party, helping the president, and sowing fear - because he has to if he is to survive as anything but a pariah. The one thing he cannot stand is sunlight. So let it in, Mr President. Let it in.

Very, very well put. (Though I certainly don't mind Cheney hurting the GOP. We can't get enough of that.)