Calling Cheney's Bluff

A reader writes:

Hold on, those in Gitmo are the worst of the worst, but we did not even keep a file on them? How did we plan to stop terrorist attacks?

Look: Cheney and Rumsfeld simply knew these people - mostly shifty types handed over by bounty hunters or seized in Pakistan - were the worst of the worst. They didn't need any proof. They were never going to put them on trial. Some, of course, were dangerous Islamists who had real information worth finding out. But many more were foreigners captured in chaotic situations by other foreigners with axes to grind. Their use for Cheney was as a demonstration project for what America could do to bad guys with funny names and long beards. And once they had been seized and described as the "worst of the worst", Cheney could not admit he had seized dozens of innocent human beings. So he doubled down on the lie.

But you know it's a lie because he always acted as if it was.