There’s a book out called “Angler” about the Vice Presidency of Dick Cheney and anyone interested in the present day war of ideas between the banished Republican “neocons” and the so-called “progressives” led by President Obama should read this book. Apparently, not only are the right wing – what I call – “nutjobs” led by Rush Limbaugh – you know, the guy who has had three failed marriages, who was implicated in a sex scandal in the Caribbean when he was caught with unprescribed Viagra pills (the rumors of that trip are very unsettling – if you’re reading this I’ll let you google Rush Limbaugh, Caribbean and decide for yourself what he was doing), the guy who was addicted to prescription pain pills, and the guy who apparently speaks for the party of “family values,” – but these guys have brought out Dick Cheney to try to vindicate the past eight years AGAIN! I really wish someone would get on with the investigation of the Bush administration so I wouldn’t have to listen to Cheney any more – he keeps popping up as the only one, evidently, who can defend the Bush/Cheney administration with a straight face. If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you’ve no doubt heard me point out how people who are pathological liars eventually start to believe their own lies. CHENEY FALLS INTO THAT CAMP.
What these guys are doing is spreading so-called “talking points” in a brazen attempt to persuade the American people that all the trouble we are in is the result of two months of President Obama’s administration. Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m not happy with everything Obama is choosing to do, but I guarantee you it is a darned sight better than anything the Republicans have come up with in the past or are suggesting in the present (actually, what they’re suggesting in the present is exactly what got us into the mess we’re in – the same “failed policies” they crammed down our throats in the past). The reason I’ve been such a persistent proponent of prosecuting Bush/Cheney et al for all the legal transgressions committed under their watch is for exactly the reasons we are seeing – in fact, this Republican “campaign” is happening quite a bit sooner than I had anticipated. They are starting their “pushback” way ahead of schedule. I think Cheney knows that he is on the hot seat, so to speak, and the only way this guy knows how to go about things is very aggressively. And the Democrats better pick up on this, or we’ll be writing about these same “transgressions” again, and a lot sooner than I had even imagined.
While I believe Cheney is a criminal of the nature of an organized crime boss, I have to give him credit for being gutsy and fearless. He believes in striking first – and he is definitely on the attack. Now, my TV isn’t working presently (makes my wife happy) so I’m only catching snipits of what’s going on this past week, but the few snipits I’ve managed to listen to are alarming to say the least. Cheney is on the prowl and, I believe, the Democrats are making a HUGE mistake if they don’t hammer him at every opportunity. Some of the things I’ve heard him say in the past week: First – he’s still stating the claim that the Bush/Cheney administration “kept us safe after 9/11” – and he’s claiming that President Obama is making us “less safe” or words to that effect. Well, the absurdity of both of those statements should be such that they don’t even deserve a response, but I guarantee you there had better be a strong Democratic response. Unfortunately Cheney has one thing right, the Democrats show themselves as whimps more often than not – especially when dealing with him and his boss, George W Bush. But, back to his argument, for them to continually claim that they “kept us safe after 9/11” just really #*&%*# me off! Where were they before 9/11? There is ample evidence that they were sleeping at the switch prior to 9/11 and it never should have happened. Both Bush and Cheney ignored warning after warning and the way they set up the Defense department with Donald Rumsfeld led to a lack of cohesion between the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI – allowing the terrorists who ultimately took down the trade center to roam freely in this country for over a year (read “Shadow Factory” by James Bamford if you want to really understand what they did “to keep us safe”) when they should have been stopped.
And to claim that we are “more safe” because of their decisions is equally if not more absurd. Every expert that I’ve read – and there are many – says that al Qaeda is stronger today than it was right after 9/11 specifically because of the decisions of the Bush administration. For example, one of Osama bin Laden’s goals in attacking the World Trade Center was to get the United States “bogged down” in an endless war in Afganistan – with the ultimate objective of bankrupting our country just as they had bankrupted The (former) Soviet Union in the mid to late eighties. Well, Bush and Cheney did them one better – instead of capturing or killing bin Laden when they had him on the run in Afganistan during the early months of 2002 they decided to get “bogged down” in Iraq – thereby fulfilling bin Laden’s plan, only in a much better way for him. Bin Laden was able to escape and reconstitute his forces in Pakistan (which is now far more dangerous than any other place in the world – in fact if a huge disaster comes from all of these blunders by Bush/Cheney I believe it is likely to come from Pakistan and the terrorist forces embedded there) and the US is bankrupting itself in Iraq in an endless war (another interesting point; Bush/Cheney actually paid the Pakistani government something approaching 10 Billion dollars in aid while it was allowing bin Laden and the Taliban to roam freely in its country). In fact, President Obama has already said that our troops will be in Iraq for 15 months longer than he “promised” in his campaign, and I fully expect them to be there indefinitely (bin Laden couldn’t ask for more – and this is one area where I disagree with Obama – I say get ALL the troops out of Iraq in the timeframe you promised – but that’s a subject for another day).
Our presence in Iraq where our troops and their support “contractors” have committed numerous atrocities while suposedly defending Iraqi’s has been a great recruiting tool for bin Laden and other terrorist cells around the world. So, to suggest we were “safer” under their watch is so absurd that I hope the Democrats out there with a little spine “call” Cheney on this. And if it’s true that Cheney was running a “Death Squad” out of the Vice President’s office which led to assasinations in numerous countries (the reports I heard placed the number at 9 or 10 different soveriegn nations) – as has been alleged by Si Hersch – then I guess Cheney believes that will make us safer – I’m actually feeling when the truth comes out about the US killing world leaders there are going to be a lot of really MAD people in these other countries. WE’RE PRETTY MUCH NOT SUPPOSED TO GO AROUND KILLING THE LEADERS OF OTHER COUNTRIES, EVEN IF WE DON’T AGREE WITH THEM. I mean, Dick Cheney shouldn’t even have the credibility to get his voice heard – of course that’s in a perfect world, and a perfect world doesn’t include FOX “News.”
Obviously, I could go on and on here – and I only heard a few things he said. A couple more that struck a bell with me. Cheney said something along the lines of “I love Rush Limbaugh” and I can’t remember the rest but it was a ringing endorsement of Rush. Maybe Rush really is the leader of the Republican party – as hard as that is for me to believe. I figured the Republicans were in a down time, but I just couldn’t imagine them being that stupid. However, I would be all for it. In fact, I would like to see Limbaugh run for President in 2012. I think the perfect Republican ticket would be Limbaugh/Palin – they would get 100% of the white supremicist/successionist vote in the country. The other thing Cheney said was that he felt the Bush administration was not at fault for the economic “meltdown” because they were so busy keeping us safe. When you study the history of the Iraq invasion and the occupation you wonder how they could say they were busy keeping us safe – because they didn’t really do anything. They just assumed everything would turn out OK, and while you won’t get them to admit it today, George and Dick were “licking their chops” over the prospect of controlling the second largest known oil reserve in the world. I’m sure they figured this would be the biggest heist job in the history of this planet. I guess they assumed that the Iraqi’s would be so happy to be rid of Saddam they would just give us their oil (remember the Bush/Cheney claims that the Iraqi oil would pay for the war? – which was going to cost only a few billion dollars! Ughh!)
These guys were idiots every step of the way – and now they are busy trying to make sure the history books reflect something far more reflective of what they want us to see than what is the truth. However, history books don’t work that way. I suppose the first “histories” of their administration are so negative they feel it’s important to kind of circle the wagons and defend themselves – in other words, they don’t want to leave it to the historians because the first installments don’t look at all like what they would like. In reality, they have come close to destroying the very fabric of this nation – and really as I read about what’s happening in the rest of the world, these guys (Bush/Cheney and their close associates) were infecting many other nations with their venom that is backfiring in one country after another. I have come to the conclusion their economic philosophy could be called exponential borrowing. They not only believed in borrowing to the hilt (and hiding as much of it as possible – like the accounting scandals of the 90’s) – but they leveraged the borrowing with the so-called credit-default swaps, etc. Borrowing money and gambling with it – over and over – creating this huge pile of paper wealth that was almost imaginary – REMEMBER, THESE ARE PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE THEIR OWN LIES – They probably believed this wealth was real. So now Cheney is trying to blame Obama for the economic crisis and convince the American public that our sitting President is making us “less safe” by adhering to the constitution and honoring our basic principles regarding human rights. Despite the fact the greatest tragedy in the history of this nation happened on his and his President’s watch – he wants us to believe that he kept us safer. Dick Cheney wants you and me to believe that his endorsement of warrantless wiretapping, his outing of a covert CIA agent, his lying us into a needless war, his part in ruining our economy (he was the one in the Bush administration who said “Ronald Reagan proved deficits don’t matter”), his part in running an alleged “Death Squad,” his endorsement of torture which led to Abu Ghraib and waterboarding, and him and his boss letting Osama bin Laden go – the very guy who masterminded the 9/11 attacks – has kept us safer. Well, if you believe Dick Cheney’s claims – I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you!