A long overdue apology

Blinded by Wrath

Dear President Bush,

I write to you today to apologize for wronging you in my thoughts for many years. For excoriating you with the most bitter and hateful thoughts I could muster. I apologize for hating you because, as I saw it, you invoked war and destruction on innocent people.

Eventually, I came to understand that whatever sins I may have attributed to you live within me as well. That, by succumbing to Wrath, I was your brother in folly.

And thus, we being brothers, I can no longer hate you.

God is great.

Please forgive me, my brother.

Sincerely,
Dade Ross Cariaga

Humbled by life

Junior Bush: Still cashin' in on Iraq

How sweet it is, eh, Junior?

Junior Bush. No matter what the Iraq War did to the rest of us, for him it continues to yield lucre.

Yesterday came the revelation that the most vacuous and unenlightened man to occupy the White House in my lifetime charged $100K to speak at a charity fund-raiser for wounded war veterans.

That's right. In 2012, Junior Bush charged the Helping a Hero charity $100K for the honor of hearing his folksy, homespun adages and idiotic jokes. (Helping a Hero raises funds to build homes adapted to accommodate veterans with missing limbs or other severe injuries.)

Meredith Iler, the charity's former chairwoman gushed, "It was great because [Bush] reduced his normal fee of $250K down to $100K."

That was big of him, eh? (And what a sorry display of Battered Wife Syndrome by Ms. Iler: being grateful that your abuser held back, that he didn't abuse you quite as much as he might have.)

Former marine Eddie Wright, who lost both his hands while serving in Iraq, had a different take on it: "For [Bush] to be paid to raise money for veterans that were wounded in combat under his orders, I don't think that's right."

Although he worded it a little more temperately than I might have, I agree with Mr. Wright.

But is anyone surprised at this revelation? If you are, then you haven't been paying attention.

Remember, even while he was still "president," Junior was rubbing his palms together in anticipation of all that money he'd earn in speaking fees when he retired. Here's the quote from 2007:

"I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch," [Bush] says. He also has big plans for making money. "I'll give some speeches, to replenish the ol' coffers," says Mr Bush, who is already estimated to be worth $20m. "I don't know what my dad gets - it's more than 50-75 [thousand dollars a speech], and "Clinton's making a lot of money".

Congratulations, Junior! Your dream is coming true!

There are many people in this country, nearly all of whom have net worths less than Junior's $20 million, who donate their time and money to help war veterans. But, for Junior, you know business is business. Can't let sentiment get in the way.

Don't get me wrong. It isn't that the man has no regrets. He has a great many regrets that will haunt him to the end of his days. At least, I believe he does. It's just that his regrets are not the regrets that one might expect.

I've said it before many times and this latest effrontery is just more proof.  That flaccid, hopeless little man who brought unprecedented ruin on this country is an out-of-touch cake-eater, a thoughtless, shallow simpleton, a sociopath.

It must be a terrible revelation for those who, at this late date, still believed in him.

Message from a dying Iraq veteran

Yuck it up, pigs

It's been 10 years since Junior Bush and his filthy band of blackguards and hypocrites launched their war of greed and aggression.

Tomas Young, an Iraq War veteran who has decided to end his life (he receives medicine and nourishment from a feeding tube) has penned a final letter to the evil cadre that even now enjoys the lucre it gained from its crimes at the price of his life.

What do you want to bet that no one, not a single one of them, has enough courage to watch this video all the way through?

Here's the text of the letter:

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of [those who bear those wounds. I am one of those.] I am one of the gravely injured. I [am] paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost parents, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have [done, witnessed, endured] in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, [and your privilege and power] cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the [9/11] attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the [U.S.] I did not join the Army to 'liberate' Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called 'democracy' in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the [Army] to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the biggest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I have, like many other [wounded and many other] disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical [disabilities and] wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your [own] brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend our country I love—the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

The hopes that Tomas expresses at the end of his letter are heart-breaking. It's as if he believes those scoundrels still have souls to salvage.

They've earned my undying hatred. All of them. Junior, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and all the rest. Dirty people. Human filth.

Rachel Maddow reopens the lies of Iraq

Rachel Maddow's new documentary, which first aired on MSNBC on Monday night (and which you can view here), recounts the story of how the Bush administration fabricated its case for war against Iraq. And although I can already hear right-wing apologists complaining about the "inherent bias" of MSNBC and Rachel Maddow, the case she presents is irrefutable.

In case you missed it, I provide this succinct summary: the Bush administration lied to start a war that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.

For anyone who was paying attention back then, at the beginning of the last decade, this is nothing new. Rachel's documentary covers how the administration promoted lie after lie: the Prague meeting between Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officers that Dick Cheney promoted on Meet the Press, Condi Rice's aluminum tubes, Curveball, the Iraqi informer with his own agenda.

Rachel doesn't go into motives in her documentary. But it's easy enough for me to speculate. Dick Cheney, Junior, Condi, Rummy, and all the bit players (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, and more) --each had his own motives, not one of which was "serving the public interest."

Watching this documentary reignited the burning hatred (and, yes, I use that word carefully) I hold for these irredeemable scoundrels.

So long as these people go unpunished (and I've given up any hope of justice) our high-minded egalitarian ideals are just chaff in the wind. Any fool who's managed to stay alive long enough knows that the notion of human justice is a childish fantasy.

I don't know. Maybe that's just how it is. Maybe the power hierarchy, where some people operate above the law, is an inherent part of civilization.

Thank you, Rachel Maddow, for compiling a comprehensive account of the lies and deception that the Bush administration used to fool the people of the United States. I knew back then, and your documentary was a painful reminder: we'll be paying for their villainy for the rest of my life.

Cheney's new heart

Vulture

This is not my favorite post to write.  Anything touching on that villain is, by definition, corrupted and hateful.  But he's earned it.  And I'm not man enough to let it pass.

Dick Cheney got a new heart.  The Los Angeles Times reported on March 24 that  “Former Vice President Dick Cheney had a heart transplant Saturday morning after waiting more than 20 months on a transplant list, his office reported.  Cheney, 71, … has battled a lifetime of heart disease.”

"A lifetime of heart disease" is one way to put it.  Cheney's had 5 heart attacks in his life (so far).  The first occurred when he was 37 years old.  At the beginning of Junior's tenure in the White House, Cheney actually had more heart attacks under his belt than Junior had countries visited. 

The LA Times reports that Cheney waited more than 20 months on a transplant list and that --hey, it's not unusual for a 71 year old man to receive a new heart.  Sure, most heart transplant recipients are in the 50 to 64 age range, but you can't hold it against Cheney if he got lucky, eh?  I'm sure no undue influence was exerted.  (Just like back in the 60s, when Cheney finagled 5 military deferments to avoid combat duty in Vietnam (even though he supported the war)).     

But never mind.  All we need to know about Cheney is revealed in these facts^*:

1. With Dick Cheney as its CEO, Halliburton was on the verge of bankruptcy.
2. George W. Bush appointed Dick Cheney to head up an exploratory committee to find a running mate.
3. The committee chose Dick Cheney.
4. Upon assuming office, Dick Cheney convened an energy policy task force, composed exclusively of energy extraction executives.
5. Shortly thereafter, White House rhetoric was aimed at Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
6. Our country was attacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001.
7. Key members of the Bush administration (including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, and Rice) began advocating an invasion of Iraq to "protect" the United States from terrorist attacks.
8. George W. Bush ordered the United States military to invade Iraq in March, 2003.   
9. Halliburton was awarded multi-billion dollar federal contracts without being subjected to competitive bidding. 
10. Dick Cheney (who was still being awarded a deferred salary from Halliburton) and his cohorts got rich(er).

^*excerpted from an earlier post, Kleptocracy in action

But apparently getting filthy rich by lying us into war isn't enough.  Cheney's contempt for his fellow man is so all-consuming that even now, after being responsible for untold death and suffering (all in the interest of the Cheney fiefdom), he has taken to cannibalizing the body parts of his victims.

Appalling?  Certainly.  Suprising?  Not really.  He's always viewed us as a resource at his disposal.

Straight out of a Cormac McCarthy novel.  What a beast!

No fondue for Junior

Well, Americans, I must say, for all our red, white, and blue pride, we don't seem to have much moral courage in this country.  At least, when compared to the Egyptians, who are still taking to the streets, shutting down commerce, refusing to accept the status quo, demanding change.  Or even, perhaps, compared to the Americans of yesteryear, my parents' generation, who marched in the streets to demand an end to an illegal war and to racial discrimination and segregation in Dixie.

And now, here are the Swiss, showing us up again, by threatening to bring charges against the man who most typifies American ignorance and anti-intellectualism, Junior Bush.

According to Reuters:

Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod's annual dinner on February 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.


Criminal complaints against Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials say, and several human rights groups signaled that they were poised to take further legal action this week.

Color me grateful. If it weren't for human rights activists in Switzerland (which has her own problems vis-a-vis human rights), Junior Bush might be happily jetting around Europe, clowning like an idiot, telling dirty jokes, and remaining blithely ignorant of the hatred directed at him by so much of the world.

I'm grateful to Swiss activists for having the courage and the fortitude to take these steps.  And my biggest single complaint against President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid is that they lacked the courage to bring justice to an obvious war criminal and his cartel when they had the chance in 2008. 

It is a bitter lesson of life that evil will often go unpunished.  At least from the outward human perspective.  As scripture states, in Matthew 5:45:

...he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

But I do believe that Junior, in his half-aware, blithe ignorance, still experiences pangs of guilt and unhappiness.  I do believe that, in his most private moments, he regrets that he has failed so miserably, not just as a president or a leader, but as a man, as a human being.

And, Switzerland, thanks for reminding him.  Junior, you are not forgiven.

Junior writes a book!

Junior wrote a book!  Everybody hurry down to Walmart and snag one of those big Crayola Crayon Classic Color-Packs before they sell out! 

Right on the heels of the Big Red Wave (which we utterly rejected in Oregon) Junior Bush has decided to emerge from his Texas sh*thole to peddle a brand new book.  I'm afraid I won't be reading it myself; I've been awfully busy channel surfing and contemplating cob webs.  But his pugnacious, irascible remarks announcing the book in the various media serve to confirm my opinion that Junior is a deluded, out-of-touch plutocrat.

Here're a couple nuggets I've gleaned from the "interwebs:"

• Junior's feelings were hurt when Kanye West, in the midst of the post-Katrina disaster in New Orleans, suggested that "George Bush doesn't care about black people."  Junior says it was an "all-time low" in his "presidency." Not 911, mind you; nor when David Kay released his report confirming that the WMD ruse in Iraq was a lie; nor when the national financial system teetered on collapse.  The all-time low of Junior's presidency (according to himself) was when Kanye West hurt his feelings by saying something mean about him.  (Well, at the very least, the man is capable of regret.)
  
  
• When Junior was a teenager, he said his mother showed him a fetus she had just miscarried. The Calgary Herald reports:  "'I never expected to see the remains of the fetus, which she had saved in a jar to bring to the hospital,' Bush writes. The former U.S. president told [Matt] Lauer 'there's no question that affected me, a philosophy that we should respect life.'"  Respect life, President War-monger?  How utterly insulting to the thousands who have died in his wars!
  
  
• Junior claims that Big Dick offered to withdraw from the presidential ticket in 2004.  According to the New York Times:  “The president resented the caricature that Mr. Cheney really controlled the White House. 'Accepting Dick’s offer [to resign] would be one way to demonstrate that I was in charge,' he writes."  I suppose it is plausible that arch-villain Cheney might have made that offer.  But I have to imagine he made it while hunching foward, cocking an eyebrow and affixing Junior with his daunting Dark Lord gaze:  "George, if you want, I'll leave...  If you're sure that's what you want..."   Who can blame Junior if he chickened out? 
  
  
• Four years later, as he prepared to leave the White House, Junior says he was worried that the rift between himself and Cheney over a pardon for convicted felon Scooter Libby might poison their sacred friendship.  But now, according to the Raw Story, Junior is "'... pleased to report we are [still friends]. I was a little concerned at one time.'"  Let's see what Big Dick says about it in his upcoming memoirs.

God knows who are the benighted souls that might imagine Junior's whining and sniveling would make for good reading. But the book is hitting the shelves today.

A sniveling punk.  A petty, thoughtless man.

Scooter Libby whines

Surreal.  That's all I can say.  Check this exchange between between Fox News' Monica Crowley and convicted perjurer and former Chief of Staff to Dick the Beast, Scooter Libby:

CROWLEY: Scooter, a final question for you. That absurd political witch-hunt that you were subjected to during the Valerie Plame case, your sentence was commuted, but you never did, in fact, get a pardon. Are you still hopeful that eventually you might get a pardon?

LIBBY: […] I learned two things from this. One is the world’s not just. And the second is it doesn’t do a lot of good to whine.

CROWLEY: You’re a class act, Scooter Libby. And had Monica Crowley been president of the United States, you would have gotten that pardon.

Go here to see the video.

Monica Crowley calls the investigation into the "outing" of a CIA operative who was working to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, an "absurd political witch-hunt."  But, of course, that assessment is belied by the fact that Scooter Libby was convicted by a jury of his peers on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Undeterred, Crowley goes on to gush:  "You're a class act, Scooter Libby.  And had Monica Crowley been president of the United States, you would have gotten that pardon."  Just goes to show:  Junior Bush may be the worst president in the history of this nation, but we've still got some digging before we hit the bottom of the barrel.

And as for Scooter:  Do you mean to say, Scooter, that it took you 60 years to figure out that the world is unjust?  Slow learner, apparently.  I had that figured out when Junior and Dick started their filthy war (with your help) and got away with it.

But your conviction seems to stick in Old Man Dick's craw, judging from the way he tried to bully Junior into granting you a pardon.  That's about as much justice as I suppose we can expect in this world.

As Cardinal Altamirano said, in Roland Joffé's classic 1986 flick, The Mission, "... thus have we made the world... Thus have I made it."

There might be a lesson in there for you somewhere, Scooter.  But I doubt you could find it.

Halliburton: Cheney fiefdom

A villain for the Ages

This, I assert:

History has few such villains as Richard B. (Dick) Cheney.  The man is a perfect beast.  A villain to rival even Iago in pure malevolence of heart.  Dick Cheney is a man who saw an opportunity for immortality, an opportunity to make his historical mark on the world, to establish an empire of his own.  And he seized it.

In some circles that passes for greatness. 

Hearken back to Cheney's time as Secretary of Defense in Bush the Elder's administration.  Like some death-obsessed necromancer, wandering the dark passages of a medieval dungeon, Cheney learned many secrets in that time.  He learned how government contracts were written, about how they were awarded, about how they were overseen and managed.  Whether he came into the job with evil in his heart, or whether he succumbed to the temptation of the unimaginable wealth of the Federal Treasury is unclear.  But what is clear to me is that Cheney viewed the Federal Treasury as an oilman would an oil field.

There were incredible riches to be had.  It was just a matter of extraction.

When he left the Defense Department, Dick Cheney hooked up with his friends in the resource-extraction industry, no doubt leveraging the knowledge he had gained as a "public servant" and arranged to be named CEO of Halliburton. 

When Junior Bush needed a running-mate for the national election of 2000, Cheney saw that if he had the courage to act, he had the power to shape history, to brand it with the Cheney iron, the way he no doubt watched ranchers brand their cattle in Wyoming.   

It is well-documented how Cheney manufactured a case for war with Iraq and that, as a result of the invasion, Halliburton was awarded military contracts for billions of dollars without being subject to competitive bids. It is well-documented that Cheney, as sitting vice-president, was being awarded a salary en absentia from Halliburton.  Halliburton went from the verge of bankruptcy in 1998 to $15.26 billion in revenues in 2008, at the end of the Junior Bush administration.

The services that Halliburton provided in exchange for those billions of dollars were, by many accounts, shoddy or non-existent and by all accounts rife with corruption. But the well was gushing, the dollars fell from the sky.

It should come as no surprise that Halliburton is implicated in the BP Oil disaster.  Federal regulators are investigating the cementing techniques that Halliburton employed to prevent blowouts for the deep sea well that is now spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, despoiling the Gulf Coast.

And, just as with the Iraq war, Halliburton, having extracted what wealth it can from the situation, is now attempting to extricate itself.   Leave the clean up for the chumps, just like with Iraq.

Halliburton is the endowment Dick Cheney plans to leave behind when he exits this mortal coil.  Note how he has groomed daughter Liz to take over when he is gone.  Halliburton is the Cheney family's fiefdom.  It is the source of their power.  Real power.  Not the fickle, illusory power that comes with the consent of the governed.  Cheney's is the kind of power that can only be ruthlessly seized.  It is the kind of power that one protects with murder, with torture, with bald-faced, shameless lies.  The kind of power for which one must sacrifice one's humanity.

No doubt Cheney has no regrets.  Greatness, after all, has its price.

Tom Ridge blabs

Tom, tell me something I don't already know...

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, the guy who invented the laughable color-coded scale that supposedly gauges the threat of a terrorist attack on the United States on any given day, has just put out a book that would seem to confirm the assumptive truth that those who hate Junior Bush have lived by: Junior and the gang were using Secretary Ridge's ridiculous threat-level for specific political goals.

In Ridge's book, the Test of Our Times, he alleges that, the weekend before the national election in November 2004, Defense Secretary/war criminal Don Rumsfeld and Attorney General/puritan freak John Ashcroft pushed Ridge to raise the threat level in the hopes that it would give Junior that extra little push he needed to win the general election. Ridge says he was dismayed and troubled by this manipulation; offers it as the final straw that caused him to leave the administration shortly into its second term.

From Think Progress' website:

Osama bin Laden had released a videotape with one more ominous sounding but unspecific threat against the United States. Neither Mr. Ridge nor any of the department’s security experts thought the message warranted any change in the nation’s alert status.

“…at this point there was nothing to indicate a specific threat and no reason to cause undue public alarm,” he writes.

But that view met resistance in a tense conference call with members of the intelligence community and several other Cabinet officers including Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

“A vigorous, some might say dramatic, discussion ensured. Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level and was supported by Rumsfeld.”

Noting the correlation found between increases in the threat level and the president’s approval rating, Mr. Ridge writes, “I wondered, ‘Is this about security or politics?’” --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 9, 2009

Media pundits are calling this revelation a "block-buster," but to me, this is no surprise at all. It is just another data point that confirms everything I believe about the complete and total insincerity and lack of integrity inherent in the Bush administration.

Ridge now joins the list of former Bush administration officials that have publicly protested the cynical and criminal behavior of that entity during its horrendous tenure. (One wishes he had had the stones to say something back when it mattered.)

He can now take a seat at the table with Colin Powell, John Snow, Richard Clarke, and Scott McClellan.

And watch how quickly and vehemently the Bush defenders will savage him. I do have some sympathy. Bush bleaters, like vicious scavenger birds, will pick away at whatever is left of his reputation. But, hey... he signed up with that crew. And it should have been obvious that Junior and Cheney and Rove were no ordinary band of snarky, dishonest politicians, but rather an entirely new breed.

The funny thing is that those who still, at this late date, contend that Junior was a real leader, a visionary, a prophet, will not be swayed in the least by what Ridge has to say. It is easier and safer for them to defy logic and believe that Powell, Snow, Clarke, McClellan and Ridge are all liars pursuing their various selfish agendas than to face the realization that those they call "Bush bashers" were right all along.

To do otherwise would be to admit that they are, in fact, gullible idiots.

Cheney and the icy hand of death

If looks could kill...

Junior had better watch his back, eh, Dick?

Word has it that you're writing your own tell-all book about those dark days when you, Richard B. Cheney, lorded over le monde politique like Hades on his Underworld throne. There's gonna be some nuggets in this one, eh?

Speaking through an intermediary, you let it be known that you felt Bush "went soft" in the second term, conceding to public disapproval, retreating on some of your hard line policies. Poor, hapless Junior is soon going to be on the receiving end of that vampiric bite. He's going to relearn to his chagrin that Dick Cheney doesn't let trivialities like "truth" or "integrity" get in the way. Well, somebody has to be the goat, and it ain't gonna be you, right, Dick?

At first glance, the idea of a Cheney blab book is a mind-twister. According to associates, you don't give a tinker's damn about your low public approval ratings. They say that you are driven by concerns about a hostile state obtaining nuclear weapons and giving them to terrorists.

Real, patriotic motives, eh, Dick?

Well, sorry, but I don't take anything you say at face value. You've already uttered too many demonstrable lies for me or for any rational person to do that. I have absolutely no faith that your motives have anything to do with concern for anyone other than yourself and that narrow group of people that compose your "tribe."

And you've been pimping out that hideous daughter of yours, haven't you? Sending her out on the cable talkie shows to perpetuate your lies, to try to garner some faction to carry the flag for you. Between her and John Bolton, who whined about President Clinton getting those journalists out of North Korea, and Frank Gaffney, who shrieked that President Obama "actually may still be [a Muslim] himself" (heaven forfend!) you've got the makings of your very own Scream Machine.

But, now we're getting at the truth, aren't we?

I think what we've got here is a panicky reaction to the icy hand of death. We all know that your ticker is weak. (That's right, Dick, "weak." I know it rankles that anyone would associate that adjective with you, but there it is.) And now that your life's work is largely done (after all, you will never again hold public office), you've started to notice a chill spreading over that obdurate little black nugget that serves as your heart. But a man wants to leave something behind, yes? Some little marker for future generations.

I suspect that your aim is to rehabilitate the family name, to associate the Cheney appellation with hard-boiled patriotism, with true-blue no-apologies American exceptionalism. God knows there are plenty of dumb-ass rubes out there who respond to that kind of claptrap. If you get enough of them to buy into it, daughter Liz can continue on as you have done, eh? She can keep the Cheney dynasty rolling.

For most people, to be included in the memories of those they leave behind is enough. Or, maybe a family heirloom. But you've always held such quaint nostalgia by the plebs as pathetic, eh? For Big Dick Cheney, nothing less than full scale global conflagration will do. You're every bit as much an historical figure as some faggot like Alexander or that French midget with the funny hat.

So, here you are, with your fingers crossed, hoping that there will be a cataclysmic terrorist attack that will vindicate you in the eyes of a fearful public. This book you're writing, and the public appearances by that witch of a daughter are all part of the plan, eh?

Well, Dick, you're in a race against time. And with a ticker like yours, I'm betting on the latter.

Rummy's War: Gimme that ol' time religion

The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords. ~Psalms 55:21

News broke yesterday that all through the "Rumsfeld era" of the illegal invasion of Iraq, Pentagon-issued military briefs were pumping Junior full of that old time religion to keep the man-child from losing his nerve when things started to go south.

According to GQ magazine, daily intelligence briefings, called "Worldwide Intelligence Updates," produced by the Pentagon for presentation to President Junior were adorned with colorful photos and captioned with warlike Biblical quotes.

Keepin' the boy-king bucked up

Rumsfeld, himself, is not a religious man, but he's smart. Certainly, he's smart enough to know how to play Junior like a fiddle. And what better way to manipulate an insecure dry drunk of limited intellect than by quoting from the one source that the poor sap feels he can trust? One can imagine that, public displays of resolution aside, in the dark days when Iraq was burning, Junior spent a lot of time curled up in some corner of the Oval office, sucking his thumb and hugging his pillow. These briefs, with their faith-over-fact assurances, might have been just the ticket to get him to pull himself together.

There is some question as to whether the religious quotations were actually dreamed up by Rummy or some demented Pentagon underling, but Rummy certainly saw the briefs before they showed up on the president's desk. Rummy, like his partner in crime, Big Dick, would likely recognize a useful tool when he saw one.

And so, everyday for a period of time, Junior's quaking heart was reassured with inspiring photos of soldiers praying, captioned with resolute Old Testament quotations. (Interesting, isn't it, how evangelicals like Junior seem to draw more from the Old Testament than from the words of Christ, Himself?)

Never mind that, were these briefs to ever be leaked, they would only serve to reinforce Muslim suspicions that the war was part of a larger inter-faith war, a modern-day Crusade, between Christianity and Islam. Never mind that Muslim-Americans working in the Pentagon took offense and began to question the virtues of their own government. Just like those poor civilians that got in the way of Rummy's "smart bombs" it was just collateral damage.

Rummy and Dick had a war to get rich off of. That's what was important.

Well, Rummy may have achieved his goal, but there is a price to pay. Check this video of Rummy's reception at a recent Washington, DC, function by members of Code Pink.

Lawyer up, Condi!

Ulp!

Bad news for Bushies!

A report released by the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday states that Junior's confidante Condi Rice, approved the use of the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" that are the subject of so much furor. The report says that Condi, in her role as National Security Adviser, gave approval in 2002 to CIA Director George Tenet to use waterboarding and other "harsh" interrogation techniques.

This revelation appears to be in conflict with Condi's written testimony to the Committee in the fall of last year. She 'fessed up to attending some meetings of which she claimed she could not recall the details. But it is now established that, not only did she attend these meetings, she led them. Further, she did not mention that she had a direct role in approving the techniques.

They call that perjury.

And, remember that Tuesday, a legal adviser that worked for Condi, Philip Zelikow, stated that the administration not only ignored a memo he wrote dissenting from the legal opinions expressed in the "torture memos" authored by administration advisers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, it attempted to have it destroyed.

Listen to the rhetoric that is being thrown around on the cable news networks. Republicans like Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham are saying that there should be no prosecutions, that we need to find out what happened and move on. Meanwhile, Democrats like Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Patrick Leahy are not saying that there should be prosecutions. They're saying "Let's find out the facts. Let's see where it leads." If I'm reading this right, that means that they're on to something.

I have to imagine that Big Dick is starting to sweat. To his way of thinking, having Condi be the one in the cross hairs is a nightmare. She'll roll. She's not a soldier like Scooter Libby, willing to take one for the team. Condi was always more in to the glamor and the camera flashes. When things start getting really tough...

At this point, Attorney General Holder is almost compelled to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate this matter. A good prosecutor will know where to find the weak link in the chain. If it were me, Condi would be one of my first choices.

I have no doubt that some big names are making calls all over Washington to find Condi some legal counsel. They'll foist her off on some high-powered DC consiglierie like Bob Bennett who is an expert at making black seem white.

Still, Big Dick has got to be worried. He's never liked Condi and she never much liked him either. Besides, she ain't got no stones.

Torture memos: We've got us a ballgame!

Smoking gun memos

Wow! I'm taken aback at the furor that is erupting over potential investigations into the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation techniques." New developments, new data points are coming rapid fire from every corner of Washington: Congress, the Obama administration, the Justice Department, former Bush administration officials.

The frenzy of activity, and the tone of the statements all indicate that something Very Big ^TM is afoot.

A quick overview of some of the developments:

• As I wrote yesterday, a report published in Newsweek stated that Attorney General Holder is considering appointing a special prosecutor to investigate whether crimes were committed in the development of the Bush administration's so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques."
  
• President Obama said yesterday that, while he is focused on "looking forward," any decision concerning investigations into the matter will fall under the authority of Holder and the Justice Department.
  
• On the Rachel Maddow Show, last night, Philip Zelikow, a lawyer for the State Department in the Bush administration, stated that, in response to the legal opinions rendered by White House advisers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the "torture memos," Zelikow wrote an opinion stating that he found the memos to be legally faulty. He circulated his differing opinion in the White House with the knowledge that it might be ignored. But the Bush White House not only ignored his memo, according to Zelikow, the administration attempted to find and destroy all copies! That's a cover-up, people.
  
• Senators Patrick Leahy, Sheldon Whitehouse, Russ Feingold, Carl Levin, and Diane Feinstein have all been suggesting that investigations and prosecutions are on the way. Congress can (and should) investigate the matter independent of the Justice Department. And the Republicans are so weakened that they can do little to stop it.
  
• Former members of the Bush administration are all over the airwaves. And they sound frantic. Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, and Big Dick, himself, have all been on the cable news shows dissembling, obfuscating, stuttering and stammering. But the defenses they put forth are inconsistent.
  
• Recall that it is now known that the CIA destroyed 92 videotapes of these "harsh" interrogations, acting against the express orders of then-CIA Director Porter Goss.
  
• And, now, the money quote:
  

  "There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder.
  
  "Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA...and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies"... --Major Charles Burney, in response to questions from Army investigators in 2006

  Get that? The people who pushed for the illegal Iraq invasion, were so determined to establish a link between al Qaeda and Iraq that they authorized torture to get detainees to confess it. Just as the Spanish Inquisitors tortured people to get them to admit they were in league with the Devil.

Things are happening so fast right now that there is simply no telling what is going to happen. The political implications are enormous. If you listen very closely, you'll hear that already, Republicans in congress are starting to distance themselves from the Bush administration on this issue.

In my opinion, President Obama is playing it very shrewdly by keeping as far away from it as possible. There's no need for the president to get further involved. The ball has started rolling now and it's going to go where it goes.

Let's pause for a minute, here, and remember why this is such a big deal. Assume, for a moment, that the detainees who were subjected to these techniques were, in fact, terrorists who had knowledge of future attacks. Further, for the time being, let's put aside the opinions of professional military and law enforcement interrogators and Senator John McCain which hold that torture is ineffective and produces unreliable information. Working from these two, very shaky assumptions, can we justify torture as a legal and acceptable means of protecting ourselves?

In a particularly telling exchange on Anderson Cooper's 360, Paul Begala pointed out to Ari Fleischer that in the aftermath of WWII, the United States tried, convicted, and put to death officers of the Imperial Japanese Army for water-boarding American prisoners. Ari Fleischer, for once in his life, had no response. Watch it. It's amazing.



Junior said repeatedly that "We do not torture." Let's find out if he was telling the truth.

Fingers crossed: Holder weighing special prosecutor

Sic 'em!

My, my, my! The day when the beast is brought to bay may actually come!

Late last week, the Obama administration released certain Bush Justice Department memos that relate, in all their appalling detail, the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that CIA operatives could use to obtain information from terrorist suspects. In one word: torture.

The release of the memos, which apparently was the result of an impassioned debate within the White House, has caused a ruckus all over Washington. For the millions of Americans who have all along suspected that the Bush administration consisted of warped and amoral creatures lusting for power, these memos provide yet more legal and legitimate grounds for investigation and prosecution.

But only Sunday, two days ago, Rahm Emanuel threw cold water on the idea of prosecutions when he appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulous. And President Obama has been saying, consistently, that his inclination is to "look forward."

Now, Newsweek reports that Attorney General Eric Holder might have ideas of his own. Among the many interesting tidbits in reporters Michael Isikoff's and Evan Thomas' latest contribution, "The Lawyer and the Caterpillar," is this:

Senior Justice Department lawyers and other advisers, who declined to be identified discussing a sensitive subject, say Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. has discussed naming a senior prosecutor or outside counsel to review whether CIA interrogators exceeded legal boundaries--and whether Bush administration officials broke the law by giving the CIA permission to torture in the first place. --Newsweek, April 18, 2009

This is big.

Remember when Eric Holder was first nominated for the Attorney General post? Some Republican senators expressed concern about Holder's ability to be an independent Attorney General, and not just a "yes-man" for the Obama administration. Well, let it be known that Republican senators were given fair warning to be careful what they wished for.

It seems that Holder is, in fact, exercizing his independence in a big way. Unlike his lapdog predecessor, Michael Mukasey, who made a public statement recently, condemning the release of the torture memos, Holder doesn't seem to be making his decisions according to what he thinks the president wants. (Someone should remind Mukasey that he's no longer working for the Bush administration. He doesn't have to suck up to the boss anymore.) The important point to remember, which is mentioned in the Newsweek article, is that the president does not have the power to determine whether or not there is an investigation. The Attorney General can appoint a special prosecutor on his own.

Members of the former Bush administration are clearly rattled. Big Dick let Sean Hannity pitch him some softballs the other day so that he could once again perform his song-and-dance to try and paint any forthcoming prosecutions as witch hunts. Congress has started talking about impeaching a Bush appointee to the federal bench, Jay Bybee, who authored the memos. Senator Patrick Leahy is still pontificating about the need for a Truth Commission.

And, one has to wonder if President Obama is playing it cool by publicly expressing reluctance for investigation and prosecution, all the while encouraging Holder to move forward. That way, the president can preserve his image as a magnanimous, even-handed leader and still sate the bloodlust of the leftwing of his supporters. It would be a shrewd move and he's a politician, after all.

Hats off to the American Civil Liberties Union (of which I am a proud member) for suing to have the memos released under the Freedom of Information Act. Keep your eyes on this story, folks. There will be much more to come.

Junior and the gang: Remembering the party...

Junior, me, and some of the guys: Ah, the good ol' days

I don't care what anyone says. The Bush years were some mighty fine times. Yeppers. Mighty fine.

I haven't talked about it much, but now that the party is over, I guess it's okay to do a little "catapultin' of the propaganda."

For the past 8 years, myself and a few others of the Portland gang were part of Junior's personal entourage. Partyin'. Drinkin'. Having a few laughs. Just generally livin' fat off the federal treasury.

High times. And I do mean "high." Ribeye steak and bacon-cheese fries every night. Late nights of partying in the Oval 'til Ol' Man Dick came stumbling out in his skivvies and nightshirt and sent us all jumping over the security fence. One time he let fly with his shotgun and pelted Andre in the face with a load of rock salt.

Junior and Andre Indian-wrasslin'

Man, we laughed to see the antics of those poor goofs stranded on their rooftops in New Orleans, during the flood! Just yucking it up on Air Force One. Junior laughed so hard he almost choked on a pretzel. There he was, one minute laughing and spitting crumbs onto his shirt, the next, turning blue and clutching at his throat. He staggered around for a good minute before tripping over the ottoman and spitting out a drool-soaked Rold Gold. Sent the rest of us into hysterics. I damn near passed out.

Ah me!

Well, nothing lasts forever, as the saying goes. We knew that eventually somebody'd wise up and send us packing. We just figured we'd ride that pony 'til she died underneath us. And, damn! She nearly did!

Well, shoot. It wasn't like we were tryin' to fool anybody. We came to Washington to see what we could get out of it. Wasn't our fault if those red state yokels took us seriously.

Anyway, I imagine now that he's gone back to Texas, we won't be partying with Junior too much anymore. He's a momma's boy, after all. And I know that old battle axe is gonna give him an earful when he shows up in her kitchen, stinkin' of gin and cigar smoke.

Makes me laugh just to think about it.

Happy April Fool's Day!

Big Dick ain't so scary anymore

Rage on, beast! Rage on!

Of all the unlikely genealogical matches one might imagine, could there be any more strange than that which came to light with the discovery that Barack Obama and Dick Cheney are actually cousins? Well, strange as it seems, it is true, according to an article in September 2008 in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Be that as it may, Cousin Dick is not letting any family sentiments get in the way of him spewing forth his hateful bile, delivered in his gravelly monotone, raging that cher cousin is all wrong about where he wants to take the country.

Big Dick, in his first television interview since fleeing his Washington, DC crypt, told CNN's John King that President Obama has made the United States more vulnerable. "Now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack," growled Dick.

President Obama has announced an end to waterboarding detainees during interrogations, required that CIA interrogators abide by rules put forth in the Army Field Manual, ordered the closure of secret intelligence interrogation sites, and ordered the (eventual) closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. That is quite a set of reversals from Big Dick's horror house vision, each of which must cause the waning life force in his dessicated cadaverous body to sputter and cough.

Further, Big Dick must have been positively nonplussed when President Obama had the temerity to actually respond.

I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney. Not surprisingly. You know, I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the wrong lesson from history. The facts don't bear him out. That attitude, that philosophy has done incredible damage to our image and position in the world. I mean, the fact of the matter is, after all these years, how many convictions actually came out of Guantanamo? How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment. --President Obama, March 22nd, 2009, 60 Minutes

(Although President Obama's questions are most likely intended to be rhetorical, they have empirical answers: there have been 14 convictions of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay facility. Fourteen out of 245 detainees. More than half of the detainees have never been accused of committing hostile acts against the US or its allies, according to evaluations made by the Defense Department.)

This kind of insolence must surely make Big Dick apoplectic. A mere three months ago, no one would have had the stones to challenge him like this... not even Junior, who, like a sullen but defiant teenager, refused to issue a pardon for Scooter Libby, then locked himself in his office to avoid Big Dick's wrath.

But the times have changed for Big Dick. His visage just isn't daunting people like it used to, back in the day. Even the pipsqueak House Republicans have been wishing Big Dick would go back to his coffin.

“He became so unpopular while he was in the White House that it would probably be better for us politically if he wouldn’t be so public...But he has the right to speak out since he’s a private citizen," said Representative John Duncan, Junior (R-Tenn).

It must gall Big Dick terribly that he can't evoke terror from even a lowly House Republican anymore, let alone his upstart, greenhorn cousin. Well, rage on, Big Dick! Just like every other undead creature who has sold his soul to extend his power and influence, your fate is sealed: your remaining days on this material plane are to be consumed with impotent, tortuous rage.

Then you die.

Then it gets worse.

Let the Bush tax cuts die with the Bush legacy

Part of President Obama's budget plan, just released yesterday, is a projection of increased federal revenues due to the expiration in 2010 of the so-called "Bush tax cuts" on the wealthiest individuals. Republicans are, predictably, screaming bloody murder.

At issue are the tax cuts passed in 2001 by Congress during the first 6 months of Junior's "presidency." Remember? Before bin Laden gave him his "mighty gift?" Back when Junior was just an inept and ineffectual shadow of his father?

These tax cuts were targeted for persons making more than $250,000 per year. Junior and company claimed that they were a necessary response to the (relatively mild) recession we were experiencing in early 2001. Estimates of lost federal revenue as a result of these tax cuts are as high as $1.35 trillion.

Unsurprisingly, the same Republicans who advocated these expensive tax cuts (which, after all, filled the coffers of their biggest campaign contributors) were also those who whined that Obama's $900 billion stimulus bill was "too big."

Get it? Over a trillion is not too much to give back to corporate titans and blue-blooded inheritors. But $900 billion is way too much to spend on helping working people keep their jobs and save their homes.

Well, they lost on the stimulus bill, as we all saw recently. But now, they're making a feeble attempt to save Junior's irresponsible tax cuts.

But this time, I'm afraid public sentiment is very much against them. They are trying to frame the expiration of the tax cuts as a tax increase on small businesses, but most people just don't see it that way.

In light of all the federal bailout dollars, those borrowed hundreds of billions tossed into the raging inferno of our financial crisis, there is just not a lot of sympathy for the folks at the top of the income scale right now. To the extent that there is any identifiable group to blame for our current (and perhaps, ultimate) economic crisis, it is that very group, which I call the plutocrats, that benefits from the Bush tax cuts.

"But, dahling, I will so miss our nights by the pool..."

These are the people who, apparently not content with the extra scratch they got by lessening their tax responsibilities, took advantage of the Bush administration's negligent oversight and regulation practices to bilk us all out of trillions of dollars by selling us fraudulent securities, pawning off too-good-to-be-true mortgage scams, setting regressive policies, and lobbying for competition-stifling legislation. These are the same people who, fresh from cashing those huge government bailout checks, continued on as they had done with their extravagant junkets to Las Vegas, Monarch Beach, and Half Moon Bay. These are the people typified by rapscallions like Bernie Madoff and R. Allen Stanford.

It all fit in well with the plutocrat mentality that Junior and company encouraged: those at the top are there because they deserve it. According to them, there are a certain class of people that are inherently more deserving of riches and ease.

But Mammon, their god, whom they believed was their eternal savior, their facilitator as they manipulated the levers of power, is turning out to be a phantom, a figment. All their funny money, that ephemeral substance that allowed them to imagine they were superior, is going up in smoke before their very eyes.

Conservatives will sometimes preach "tough love" as a means of dealing with the down-trodden. Maybe it's time for the plutocrats to get a little taste of that bitter medicine. And for my part, I can't see a need to sugar the pill for them by extending the tax cuts that started them down their delusional path.

Come on down, plutocrats! We'll save you a place in line at the soup kitchen!

"I wanna sit by Bernie!"

Lord Cheney, Zombie King, curses from the grave

Horror! Horror!

Foolishly, I had hoped that we were finally rid of him. When they wheeled him off the dais at President Obama's inauguration ceremony I felt a surge of joy and relief. That misshapen monster, head lolling obscenely like some buzzard at feast, hands clutching, fingers hooked like grim bloody talons, being rolled away from the halls of power... the sight had me positively giddy. At that moment I dared to believe that we were forever quit of him, quit of his remorseless cruelty.

But, no!  This monster can never be fully vanquished. Just as Eden was forever marred by Lucifer's pride, so are these United States ever to carry within them the cancer of Richard B. Cheney. His evil will outlive his corporeal form, which, as anyone can see is deteriorating quickly. One wonders what vile oaths and dark rituals may have been performed in the darkness of his undisclosed location over the last 8 years to have stretched his mortal existence this far. Best not to think on it over much.

Anyway, the zombie king croaked out some more of his evil incantations today, during an interview with Politico. It's no surprise, of course, that Cheney would discard the decorum of tradition by criticizing his successors a mere two weeks after the change-over. None should expect less from him. But the vehemence of his criticism was exceptional. Here's the money quote:

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry.” --Dick Cheney, February 4, 2009

Never mind that the beast is summoning all his demagogic talents to mischaracterize the policy changes made by the Obama administration in the most obvious way. For that 19% of mindless zealots that still approve of him, it is more the drone of his voice than the actual words that incite them to their blood lust.

No, for me, the real question is this: what is his motive? What does he hope to gain?

Does anyone object if I immediately rule out any possibility of his being sincere? Or truthful? Or genuine in his concern for the well-being of the American citizenry?

Anyone?

Okay, fine. I didn't think so.

At the risk of (yet again) letting my pie-in-the-sky hopes get the better of my reason, here's what I think: Cheney is making the opening play of his defense. I believe that, deep in the cold, black granite of his half-dead heart, he is afraid.

Cheney fears a special prosecutor.

• Recall that Cheney has already publicly admitted to authorizing "enhanced interrogation techniques" that have been ruled by judges to amount to torture. Attorney General Holder was not ambiguous about his own views on the matter.
  
  
• Then, there is still the investigation into the Valerie Plame affair in which Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. Junior, in some fit of mind-bogglingly twisted ethos, declined to issue a pardon to Scooter before heading back to his Texas sh*thole. That means Scooter remains a convicted felon, which can't sit well. Sometimes a man gets the urge to sing, you know? Especially when it seems that he's the schmuck who got left holding the bag.
  
  
• And then, of course, former White House chief-of-staff Josh Bolton and White House counsel Harriet Meiers are currently in defiance of congressional subpoenas to answer questions about White House involvement in the Justice Department fiasco.
  
  
• Do I even need to mention Karl Rove?
  

In short, there are a lot of stinky, slimy slug trails that might just lead to Cheney's doorstep.

So, Cheney comes out guns a-blazin' with this salvo. Now, if and when any investigations are initiated, Cheney can squeal and whine about "partisan witch-hunts," claiming that such investigations are pay back for his "candor" about the Obama administration's supposed folly.

If my wild speculation is accurate, it's an interesting gambit. It puts Cheney in the position of secretly hoping that there will be a devastating terrorist attack on the United States during President Obama's term. In Cheney's mind, such an attack would vindicate all his excesses. Hell, he might even come away from it with a little love from the under-appreciative rabble.

Of course, if Cheney really does think that way, then he is truly the monster that his harshest critics believe him to be.

I guess those would include me.