The corporate news media are ignoring the revelation by ABC News last week that top administration officials, including Dick Cheney and then Sec. of State Colin Powell, drafted guidelines for torture techniques to be used by CIA interrogators.
Five years from now, reporters will write books on why they chose to ignore the story of Cheney’s drafting of these immoral, unethical and un-Constitutional torture guidelines. Let’s all vow not to buy those books.

On Thursday, Jonathan Turley, a constitutional expert who was a strong advocate for impeaching Pres. Clinton, said the vice president and the other officials also appear to have committed war crimes.

This news, including Bush’s confirmation late on Friday that he approved the crafting of torture guidelines, was not mentioned on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday nor was it discussed on ABC News’ own political chat show, “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

On Saturday, the Washington Post published a story on page A03 about Bush’s confirmation that he authorized torture, but it has not been covered in the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times. The drafting of the torture guidelines by senior Bush officials was not mentioned during random samplings of cable news broadcasts over the weekend — not even in the headline crawl at the bottom of the screen.

This should be a big story. Leaving aside the fact that torture is immoral, unethical and counter-productive, the drafting of guidelines for torture techniques was simply illegal — or, more to the point, unconstitutional:

The Constitution of the United States is absolutely clear when it comes to matters of torture.

Amendment 8 specifically states that,”Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

Acts of torture are by definition and common understanding — certainly at the time of the drafting of the nation’s essential document and arguably even in this less-enlightened era — cruel and unusual punishments.

The fact that the officials at the meetings included the vice president, Powell and the nation’s topmost unelected personnel — then National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, then Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft, then Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, then CIA Director George Tenet and their aides — should invoke what in the era before Bush would have been called a “Constitutional crisis.”

All of these officials, especially including Cheney, took oaths to uphold the Constitution. At the very least, in drafting the torture guidelines — and by Bush’s approval of their final workproduct — all of them, including the president and vice president, violated that oath.

So why are corporate news outlets ignoring this story? Maybe, like most of us, news editors, producers and reporters have succumbed to outrage fatigue when it comes to the corruption of Bush, Cheney and their loyalists. Or maybe they have concluded that the Democrats in Congress won’t pursue the administration’s law breaking, so why should they.

Whatever the reason, it is beyond shameful that the media are ignoring this story — not because it’s what they get paid to do, often quite handsomely — but because they were the last bastion of hope for American democracy.

This is as big a travesty for the media as when they ignored plain evidence in late 2002 and early 2003 that Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq was either flawed or built on lies (or both). Based on that experience, we can predict what will happen next. Somehow, despite the media’s inattention, the story will blow up into a huge national crisis. Then, five years later, reporters will write books on why they missed the story.

Let’s all vow not to buy those books.