Dick Cheney is getting vindication from an unlikely source — the very Obama administration he’s bedeviling in all of his TV interviews.

The former vice president has dared to defend the Bush administration from the charge it ran a torturing, Constitution-shredding criminal enterprise for years under the guise of the “war on terror.” He’s been duly subjected to the Two Minutes Hate — on an endless loop — from all the people who want him to slink to an undisclosed location never to emerge again.

Cheney’s defense is so notable because he’s so lonely. As the Bush administration is accused of war crimes, other Bush stalwarts have fallen silent. Where is Condi Rice (who at least defended herself when challenged on waterboarding by a fourth-grader the other day)? Where is former national-security adviser Steve Hadley? Where is George W. Bush, who wants to maintain post-presidential decorum but might bestir himself to stand up for the people who protected the nation during his presidency?

No, this is a job for a man with a stomach of steel, who can take satisfaction in Obama’s Cheney-like turn. Obama has decided to “delay” the release of photos of detainee abuse — maybe secrecy does have an important role in national-security affairs. Obama is considering indefinite detention of terrorists on U.S. soil and reviving military commissions — maybe the system of detention and trials the Bush administration created wasn’t so lunatic after all.

The photo reversal brought thunderous denunciations on the left. The American Civil Liberties Union, whose Freedom of Information Act request seemed set to force the release of the photos, huffed that Obama had adopted “the stonewalling tactics and opaque policies of the Bush administration.” Human Rights Watch decried “a blow to openness, accountability.” Obama might have led them to believe that he shares the juvenile, unalloyed commitment to transparency in all things of an ACLU litigator, but he apparently prefers to be commander in chief.

When Gen. Ray Odierno, commander in Iraq, and other military officials told the president that release of the photos endangered our troops, Obama took notice. They only applied his own logic to the case. During his Europe trip, Obama said, “When we saw what happened in Abu Ghraib, that wasn’t good for our security — that was a recruitment tool for terrorism.”

So why release more advertisements for the enemy? It’s not necessary for accountability, since abuses at detention facilities can be investigated without splashing the photographic evidence on every front page in the Middle East. Images are uniquely powerful. Jane Mayer’s indictment of Bush interrogation policies, The Dark Side, could be translated into Arabic and given to every male age 18-24 in the Middle East, and the terrorist dial would barely move. Publish one humiliating picture and it becomes the recruiting poster from hell.

To the extent Guantanamo Bay has stoked terrorist recruitment, it probably has more to do with the photos of the facility from its earliest days — with captives bound, in orange jumpsuits — than anything that happened there. The most infamous photo from Abu Ghraib — of a man with a black hood over his head, his arms outstretched — has negatively branded the “war on terror” for millions, no matter how sincerely we hope to protect Muslims from the depredations of the vile murderers in their midst.

Obama isn’t going to subject us to another self-inflicted disaster in the information war. At least not yet. If he wants to keep the photos permanently under wraps — and show he’s truly willing to buck the loudest faction in his own coalition — he can’t rely on the courts, where he’s now appealing the decision to release them. He’ll have to issue an executive order exempting the photos from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

Hmm — an executive order protecting secrecy in a sensitive matter involving national security. Who does that remind you of? If it’s not enough to make Cheney smile, it should get a well-earned smirk out of him.

(c) 2009 by King Features Syndicate