Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been busy since leaving office, making media appearances where he defends the Bush administration generally and the use of torture in particular. These appearances and the number of them and their tone, especially when calling out the Obama administration, have been turning heads. Usually previous administrations remain fairly quiet about current ones.

His latest appearance was this past Sunday on Face the Nation (transcript), doing all of the above, but also something a bit different.

This exchange occurs at about the 10:50 mark:

SCHIEFFER: How much did President Bush know specifically about the methods that were being used? We know that you-- and you have said-- that you approved this...

CHENEY: Right.

SCHIEFFER: ... somewhere down the line. Did President Bush know everything you knew?

CHENEY: I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew -- he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to the president. He signed off on it.

This passage stuck out to me because of something Cheney said several times during the Bush administration, that he was happy being Vice-President, had no interest in running for any other office and was happy to be serving the President and his administration. Yet in the above exchange he essentially put all the blame on Bush or at the least tied the anchor around himself and Bush. He's a bit vague at first, saying "I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew," only to turn around a few sentences later and say "He signed off on it". Perhaps the obsession with loyalty is reaching its logical outcome, considering Cheney has got to be peeved about Bush's silence on Obama's repudiation of the former administration's policies.