WASHINGTON — The Washington National Cathedral played host Thursday to what observers are calling "the largest gathering of alleged war criminals in one place since the last Republican administration," as political elites assembled to mourn former Vice President Dick Cheney, the man who made torture memos a legitimate genre of government documents.
The invitation-only service brought together a bipartisan coalition of leaders united by their shared legacy of extrajudicial killings, indefinite detention, and creative interpretations of the Geneva Conventions.
"It's heartwarming to see so many people who authorized drone strikes on civilians coming together like this," said one international law professor who requested anonymity for fear of being extraordinary renditioned. "Really shows that some bonds transcend party lines."
Former President George W. Bush delivered a moving eulogy praising Cheney's commitment to "lifting the standards" of those around him, a reference attendees understood to mean "standards for what constitutes an acceptable number of Iraqi casualties" and "standards for how much surveillance of American citizens is too much."
"His talent exceeded his ego," Bush said of the man who convinced him to invade a country based on weapons that didn't exist, a statement that caused several human rights lawyers watching from home to throw objects at their televisions.
The service drew former Presidents Bush and Joe Biden, the latter having voted to authorize the Iraq War that killed hundreds of thousands of people, alongside former Vice Presidents including Mike Pence, whose administration conducted a record number of drone strikes, and Kamala Harris, whose State Department continued selling weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen.
"Dick brought us all together," said one former Cabinet official, presumably referring to Cheney's role in uniting the political establishment around the consensus that international law is more of a suggestion. "Regardless of party, we all believed in America's right to invade countries preemptively."
Attendees fondly recalled Cheney's greatest hits, including the time he shot a man in the face and received an apology from him, his championing of "enhanced interrogation techniques" that the rest of the world called torture, and his masterful ability to award no-bid contracts to his former company Halliburton while serving as vice president.
"He really paved the way for all of us," noted one defense contractor in attendance, who has made billions from wars Cheney helped start. "Before Dick, people still pretended to care about international humanitarian law."
The ceremony notably excluded President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, not because they opposed the Iraq War—which they now claim to have always opposed despite their past statements—but because Cheney's daughter Liz had broken with Trump over the comparatively minor issue of attempting to overthrow American democracy.
"Sure, Dad helped lie us into a war that destabilized an entire region and created ISIS," Liz Cheney reflected, "but at least he respected the peaceful transfer of power domestically. We're not monsters."
Political analysts noted the bitter irony that Trump—whose own administration increased civilian casualties by loosening rules of engagement and sold a record $110 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia—was deemed too controversial to attend a funeral for the architect of the Iraq War.
"Standards really have changed," remarked one observer. "Apparently you can lie about WMDs and authorize torture, but questioning election results is where we draw the line."
Supreme Court Justices who helped legitimize the legal frameworks for indefinite detention sat solemnly alongside Congressional leaders who voted for every war appropriations bill, creating what witnesses described as "a really beautiful moment of cross-branch war crime cooperation."
The only controversy arose when the program listed Cheney's legacy as "progressive on social issues" for supporting gay marriage, causing several attendees to wonder if supporting human rights for your own daughter while denying them to hundreds of thousands of brown people overseas constitutes "progressivism."
As the service concluded with full military honors—the same military Cheney deployed under false pretenses—attendees filed out, many headed directly to think tanks and defense contractors funded by the military-industrial complex Cheney spent his life enriching.
At press time, the entire guest list had been referred to the International Criminal Court, which confirmed they would continue their longstanding policy of "definitely not doing anything about that."