Dick "Dick" Cheney, the Batman villainesque architect of a needless imperial war who is responsible for hundreds of thousands of needless human deaths, got together with some of his pals this week to chuckle about torture.

It's funny—haha!—how America tortured countless foreign nationals during our wholly unnecessary "War on Terror," thereby destroying credibility that had taken centuries to build, not to mention violating some of the most basic principles of human rights. Why not get together, years later, with all the architects of the whole horrific scheme, and tell some jokes about it, while wearing tuxedos and eating expensive food? If you can't laugh about your war crimes, what good are they?

Ben Smith assembles several accounts of the fun roast of Dick Cheney, held on Monday night at the Plaza hotel in DC. It sounds like the most despicable event in that city since David Gregory danced on stage with Karl Rove. All the most important American Heroes of the Bush administration were there, laffing it up.

Cheney himself told one waterboarding joke, the attendees said, which he attributed to Jay Leno. It centered on a one-shot antelope hunting contest in Wyoming in which the loser had to dance with an Indian squaw. Cheney’s shot got caught in the barrel, producing a dispute over whether it counted as a hit or a miss — and Leno, according to Cheney, joked that Cheney wanted to go catch the animal with his bare hands and waterboard it.

Separately, Rumsfeld joked about Cheney waterboarding fish.

Funny.

Chelsea Manning should be freed and Dick Cheney should be imprisoned in her cell.

[Buzzfeed. Photo: AP]