There was a time when an American vice president was seldom heard from when in office, and never heard from again after leaving it. No longer, with Dick Cheney taking on the role of avenger against the critics of the previous eight years.

The man who once spent much of his time being unheard from at undisclosed locations has become as talkative as his visible loquacious successor, Joe Biden, but still in the service of the George W. Bush administration now targeted by Obama Attorney General Eric Holder.

As Bush remains relatively silent on the matter of the waterboarding and other methods of persuasion imposed on suspected terrorists, Cheney has not only continued to defend them; he has now gone on the offensive against his legal tormenters.

Speaking from the friendly confines of the "Fox News Sunday" show, the principal advocate of the notion that a wartime president can do whatever he pleases continued to insist Bush's Justice Department had it right in saying there was nothing "improper or illegal" about waterboarding.

What's more, Cheney labeled Holder's decision to look further into a 2004 report by the CIA inspector-general critical of the practices "an intensely partisan, politicized look back at the previous administration to placate the left wing of the Democratic Party."

This assessment comes from the man who was an architect of the policy of "extreme interrogation techniques" buttressed by the discredited legal opinions of the Bush Justice Department, and condemned as torture by none other than Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

Cheney called Holder's decision "clearly a political move" in spite of the fact that President Obama earlier had specifically said he wanted his new administration to look forward, not backward at the alleged abuses of detainees by the Bush administration.

Are Obama and Holder playing good-cop, bad-cop in this matter, with Holder seemingly ignoring his boss's wishes not to spend time looking under old Bush rocks? It's possible, but good-cop Obama did say also that if there was evidence of wrongdoing, it was his Justice Department's obligation to investigate it. Cheney's lament smacks of concern that more Bush rocks may be turned over on other questionable practices of an administration also accused of playing politics in the removal of uncooperative federal prosecutors.

Cheney continues to play the 9/11 card face down as he did during the last presidential campaign, when he credited the questionable interrogation techniques for keeping Americans safe from another such attack. He had no proof then and he hasn't been able to offer proof now that they were "directly responsible for the fact for eight years we had no further mass casualty attacks against the United States."

Be that as it may, Cheney is certainly correct to say that liberals in the Democratic Party continue to press for a full airing of these and the more important Bush decisions that launched the invasion of Iraq and botched the aftermath. They have led to a colossal foreign policy morass for this country in general and for Obama in particular.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that is already investigating the alleged illegalities of the Bush years, has indicated that while she thinks the CIA inspector general's report warrants Holder's decision, she would have preferred he wait until her own committee inquiry, nearing completion, was finished.

Despite Obama's preference to let these particular sleeping dogs lie, the liberals see that awakening them can only be to the political benefit of Obama, in reminding voters of the origins of his current, inherited challenges. Demands for such investigations also keep up pressure for a "truth commission" into the Bush years similar to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group inquiry.

The irony can't be missed in the spectacle of Cheney, the shadowy figure who operated in such secrecy while asserting unprecedented power from the once-insignificant office of the vice presidency, now in full view and open attack on those who would shine a brighter light into his old dark corners.

Former vice president Dick Cheney has gone on the offensive, defending the secretive policies of the Bush administration.