But why is Cheney fighting for torture?

Much has been blogged today about this mornings WaPo A01 story "Cheney Fights for Detainee Policy," but very few are asking the question why. My best guess is that Wilkerson(Colin Powell's former second) was right and that there is a direct chain that leads onto the Vice President's desk. These quotes from theWaPo story are out of order.

After Senate aides were ordered out of the Mansfield Room, just steps from the Senate chamber, Cheney said that aggressive interrogations of detainees such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed had yielded useful information, and that the option to treat prisoners harshly must not be taken from interrogators.

Slightly different wording. Are "aggressive interrogations" the same as the "option to treat prisoners harshly" that Cheney is seeking in the CIA exemption to the McCain amendment? Is Dana Priest telling me here that in this closed Senate meeting Cheney is admitting that Khalid Skeik Mohammed was tortured?

Of other interest from this article is confirmation of Wilkerson's other claim that Cheney staff were spying on the NSC.

On the issue of the CIA's interrogation and detention practices, this spring Cheney requested the CIA brief him on the matter. "Cheney's strategy seems to be to stop the broader movement to get an independent commission on interrogation practices and the McCain amendment," said one intelligence official.

Beside personal pressure from the vice president, Cheney's staff is also engaged in resisting a policy change. Tactics included "trying to have meetings canceled ... to at least slow things down or gum up the works" or trying to conduct meetings on the subject without other key Cabinet members, one administration official said. The official said some internal memos and e-mail from the National Security Council staff to the national security adviser were automatically forwarded to the vice president's office -- in some cases without the knowledge of the authors.

And why would Cheney be attempting to "stop the broader movement to get an independent commission on interrogation practices"? I would wager it's because Wilkerson was telling the truth on NPR when he said that he had uncovered a "visible audit trail tracing the practice of prisoner abuse .... directly back to Vice President Cheney's office."

Question: Forget the context for a moment, if someone in the whitehouse was "automatically forwarding" emails with potentially classified info, without the author's knowledge, shouldn't that get them fired?

Question 2: Why would Cheney be so actiively seeking to block investigations into "prisoner abuse" if he wasn't afraid that he was under that rock?

For a little context, be sure to read Mike's wild-assed theory that Colin Powell is behind the downing of Cheney.

UPDATE: I've gotta admit, this is clever tactics. The NYTimes is reporting that the new DoD interrogation guidelines have been signed by Rumsfeld. Nothing too surprising in that, but if you read the article carefully, the guidelines only apply to "Pentagon prisoners."

"requires that Central Intelligence Agency interrogators follow military guidelines when questioning Pentagon prisoners."

In other words, the CIA is still allowed to torture CIA prisoners. What this does is to allow Cheney's CIA exemption, because there has never been any real debate that the military would be allowed to torture. The Bush admin can say the problem is dealt with and put pressure on McCain to drop the amendment. Good tactics. Let's see just how serious McCain is.