Dick Cheney has long crusaded to restore the executive branch to its pre-Watergate glory.  He has overshot the mark so dramatically that it seemed that he might never be called to account (he is, after all, only the Vice-President), especially with henchmen like Scooter Libby ever-ready to take whatever heat that might threaten the endless winter of his steely resolve.  But the Vice President now finds himself in need of others to deny his having said and meant what he quite plainly said and meant about waterboarding.  (Don’t count on hearing him say, "Your Vice-President is not a waterboarder"; his last word on the matter will likely remain: "I didn’t say anything, he did.")  Keith DeRose offers a parable:

A town in the Old West had had some troubles with cattle rustlers.  Some of the
townfolk wanted suspected rustlers to be hung or somehow executed – anything to
keep them safe from the rustlers.  And it was widely known that Sheriff Gus’s
men had hung one particularly notorious rustler, Dastardly Dan.  But some of the
townfolk didn’t like the idea of executing rustlers….

Understandably, those who
wanted rustlers to be executed if it could help make the town safer from
rustling often avoided straightforward terms for what they thought should be
done to rustlers.  So, for instance, one way of killing prisoners that had been
used was by pushing them off of a very high cliff outside of town, so that they
would die on the rocks below.  But some who thought it was fine to kill rustlers
by pushing them off the cliff liked to talk about it in such euphemistic terms
as this: “Well, if we have to make a few rustlers take a little fall to
keep the town safe, we should do that.”  And, though some would say
straightforward things like, “Hang rustlers, if it will help keep us safe,”
others preferred to say things like: “If we have to make a few rustlers swing
on a rope to keep the town safe, we should do that.” 

Which
brings us to the interview.  A reporter from the town paper was allowed to
interview the Deputy Sheriff, and this is how it went:

REPORTER: Deputy
Dick, I’ve heard from a lot of readers — that’s what we do for a living, talk
to good folks in the town every day — and a lot of them have told me, “Please,
let the Deputy Sheriff know that if takes making a few rustler swing from a
rope, we’re all for it, if it makes the town safer from rustlers.”  And this
debate seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you
agree?

DEPUTY DICK: I do agree. And I think the rustler threat, for
example, with respect to our ability to execute really bad rustlers like
Dastardly Dan, that’s been a very important tool that we’ve had to be able to
secure the town. We need to be able to continue that.

REPORTER:  Would
you agree a swing from a rope is a no-brainer if it can save the town from
rustling?

DEPUTY DICK: It’s a no-brainer for me, but for a while there,
I was criticized as being the Deputy Sheriff "for execution." We don’t execute.
That’s not what we’re involved in. We live up to our promises to the town
council and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust punishment
program without execution, and we need to be able to do that.

Well, of
course, this only heightened the suspicion that Deputy Dick, at least, endorsed
hanging prisoners, and was only saying things like “We don’t execute” because he
meant to not be counting hanging as a form of execution.  When word got out
about what Deputy Dick had said in his interview, some of Sheriff Gus’s men
tried to claim that Deputy Dick hadn’t been talking about hanging at all.  But
that was very hard to accept.  For one thing, they wouldn’t come out and say
whether it was the Sheriff’s office now accepted that hanging is a form of
execution.  But mostly, they had to contend with the words that were exchanged
between the reporter and Deputy Dick.

Of course, there are ways of
making someone swing on a rope that wouldn’t kill them.  In fact, many
ways wouldn’t even harm them, and could even be rather pleasant.  But there had
been a lot of discussion around town about the possibility of hanging rustlers,
and in these debates many used “make them swing on a rope” as a euphemism for
hanging them.  And nobody was talking about any other ways of making rustlers
swing on a rope.  So it was quite clear that the readers who told the reporter
to tell the Deputy to make some rustlers swing on a rope if it would help meant
to be using “swing on a rope” as a euphemism for hanging them to death.  After
all, what “debate” could the reporter be referring to, other than the debate
over hanging rustlers, since no other ways of making them swing on a rope had
been debated?  So when Deputy Dick responded positively to this suggestion, it
was hard to believe he wasn’t talking about hanging rustlers.  And as if
to remove any remaining reasonable doubt about the matter, Deputy Dick himself
brought up Dastardly Dan in his response.  And Deputy Dick surely knew both that
Dastardly Dan had been hung, and that also that it was widely known that Dan had
been hung.  It was in the town’s papers, after all.  And he clearly seemed to be
approving of what had been done to Dastardly Dan. 

So it was hard to
understand how it could be that Deputy Dick wasn’t talking about hanging
rustlers.  And, as I said, this only strengthened the suspicion that Deputy
Dick, and perhaps others in the Sheriff’s office, meant to use “execute” in a
very strange way that excluded hanging as a form of “execution.” 

And
given that the very suspicion that had been strengthened by the interview was
that the Sheriff’s office meant to use “execute” in a strange way that excluded
many ways of putting prisoners to death, Sheriff Gus’s own response to the
incident was particularly unhelpful.  Asked about Deputy Dick’s comments,
Sheriff Gus simply said, "This town doesn’t execute. We’re not going to
execute."

Meanwhile, the question of the hour in Washington, "What Was Cheney Thinking?" acknowledges that when it gets icy even the mighty can slip.