Dick Cheney

My thoughts on the funeral of former US Vice President Dick Cheney, including my 20-minute interview with Rebecca Myles for WBAI Pacifica in New York, about Cheney’s legacy, and why he must never be forgiven, as the primary architect of the “war on terror”, the unapologetic driver of the CIA’s repulsive “black site” torture program, and the chief instigator of the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, which led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. As I also note, despite Cheney’s opposition to Donald Trump, it was his enthusiasm for unfettered executive power throughout his career, but especially under George W. Bush, that fed directly into Trump’s notion of himself as a would-be emperor who refuses to acknowledge that there ought to be any constraints on his power. In my discussion about Cheney’s funeral, listing the high-profile attendees — and absences — I also focus in particular on the presence of Joe Biden, who so unforgivably replicated the US’s violent and lawless response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in his response to the attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, which he shamefully described as “Israel’s 9/11”, as he offered Israel unprecedented and uncritical support for its own violent and lawless “war on terror.”

Photos from, and my report about the 34th consecutive coordinated monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US, in Washington, D.C., New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and Portland, and in London and Brussels on November 5, 2025, with San Francisco joining on November 6, and Cobleskill, NY on November 8. Former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi also sent a photo from an exhibition of prisoners’ art in Giessen, Germany. This month’s “First Wednesday” vigils also coincided with 8,700 days of Guantánamo’s existence, marked with the latest poster in an ongoing photo initiative by the Close Guantánamo campaign, and they also coincided with the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s re-election as president, although that was wonderfully overshadowed by the Mayoral Election victory, in New York, of Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim socialist immigrant — and, undoubtedly, an opponent of the continued existence of Guantánamo. The vigils also coincided with the death, at the age of 84, of former Vice President Dick Cheney, the primary architect of the Bush administration’s “war on terror”, including the CIA’s repulsive torture program, as well as the main driver, using false information derived from the use of torture, of the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. Shamefully, as I note, “while Cheney passed away peacefully surrounded by his family, his victims continue to languish in Guantánamo, with no sign of when, if ever, any of them will either be released, or delivered anything resembling justice.”

On the 20th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, I look at the crimes committed by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair and others, and the many failures of the occupation, and contrast their ongoing freedom and lack of accountability with the decision by the International Criminal Court, just three days ago, to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin.

To mark the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I reflect on its long and bitter legacy, via the US’s endless wars, the continuing existence of Guantánamo, and, as recently revealed, the shockingly large number of people displaced by the US’s many wars waged over the last 19 years.

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.   On December 9, I published […]

Please support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $2800 (£2100) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo for the next three months.   In the 15 years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has systematically undermined many of the key values it claims to uphold as a nation […]

Exactly 15 years ago, terrorists attacked the United States, killing 2,996 people, in the World Trade Center and on two hijacked aeroplanes, and changing the world forever. Within a month, the US had invaded Afghanistan, aiming to destroy al-Qaeda and to topple the Taliban regime that had harbored them. That mission was largely accomplished by […]

To coincide with some renewed activity in connection with the Bush administration’s torture program — namely, the ACLU suing James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the former military psychologists who set up the program — I’m taking the opportunity to make available a video of my song ‘81 Million Dollars‘ about the torture program, and about […]

Read my full interview here. On Independence Day in the US, I’d like to direct readers to a wonderful resource, The Rule of Law Oral History Project, undertaken by the Columbia Center for Oral History at Columbia University Library in New York. The project’s website explains that The Rule of Law Oral History Project was […]

See the full list here of everyone charged in the military commissions at Guantánamo. Recently, a friend asked me for information about all the Guantánamo prisoners who have been put forward for military commission trials at Guantánamo, and after undertaking a search online, I realized that I couldn’t find a single place listing all the […]