Smelling Like a Rose?

It just occured to me that, for all the talk about prosecuting Vice President Cheney, there's an obvious problem with doing so. Cheny had no constitutional or legal authority to authorize anyone in the government to do anything. His giving orders to the CIA had exactly the same legal effect as my giving orders to the CIA.

None!

Now, it has been well documented that Cheney wielded enormous decision making power in the Bush administration - people actually did what he told them to do. And Cheney has admitted authorizing waterboarding on national T.V.

Moreover, we've prosecuted waterborading as torture a number of times, and President Obama has admitted that it constitute's torture.

But Cheney was legally powerless to authorize waterboardinig. Nobody had to do what he told them to do. Instead of admitting to the authoriziation, Cheney should have said "hey, I was only the vice president. I couldn't authorize anything."

Maybe he could be prosecuted for conspiracy, but I'm not confident of that. Unless President Bush officially delegated his authority to Cheney, Cheney might be in the clear.

Perhaps Cheney was Bush's agent?

Any thoughts?

Joe