It’s an enduring stain on the reputation and standing of our country that nothing that Dick Cheney did as vice-president has been deemed a crime worthy of prosecution. As Charles Pierce pointed out yesterday, the war in Afghanistan alone has cost “2232 Americans killed, 20,000 local civilians killed, $10.1 million dollars an hour.” To have Dick Cheney free to lecture the country about the current president’s weakness is an abomination. The man has made the words “torture” and “America” synonymous, which is an enduring shame that cannot be blotted out. Dick Cheney is responsible for creating an explicit, operational guide to torture that manifested itself at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, as well as in our secret black site prisons in places like Thailand and Poland.
No one in the Bush administration was a more brazen liar about Saddam Hussein’s alleged role in the 9/11 attacks than Dick Cheney. And no one in their right mind thinks that the decision to invade Iraq made America a stronger or more respected nation.
Even though Cheney no longer serves in our government, he should be impeached to make sure he cannot “hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.”
It’s the least we should do to repair our pride.
As a writer, I try to avoid the passive voice whenever possible.
“… nothing that Dick Cheney did as vice-president has been deemed a crime worthy of prosecution.”
Cheney is indeed the Godfather of today’s criminal GOoP party. Virtually every act of executive lawbreaking under Bushco (that we know about) can be traced to the Godfather and his VP office.
His role in the (still ongoing) Afghanistan fiasco is somewhat less direct than his usual crimes, where he simply advocated direct lawbreaking. The invasion of Afghanistan, whatever one may have thought of it, was the result of a very large consensus within the country and Congress that the Taliban had to go, and I don’t think there was a vote in Congress against the operation.
But the massive incompetence with which it was carried out, including the amazing decision to make no attempt whatever to use US troops to try to bag bin Ladin at Tora Bora, when US forces had pocketed the largest collection of al qaeda they would ever encounter, is extremely mysterious and frankly inexplicable—and that’s why we need to know how the Godfather was involved.
What exactly would have happened to the Bushco War of Terra had bin ladin been caught or killed in late 2001? How does the Iraq caper go forward? Why do we have Junya soon blathering that he “doesn’t think about Osmama” anymore? Catching Osmama deflates the whole Cheney/PNAC plan, and (conveniently) we didn’t even try to do it at Tora Bora, though we had excellent intelligence he was trapped there, which was later confirmed to be accurate.
Of course, Cheney’s known influence on Afghanistan was the (mis)direction of Pentagon resources away from that country (there was a war on, BTW) and over to the planning for Bushco’s liberation of Iraq’s Oil from Saddam. The principal theater literally was starved of resources by Jan 02! The focus shifted to the illegal invasion of Iraq and its oil, and the ultimate result was the re-invigoration of the Taliban, and our ultimate loss in what is now our longest war.
The world we live in was largely made by this political criminal, from the revitalization of torture, to the Repub-hyped debt and deficits, from the explosion of the NSA, to the endless parade of disabled vets and the massive costs they impose on the economy. That the Godfather resides at his ease, yapping for the teevee and Noise Machine, with no demand that he even explain his serial lawbreaking and almost inconceivable poor judgment in every area he touched, is a very sure sign of the accelerating degeneration of the nation. We are Cheney’s Nation.
Died in Afghanistan fighting the Bush-Cheney war of attrition against
Al QaedaTaliban forces.Ever since the decision by President Jimmy Carter and his National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski chose to arm the Saudi jihadists fighters against the Soviet invasion army, the blow-back has caused havoc in the AfPak region as well as in the US, Europe and across the globe. The flow of millions of guns into the region has haunted its masters ever since. The Jihadists have become mercenaries of death used by the West and Saudi Arabia in Bosnia, Libya and Syria.
Just as Bush-Cheney relied on local militia to “find” Osama Bin Laden in Tora Bora, the U.S. has been double-crossed by Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Gulf States repeatedly. Pakistan has become a failed state and the US intervention has just made it worse.
I hope President Obama has learned his lessons after six years of failure by following neocon foreign policy. His commencement speech at West Point could be a new begin of non-intervention of a uni-polar world power. Indeed, Europe has diminished its military potential because of the economic union with former enemy states, which offers the best chance for no more war and a lasting peace. The planet has been put at risk with increased over-population depleting earth’s resources and damage to the ecology to sustain life as we know it. We have become our own worst enemy and need to focus on a very different battle for survival for our children and grandchildren. The promising generation of the baby boomers after WWII has been a total failure.
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Christopher was the beau ideal of the public intellectual (Vanity Fair)
Still, the global leaders will meet at the next Bilderberg Conference, sixty years of secrecy to maintain corporate and military power as a supreme hand taking away wealth from the masses.
○ Retinger and the Prince founders of the first Bilderberg Conference
○ The Dutch Prince and the Lockheed Affair [Bribery]
○ Bilderberg: The Open Conspiracy
He’s speaking to the 19% of right-wing dead-enders that think Cheney is great. And is free to do so and continue poisoning the public space because he’s never had any opposition with the courage to take him down.
It was your president’s choice…to be more accurate, it was the choice of the PermaGov interests that financed his campaign…not to go after Cheney and the rest of the Blood For Oil profiteers.
Why?
“For the good of the country” is the usual copout…an idea that also powered Al Gore’s craven surrender to the 2000 election theft that originally resulted in bringing to power Cheney and his allies.
Is a bought-and-sold judge who exonerates a proven criminal any less guilty than the criminal who bought the verdict?
I think not.
You?
AG
Impeached hell, he should stand in the Hague to answer for his crimes against humanity, along with Dubya, Rumsfeld, and most of their inner circle.
Former Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke: Bush Committed War Crimes | Democracy Now!
He cain’t help hisself. One a Mayberry Machiavelli, always a Mayberry Machiavelli.