"Deficits don't matter."

-- Former Vice President Dick Cheney

The Republican Party's most vile, and suddenly visible, toxic asset did more than commit war crimes, lie the nation into an unnecessary war, and mount wholesale attacks on the Constitution and Bill of Rights during his string-pulling stint in the White House. Dick Cheney was also a champion and defender of George W. Bush's fiscal madness.

Cheney supported Bush in forging public policies that drained the U.S. Treasury to provide tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and ran up record deficits while spending at rates that exceeded Lyndon Johnson's pace. Johnson, at least, raised taxes to pay for his disastrous war. Cheney and Bush preferred to create billions of dollars of debt to finance their military and nation building experiments.

In late 2002, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill argued another round of massive tax cuts would result in staggering deficits and warned Bush the move would harm the economy. Cheney, infamously, cut off O'Neill snarling, "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter." O'Neill persisted in urging caution thus committing an unforgivable sin in the Bush administration - speaking the truth.

A month later, O'Neill was fired. Dick Cheney, not the cowardly Bush, told O'Neill he was getting the heave-ho. The last voice of fiscal restraint in the Bush administration and only cabinet member with the guts to say deficits do matter was unceremoniously sacked. In Bush world, no one ever again, within earshot of Dick Cheney, would dare utter the heresy that debt financed tax cuts create problems.

With that backdrop, it is truly laughable these days to hear Republicans and a few Democrats sanctimoniously squealing about Obama's budget and the deficits essential to prevent the recession from doing even more and lasting damage to the economy and creating indispensable stimulus.

Cheney recently tried to explain to CNN's John King why, during the Bush administration, an inherited $128 billion surplus transformed into a record $1.3 trillion deficit. It was all unavoidable, Cheney argued. Events just got out of hand.

There was 9/11, then the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and out of nowhere Hurricane Katrina hit. Cheney, whined, "All these things required us to spend money that we had not originally planned to spend, or weren't originally part of the budget. Stuff happens." All those revenue draining tax cuts for the rich had nothing to do with the deficit, according to Cheney's perverse and twisted reading of recent history.

Last week, House Republicans unveiled their alternative to Obama's budget which absurdly contained virtually no numbers. They promise details will follow. But the silly prop book the Republicans gave reporters did contain one number that says it all.

The Republicans "blue print" calls for the top marginal tax rate to be slashed from 35 to 25 percent. They offered not a scintilla of analysis of the budgetary implications of another tax cut for the rich. Just say we're against spending (except for the military), we cut your taxes and deficits don't matter. Dick Cheney must be writing the Republican script when Rush Limbaugh is golfing or popping pills.

Cheney - who spent eight years in seclusion, hiding in a bunker plotting and executing horrific crimes - suddenly has become publicly visible - ready to appear on talk shows claiming Barack Obama is making the nation less secure by outlawing torture and planning to close the illegal gulag at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Cheney boldly claims waterboarding and other torture techniques were "absolutely essential" in keeping America safe. We do not need some silly commission to review the horrors that came out of the White House, especially from Dick Cheney's lair. We need the Attorney General to simply enforce the law.

Dick Cheney's public admissions are clear evidence of crimes committed. The greatest failure of Barack Obama's early months in office is his apparent unwillingness to confront the most monstrous deeds of the Bush administration, all of them covered with Cheney's DNA.

We will soon learn more when Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. releases memos on torture and other illegal activities prepared by Justice Department attorneys at Cheney's behest though his aides and political enforcers Scooter Libby and David Addington. The documents are the target of a Freedom of Information request from the A.C.L.U.

The intelligence community is howling and former C.I. A. director Michael Hayden is reportedly "furious" that the memos will soon see the light of day. Notions of truth and accountability in a free society offend Hayden and his ilk. Better to keep dark secrets buried forever.

Cheney is flaunting his role in advocating torture and, so far, he's doing it with smug impunity, almost daring Obama to try to do something about it. Jonathan Turley, professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, argues we have a moral burden as a nation to confront torture.

He told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, "We have third world countries that when they have found that their leaders committed torture war crimes, they prosecute them. But the most successful democracy in history is just, I think, about to see war crimes, and do nothing about it."

Turley has long argued that we have a civic mandate to act. "It's the indictment of all of us if we walk away from a clear war crime and say it's time for another commission," he said. President Obama must appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the crimes. Nothing else makes sense.

The U.S. Criminal Code is perfectly clear. A person commits a war crime engaging in a "grave breach of Article 3" of the Geneva Conventions. Torture and conspiracy to commit torture are specifically defined as a breach. The language of the law reads, "The act of a person who commits, or conspires to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering...upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind."

The statute also considers "cruel or inhuman treatment" a grave breach, the kind of acts Cheney has literally bragged about, admitting he discussed and supervised such treatment from the White House. The brazen admissions stun Jonathan Turley.

"This is the most well-defined and publicly known crimes I've seen in my life time," Turley told Maddow, "There's no doubt about it. No ambiguity. It's well known. You've got people involved who have basically admitted the elements of a war crime that we are committed to prosecuting."

Obama, so far, has shown great reluctance to unleash a criminal prosecution and even is shying away from some kind of truth commission. Some would find it distasteful and label it a witch hunt. Public support may be thin. But it should be done.

"It is just as bad to prevent the investigation and prosecution of a war crime as its commission because you become part of it," Turley said. Cheney is running around trying to frame the issue as some kind of policy dispute and political distinction rather than a matter of law and criminal conduct.

Last week, former Attorney General John Ashcroft told a college audience in Texas, "I don't have a mark on my conscience." That is, if he has a conscience. Ashcroft went on to offer some ridiculous parsing of what waterboarding means. "There are things that you could call waterboarding that I am firmly convinced are torture," and "There are things that you could call waterboarding that might be torture."

I suppose if you use Perrier Water or only pour less than one quart only a misdemeanor is committed. Waterboarding has been considered torture since the Middle ages and we prosecuted Japanese soldiers for doing it during World War Two.

The legacy of torture Dick Cheney wears as a badge of honor cannot be tolerated. To ignore it is to countenance the crimes. President Obama has much on his plate, but he must appoint a special prosecutor now.

During his 60 Minutes interview, Obama said, "I think that vice president Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the wrong conclusion from history."

We don't need any reconciliation that we are a nation built on the rule of law not the rule of men who cloak themselves as our defenders beyond the law. Professor Turley understands. "You talk about values-the most important value is that the President has to enforce the law. He can't pick and choose who would be popular to prosecute."

_______

BILL GALLAGEHR



About author Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@aol.com