The Gall of Dick Cheney

JUNE 18, 2014

Charles M. Blow

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The situation in Iraq is truly worrisome, as militants threaten to tear the country asunder and disrupt the fragile, short-lived period absent all-out war there.

We have strategic interests in preventing Iraq from unraveling, not least of which is that we don’t need the country to become a haven for terrorists, particularly those who might see America as a target.

And of course, there is the uneasy subject of oil: Volatility in the region has already sent global oil prices soaring. On Wednesday, militants were said to have taken control of Iraq’s largest oil refinery.

We have to tread carefully here. There are no saints to be seen in this situation. Everyone’s hands are bloody. And, we don’t want to again get mired in a conflict in a country from which we have only recently extricated ourselves.

As we weigh our response, one of the last people who should say anything on the subject is a man who is partly responsible for the problem.

But former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was in the administration that deceived us into a nine-year war in Iraq, just can’t seem to keep his peace.

In an Op-Ed published with his daughter, Liz, in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, the Cheneys write:

“Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”

This, from the man who helped lead us into this trumped-up war, searching for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, a war in which some 4,500 members of the American military were killed, many thousands more injured, and that is running a tab of trillions of dollars.

During the lead-up to the war, Mr. Cheney said to Tim Russert: “I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.” Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Even if it were indeed rare to be “so wrong,” as Mr. Cheney puts it, he was vice president in an administration that was much more tragically wrong. His whole legacy is wrapped in wrong.

At one point in the article, the Cheneys state:

“Iraq is at risk of falling to a radical Islamic terror group and Mr. Obama is talking climate change. Terrorists take control of more territory and resources than ever before in history, and he goes golfing.”

Mr. Cheney must think that we have all forgotten the scene from “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Michael Moore’s 2004 documentary, in which President George W. Bush, brandishing a club on a golf course, looks into the camera and says,

“I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you.”

That is quickly followed by, “Now, watch this drive,” and a shot of Bush swinging at the ball.

In fact, on one of the rare occasions that Mr. Cheney was actually right, in 1994, he warned about the problems that would be created by deposing Saddam Hussein:

“Once you got to Iraq and took it over, and took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of eastern Iraq, the Iranians would like to claim, fought over for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire.”

That was quite prescient. And yet, the Bush administration pushed us into the Iraq war anyway, and the quagmire we now confront.

That’s why it’s so galling to read Mr. Cheney chastising this administration for its handling of the disaster that Mr. Cheney himself foresaw, but ignored.

I know that we as Americans have short attention spans, but most of us don’t suffer from amnesia. The Bush administration created this mess, and the Obama administration now has to clean it up.

The Cheneys wrote: “This president is willfully blind to the impact of his policies,” Mr. Cheney seemingly oblivious to the irony.

George W. Bush may well have been a disaster of a president (in a 2010 Siena College Research Institute survey, 238 presidential scholars ranked Bush among the five “worst ever” presidents in American history), but at least he has the dignity and grace — or shame and humility — to recede from public life with his family and his painting, and not chide and meddle with the current administration as it tries to right his wrong.

Mr. Cheney, meanwhile, is still trying to bend history toward an exoneration of his guilt and an expunging of his record. But history, on this, is stiff, and his record is written in blood.

I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me at chblow@nytimes.com.

Enabling The Illusion of Political Change: Bush, Obama, Brennan, Geithner, and Gates

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  (88 fans)by Michael Collins http://www.opednews.com/author/author3863.html

We're six years into the Obama administration and nothing much has changed concerning the most fundamental challenges facing the citizens of the United States.   Those challenges are:

• Reviving and reforming an economy that is rigged for only the very wealthiest interests;
• Ending the usurpation of individual rights by the national intelligence cabal; and
• Freeing the nation and the world from the endless insertion of U.S. intelligence and military operations throughout the world.

We have the same lousy economy with the same greedy interests in charge of the same too big to fail institutions making sure that they alone prosper.  Tax incentives and government supports are for the very few in the top 0.001%.  It is all about Wall Street at the expense of working people and Main Street.
Thanks to Snowden's revelations, we know that domestic spying capabilities and activities have expanded considerably since the Bush administration.
While the death count is lower, U.S. sponsored subversive activities and military interventions overseas are a constant.  The destruction of Libya under the guise of humanitarian relief, the open source conspiracy to destroy Syria, and the fantasies about the Ukraine having anything to do with our national security are just three of many morally repugnant, profit-generating projections of power around the world conducted in our name.  PNAC prevails.
Why and How Did this Happen?
There's an obvious answer to the why part of the question.  Those very few individuals and interests in control are not willing to share any of their wealth.

Even if they were willing to share, their fear of retribution for their massive crimes against the people is so profound; the super elite seek safety through full spectrum surveillance and control.  They see their clumsy efforts as somehow controlling the populace and offering protection from the imagined wrath of their victims.
Endless war in Asia and serious subterfuge everywhere else provides a level of public distraction that those in charge hope will substitute reactive hysteria for a critical examination of the grand scam that the power elite use as the basis for their wealth and power.
How the seamless transition of policies between Bush and Obama occurred is a bit subtler although fairly simple in principle.  You change parties, creating the illusion of change.  At the same time, keep key figures from the previous administration are retained to sustain old policies under the mantle of a new party.
Bush becomes Obama on a substantive level while social issues are used to make people think that there's a real difference between the parties.  For example, the Obama administration is supportive of gay rights issues but both gay Americans and those who oppose gay rights all suffer the consequences of a locked down economy in which resources are funneled to the super wealthy, domestic spying, and foreign adventures.
The careful placement high-level Bush operatives and a Wall Street shill in charge of critical elements of the government assured the preservation of right wing, neoconservative economic and foreign policies.  Nothing of substance changed in 2008 or 2012.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, the liberal hope, as candidate Obama  presented himself, indicated that he'd like Bush Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to remain in that position for the Obama administration.  Gates said yes.  It took five years to get out of Iraq, we're still in Afghanistan, and the policy of no defense system left behind is still in place bleeding billions from the Treasury every single day.  Mission accomplished.
Just before the 2008 inauguration, president elect Obama announced his choice of Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary.  Geithner was head of the powerful New York Federal Reserve Bank during the critical period leading up to the 2008 financial collapse.  As one of Wall Street's chief regulators, he told the world, it's all good, no problems here.  We know how that worked out.  Dutifully, Geithner assumed the role of Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and carried out the biggest bailout in the history of the world.   Despite the efforts of honest bankers and others like Elizabeth Warren, the wholesale looting of the Treasury by Wall Street continued.  Socialism for the extremely rich and survival of the fittest for the rest of us is the motto.
The expansion of domestic spying and continuation of secret operations around the world shows that a nominal Democrat can do just as much damage to the Constitution as a right wing Republican.   A carryover from the Bush administration, John Brennan, made happen.  Brennan latest work for Obama is Director of the CIA.  As Robert Parry pointed out in a recent article, Brennan was at the center of 1984 like activities under Bush.  Under Brennan, the CIA stands accused of cyber sabotage against congressional committees to block, of all things, an investigation into CIA prisoner abused by the Bush administration.
As the saying goes, people can have differing beliefs but not different facts.  The roles and products of Obama, Brennan, Geithner, and Gates are indisputable facts.
There is no Democratic Party, no Republican Party.  There's just The Money Party.  It's the real power behind the theatrics referred to as a two party political system.   The party has no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests; preserved at any cost as long as the costs and suffering are borne by the people.