Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent has an “Open Letter to Liz Cheney on Torture”:

Dear Ms. Cheney,

I don’t know if you saw ‘Meet The Press’ this morning, but a general you may have heard of named David Petraeus — he’s the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia and is the most distinguished Army general since Colin Powell — graced your television. He was asked about whether the U.S. ought to torture Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy commander of the Taliban, recently captured in Pakistan. “I have always been on record, in fact since 2003, with the concept of living our values,” Petraeus replied. Every time the U.S. took what he called “expedient measures” around the Geneva Conventions, those deviations just “turned around and bitten us on our backside.” The effect of torture at Abu Ghraib is “non-biodegradable,” he continued, and boasted that as commander of the 101st Airborne in Iraq, he ordered his men to ignore any instruction to use techniques outside the Army Field Manual on Interrogations. Besides, the non-torture techniques that manual has long instructed? “That works,” he said. “That is our experience.”

But hey. You’re a former deputy assistant secretary of state! You obviously know better than the man who implemented the surge in Iraq. Why don’t you enlighten Gen. Petraeus about all the glories of torture? And since you consider “enhanced interrogation” so necessary to secure the country, perhaps there’s a full page ad you’ll take out in a major newspaper?

Cordially,
Spencer

Would that Ackerman’s letter might get Ms. Cheney’s mind right. But I think the only means to that end would be Papa Dick in his rightful place before a war crimes tribunal. But sadly, the Obama Obstruction of Justice Department and the Look Forward, Not Back Doctrine of the Constitutional Scholar-in-Chief isn’t going to allow that to happen.

Sadly, we will continue to be subjected to the former VP, and by extension his daughter, proudly extolling the virtues of torture, undeterred by any thoughts of being held accountable.

Sadly indeed.