Rep. Walter “Freedom Fries” Jones (R-NC) says that Dick Cheney is going to hell for his role in leading this country into war in Iraq. One of the commenters in that article’s thread scoffs at the notion. “Sending Cheney to hell would be like sending Limbaugh to a buffet.”
It does seem like Cheney is possessed by a demon and that he positively revels in his own capacity to spread destruction and misery. But why do we condemn Cheney so easily and not his codpiece-sporting cohort?
Lots of people seem to assume that Bush was too much of a well-meaning doofus to mean to be a horrible person or horrible President, but was simply caught up in Cheney’s malevolent scheming. Hell, I sometimes catch myself thinking that way.
I actually agree with them on this one. By all accounts Bush was a disaster, but he honestly thought he was doing the right thing. Cheney on the other hand was creating military units outside of the Chain of command directly reporting to the executive (ie, himself), pushing torture, it was his hacks who faked the WMD evidence, outed Plame, and his companies that profited off the war.
Outside of disasterous economic policy (which was nothing more than Reagan 2.0, Reagan harder) Bush wasn’t involved in much… Cheney on the other hand… well… he was.
Also anybody who knew any of that group personally, the stories are all the same outside of rare loyalists. Bush meant well and was earnest but had no clue what he was doing or what was going on at times. Rummy was a technocratic fool who screwed up the war with devastatingly bad management, Powell was duped by people he knew where scheemers, and Cheney actually was a god damn comic book villain.
That all sounds about right to me.
Hell for Cheney? He’ d fit right in quite comfortably.
True hell for him might be to have hang with and participate with people who do generous and caring things for others and fully accept accountabilities for the consequences of their actions.
“He’ d fit right in quite comfortably.”
No doubt he’d be running the place in a week or two.
I imagine that in no time, Halliburton would be supplying the brimstone for Mephistopheles on a sole source contract.
I actually think Bush is a sociopath in his own right, and there are many indications, such as lack of empathy or remorse and inability to take responsibility for his actions. It’s just that compared to Cheney, he comes off as rather wholesome and normal.
What do you want to do tonight, Brain?
The same thing we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!
Cheney is a sociopath, with a personality disorder. It is a common problem with our “conservative” white males, though some are more afflicted than others. Many neocon males would happily have created and spread the same lies that Cheney did in order to invade Iraq and liberate its oil from Saddam.
As for the question, I blamed Cheney more than Bush, because the reporting on the criminal Bushco administration indicated that almost every illegal scheme originated in the Veep’s office. It seemed clear Cheney was the brains of the operation, and was viewed as the brains by the rest of the crime family. Doesn’t that mean he should be the more reviled?
Cheney came up with the crimes, Juhya acceded to them.
It came out that Bush The Elder was the one who forced Powell on them in the hopes that he could deal with Cheney (who Bush 1.0 never liked or trusted), and then after the fiasco forced Gates in there to try and salvage something of the mess.
A full recounting of the extent of HW’s involvement in his son’s administration will be interesting to read someday. Probably won’t happen until after he passes.
Sorry — the buck stops with the POTUS. Why anyone would overlook that GWB was as eager to wage a war in Iraq as Cheney was mystifies me.
Because GWB is a moron, a dupe. Between them both they encapsulate the problem with today’s GOP. Their ilk falls into two camps – ignorant and/or dishonest with the latter leading the former.
2/16/00 PBS interview:
Not the only statement he made during that election year wrt his position on Iraq. He said enough that one of my most passionate arguments for voting against him and for Gore is that if elected, GWB would take us back to war against Iraq. As I’m neither a mind-reader nor soothsayer and at that time wasn’t informed about the PNAC, I was simply illuminating what the man had said. (Not that a few years later some of those that had heard my argument and voted for GWB anyway didn’t conclude that I was a witch.)
February 2000 PBS interview with GWB.
Thanks for this reminder on the illegal Iraq invasion and Bush’s personal pre-election promise to undertake it. And didn’t the above Repub worthy, Freedom Fries Jones, vote for it?
But I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t (also) condemn W, he was an appalling moral and intellectual disgrace as prez, was totally on board with the vast network of lawbreaking that his admin engaged in and thus also a criminal. He wrecked the country and that’s what history will conclude.
But liberating Iraq’s oil from Saddam was just one of a dizzying array of executive crimes (torture, illegal surveillance, etc), and it now appears that Cheney (and his henchman Addington) was the instigator of most of them. He knew he was behind the crimes and undertook conscious efforts to leave no records and likely destroy those that existed. I’d guess that’s what Cheney spent his last year in office doing–another crime, BTW.
So I (slightly) condemn Cheney above Bush and strongly condemn both. But Cheney seems to have provided most of the monstrous criminal energy of the regime and always pushed for the most extreme and outrageous options available. Perhaps the future histories will reveal the full extent of this perverted rogue presidency and who exactly was its evil genius.
Well, there were “good” Germans that didn’t believe Mr. Hitler knew about the concentration camps and didn’t hold him responsible for the horror.
GWB was the “delegator-in-chief,” and Cheney followed his orders.
Don’t hate the puppet, hate the puppetmaster
Don’t hate Alfred E. Neuman, hate Mum-Rah
Can’t blame Mortimer Snerd for things Edgar Bergen said.
He’s enjoying life, spilling chemicals in Colorado and “earning” big bucks by drilling for oil on the Golan Heights and shale exploration in the West Bank.
Hell, meh. Doesn’t exist. Cheney should be in a federal prison. Barring that, a trial and conviction for war crimes at the Hague would be fitting. I’m hoping he takes a vacation through Brussels someday.
Bush had the title of Don, but his consigliere ran everything.
Some of us don’t dare admit that we elected a fool, and most of us don’t want to admit that we let the whole damn fiasco happen.
Me, I’d rather blame Al Gore for refusing to fight it.
Maybe now we’ll keep a closer watch on events in DC.
I blame President Clinton for destroying the Democratic Party during his time in office but it really doesn’t matter who we blame because like you said we’re all culpable (at least those of use who were old enough to vote in 2000 & 2004).
Hey! I voted for Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 (holding my nose). I am not to blame for Bush.
more like the collective “we” rather than those of us here 🙂
OK
Al Gore did fight. All the way to the Supreme Court. As he has readily said since then, the only step left for him at that point was to call for a revolution.
Let’s also not overlook the fact that at the end of the 2000 election, Gore was broke and GWB had a few million left along with plenty of wealthy friends ready, willing, and able to pony up whatever it took to fight the FL results. GWB’s legal team immediately went to federal court while Gore’s team was left dicking around in FL with recounts. The latter spent too much time on the trees and too little on the forest.
I blame Ralph Nader. Yeah, sure Ralph, both parties are the same.
Well, since observors report that Bush is now passing the time doing nude self portraits I’m thinking the real Bush has at long last found his calling. May Laura guard his door and not loose him upon America again. And may Jeb find a way to campaign without him.
Bush was everyone’s puppet and happily played the part for anyone who wanted to hold his strings. Cheney is so obsessive I can’t think of any other explanation other than he is trying to right the original illness of power in his life. Nixon.
Because, as I said before, in my mind I imagine Bush as a hapless child with no friends.
I haven’t forgotten bush for an instant(unfortunately).
No matter how powerful Cheney was, bush was to me the face of a rather feral or cunningly evil person hiding behind his rather ‘doofus’ image. To what extent he let cheney run things or we may never know for sure but I haven’t forgotten about bush at all. He’s just evil in a different way.
Pretty interesting comment coming from a sitting Republican congressman.
Cheney is a war criminal under international law, and an outright criminal under U.S. law. I have little doubt he still is subject prosecution under the Federal Anti-Torture Act, 8 USC § 2340A – Torture, which provides:
(a) Offense.– Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
(b) Jurisdiction.– There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if–
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.
(c) Conspiracy.– A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.
The enduring disgrace of the Bush era, and frankly, of the Obama Administration, is that no one has been prosecuted for violating this statute (among many others). Not Cheney, not Bush, not Rumsfeld, not Addington, not John Yoo, not any of the conspirators who actively engineered and promoted an illegal war of aggression against a state that, bad as it was, had not attacked us; and then made torture official U.S. policy. Only when Americans begin to acknowledge that our highest government officials were involved in grave criminal behavior and human rights violations will we begin to recover our national honor and reputation.
Having Cheney in our recent history is like a German having Himmler as a legacy in 1946. It takes a long time for a nation to recover after someone like that holds the reins of power. At least that’s how I see it.
exactly. And the same observation goes for KKKarl Rover, the Goebbels of the Bushco regime, who remains one of the respected leaders of the “conservative” movement, his ugly face yapping on teevees across the nation every day.
We refuse even to face this incontrovertible fact as a nation, another irrefutable sign of our national collapse.
Can we guess what sentiment at Camp Lejeune is of Dick Cheney?
OT: Looks like Robin Kelly smoked her opponents in the IL-2 primary. She was the pro-gun control candidate. It’s pretty big news.
Cheney may be going to hell but he’s not going to jail.