How dark and sinister is the dungeon of Dick Cheney’s mind? How depraved was our ex-vice president in his quest to unleash an open-ended program of sadism under the shameless cloak of “national security”?

So dark, so sinister, and so depraved that he’s calling for the declassifying of all the “torture memos” so that the world may reach a more fully informed assessment of the CIA interrogations that occurred during the Bush presidency.

“If we’re going to have this debate, let’s have an honest debate,” he told Sean Hannity. Cheney sounds like a citizen under the delusion that the new American president promised an age of transparency and vigorous policy discussion. Unfortunately for all of us, there will be no debate. Barack Obama decided to pick for declassification a handful of greatest hits memos that spoke to him of betrayed ideals, national reconciliation, and PR gold. Anyway, the president has already forbidden use of the methods in question — without a debate. And, of course, without punishing those who employed such methods.

So, who’s operating under false pretenses here: the last administration that’s calling for a full review of its most controversial program or the new one that wraps itself in the political glamor of “transparency” only to take an incoherent shot at its predecessor and move on?