Is Dick Cheney Really Running Scared . . .
. . . because of the drumbeat of revelations about the Bush torture regime that he led?
I hardly think so. The real question is whether the former vice president is losing his marbles and that seems to be what is happening given his recent erratic behavior and long history of serving no one and nothing more than himself.
Dick Cheney always has been wound tight.
Power for Cheney always has been more personal than political.
Grudges for Cheney always have been something to be harbored indefinitely, whether the post-Watergate constraints placed on executive power or the outting of one of his justifications for the Iraq war as a lie by the husband of a CIA operative.
Failure for Cheney always has been something deeply felt, and no failure has been greater than not anticipating the 9/11 attacks because his Cold War mindset prevented him from having the foresight or imagination.
Destruction of evidence for Cheney always has been preferable to public accountings.
And like I said, Cheney always has put himself first and country and party second and third.
Shaun Mullen is a former The Moderate Voice columnist. Over a long career with newspapers, this award-winning editor and reporter covered the Vietnam War, O.J. Simpson trials, Clinton impeachment circus and coming of Osama bin Laden, among many other big stories. He blogs at Kiko’s House.
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Shaun – much more restrained, for you, than recent posts. I do understand this is an opinion, but other than ad hominum attacks, do you have any actual analysis? Or is this just 'I hate Cheney'?
I have to believe Cheney is to some degree a tortured soul. (no pun intended) I can see GWB going blithely on his way, even after a catastrophic experiment with leadership, but Cheney has to be clenched inside. I say this not because I think his conscience is bothering him, but because I think he greatly misses being in a position to continue wielding the kind of unchecked power he once had. I agree with Shaun, I think he feels this in a more personal way than in any sort of public spirited way. I'm just glad he's more on the outside than on the inside at this point.
OK, you had me first when you were talking about Cheney when you alluded that he was a soulless power-lusting tyrant. Then you inserted this line:
*******
“Failure for Cheney always has been something deeply felt, and no failure has been greater than not anticipating the 9/11 attacks because his Cold War mindset prevented him from having the foresight or imagination.”
*****
It's funny how slowly people will latch onto the truth, even when it's staring them right in the face. The thing is about an unbelievable crime: it's so unbelievable that no one will believe it. In order accept the magnitude of some crimes, the forethought that went into their planning and so on, one has to believe that the potential to be so vilely corrupt, so amorally astray exists within each human and “only by the grace of God go I”, people just won't look that truth in the face.
Not even when they've just written all the clues themselves leading right up to it.
AR:
Read Silhouette's observation above and then go to WorldCat, the marvelous database of over 1.2 billion holdings in 10,000 libraries worldwide.
Spend some time typing in relevant search terms to flush out the many books and digital resources on which I based my post.
Then figure out which of them might interest you and where the university or public library closest to you with those holdings is located.
It might keep you out of trouble for a while. (Wink!)
Here's a link I found from my search, thanks Shaun!
http://www.rense.com/general14/bushsformer.htm
My decoder ring must be busted. I can't even translate the winking “We're onto them” comments flying back and forth here.
The funny thing is that when an elephant is sitting in the living room, you don't even need a decoder ring to notice it sitting on your foot.
The “miracle” of the obvious becomes apparent..
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Usually it is incumbent on the author of an article, opinion or otherwise, to provide some back-up to his contentions, citing of some sources, something quoted or referenced, etc.
A 'go do your own research to see if you agree with me' hardly qualifies.
Hi there. Again, dont shoot the messenger and I'm not mom. The commenters' rules at TMV are posted and clearly state that commenters are to stick to discussion /debate of the article, and not attack writer or other commenters. We appreciate that the debate remain civil, no matter how passionate. Thanks.
dr.e
assistant editor and columnist, TMV
“The Bush Presidency is three months past, the election five months past. Is there anyone left who really gives a crap about what you have to say about it?”~toad
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Yes, quite a few people. A prosecutor in Spain and most populations of foreign countries and probably well over half the population of the United States is ENRAPTURED with the nefarious doings of Cheneyco.
After all, people notice the unusual. It isn't every day that your country you've been taught since you were knee-high is the place where freedom and civil rights are paramount, who signed treaties with world countries affirming such, turns out to be torturing people at whim on behalf of an evil oligarchy backed by BigOil.
You have to admit, this little “bit' has “wow” factor painted all over it in bright fuscia and neon chartruese..
Republicans didn't hesistate one iota, even years beyond the “crimes” to flog Clinton incessantly for marital indescretions that were nobody's business or to no consequence beyond his and Hillary's bedroom door.
But we're supposed to turn a blind and forgiving eye to horrendous murders and torture on behalf of pure sadism and greed that brought the whole world to its knees, just a few short months after those people are newly out of office? I say if we're not still hotly talking about this notorious treachery seven decades from now, there's something wrong with the America I live in..
I do understand this is an opinion, but other than ad hominum attacks, do you have any actual analysis? Or is this just 'I hate Cheney'?
Austin, jeebus, Shaun just got through telling us that he based his post on research he did on WorldCat!
And aside from WorldCat, Shaun wrote nothing about Cheney that hasn't been expressed dozens of times, if not more, over the past several years. I have not yet checked out WorldCat (it sounds marvelous), but just *one book* that came out recently, Angler: The Cheney Vice-Presidency, by Barton Gellman, has most of the stuff about Cheney's personality and nature that Shaun wrote about in his post.
I think you need to get out a bit more.
Is there anyone left who really gives a crap about what you have to say about it?
It's not what Shaun has to say; it's what the history has to tell us, and yes, chump, there are lots of people who give a crap about that. They are the same people who gave a crap about it while Cheney was vice-president (and I'd bet dollars to donuts that does not include you), and they are the same people who have figured out that presidencies and vice-presidencies have consequences for at least “three months” after they are no longer in power. Maybe even longer than that.
Kathy -
He mentioned WorldCat after that post of mine post, not prior.
And my initial question still stands – does he have any analysis he is adding? If what he said is true, then he is simply repeating others research without credit. Great journalistic standards there.
And no, I don't consider is…the former vice president is losing his marbles, his Cold War mindset prevented him from having the foresight or imagination or Cheney always has put himself first and country and party second and third as insightful analysis. I consider them ad hominum attacks.
Look at the positive side of this………..the more bandwidth Mullen uses up on his Cheney obsession, the less bandwidth is left for Gandelman to obsess over Limbaugh, for Stein to obsess over Palin, kathyedits over just about anything that some Republican in Chillicothe, Ohio said or did and for Jill Miller Zimon, anything that any male did!
AR:
Allow me to hold your widdle hand for just a moment and quote from Jane Mayer's widely acclaimed “Dark Side,” which summarizes a number of other accounts:
“If anyone in America should have been prepared to respond to the attacks of September 11, 2001, it ought to have been Vice President Dick Cheney. For decades before the planes hit the Pentagon and World Trade Center, Cheney had been secretly practicing for doomsday.
. . . From the start of the administration, Cheney had confidently assumed the national security portfolio for a president with virtually no experience in that area. But Al Qaeda's attacks exposed a gaping shortcoming in the Vice President's thinking. The Soviet Union, whose threat had preoccupied Cheney and other doomsday planners in the 1980s, was gone. In its place another, more intangible danger had arisen. No one in the Bush Administration, including Cheney, had had the foresight or imagination to see Bin Laden's plot unfolding.”
Bravo Shaun, and thanks. A real cite.
AR:
If you ever picked up a book or read a news article that didn't already echo your world view, you wouldn't have needed a cite. What Shaun wrote is common knowledge.
“No one in the Bush Administration, including Cheney, had had the foresight or imagination to see Bin Laden's plot unfolding.”
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I heartily disagree..
And I disagree because of the “string of seemingly coordinated bombings” [Reuters] that happened the day before Obama, Cheney's expressed foe, touched down in Bagdhad.
Say what you want about it, but what you cannot say is that there wasn't a security leak.
And given Cheney's recent braggings about still having authority with the CIA… oh for chrissakes kids. Stop fearing being called paranoid and just do the friggin math..
Hello, Mr. Pot. Meet Mr. Kettle.
Kathy – LOL Talk about calling the pot calling the kettle black!
If you didn't assume anyone who doesn't agree with you on some things doesn't agree with you on all things, and must be ill-read when they don't agree with you, you wouldn't sound quite so shrill.
And common knowledge? That is defined by you as what you believe. Disagreement must be a sign of ignorance, right? That is the typical Left position on most things.
I am more well read than I know you think I am; I am just able to wade through the obvious bias and bullshit (from both sides) than you have shown an ability to do. From what I see, anything critical of Republicans in general and Bush/Cheney is particular is Gospel to you, and anything critical of the Left, Democrats, and Obama is heresy.
So, have you read Mark Levin's “Liberty and Tyranny” or “Men in Black”, Ron Paul's “The Revolution: A Manifesto”, or maybe “The Road to Serfdom”, or “Atlas Shrugged”? Anything by Thomas Sowell?
Oh, and I love Brave New World, too!
Undertoad, please include me among those who indeed “give a crap” about what Cheney has done to our country
Boy, this would have been an interesting approach to have tried in high school (for anyone who's life goals included nothing beyond votech). Turn in a persuasive essay with a list of opinions with no source material backing them and then yell at the teacher for failing you- “You can damn well spend your day in the library if you want to find my sources. Ever heard of card catalogs? Look up my topics and you'll find the books which back up my arguments! And besides, if you'd come out of the teachers' lounge at lunchtime and hang out with my friends, you'd have already heard all of this!”
CS:
“Boy, this would have been an interesting approach to have tried in high school”
Except this is not a high school project. It is about the direction of our country.
So, have you read Mark Levin's “Liberty and Tyranny” or “Men in Black”, Ron Paul's “The Revolution: A Manifesto”, or maybe “The Road to Serfdom”, or “Atlas Shrugged”? Anything by Thomas Sowell?
No, I haven't. And I acknowledge the point.
What is also true, however, is that when I read a right-wing blogger who is expressing ideas that I am very familiar with, that I know have been discussed widely over a long period of time, I do not go around shrieking that said right-wing blogger is “relying on other people's research instead of providing his/her own cites.” I don't need cites to prove that these ideas are held by many people and not just by that one blogger because I am well aware that those ideas are held by many people — because I read what they write. And I do read right-wing blogs and publications regularly even if I don't read their books.
DE- Isn't that why it's even more important to make a point convincingly instead of talking in an echo chamber to people who already agree with what you're writing?
Kathy: There are kind of two parts to it though- how many of the right wingers in your analogy have cited sources in their past discussions? If you didn't catch any source material then, then the current reiterations of the same points sound like the same old noise. You have to admit that many, many, left wing blogs would say things like this without citing the specific books that you and Sean have now mentioned, so why not include them here in the main post if that's the basis for the analysis? As AR points out, that's also a lot more honest to cite a source rather than use the same arguments without reference to the authors.
“Undertoad, please include me among those who indeed “give a crap” about what Cheney has done to our country”
Then you should also be concerned that shaun's weak cheese adds nothing but bile to your understanding of it.
… how many of the right wingers in your analogy have cited sources in their past discussions? If you didn't catch any source material then, then the current reiterations of the same points sound like the same old noise.
I'm not sure I'm following your question, but I'm sure you would agree that I can't speak to how many right-wingers have cited sources in past discussions that I haven't seen. What I *can* say, however, is that right-wing blogs in general are not very conscientious about citing sources at all.
When ideas that have wide currency are being discussed, I think cites are optional. If I write in a post that George W. Bush is shallow, unimaginative, and incurious, you can disagree if you want to, but you cannot say to me, indignantly, “Do you have cites for this, or is this just your opinion?” I mean, you *can* say that if you want to, but if you do, you are admitting to me that you have never, ever heard this about George W. Bush before. And that would brand you as somewhat, um, uninformed, right?
When Shaun suggests that Dick Cheney is vindictive, secretive, not at all a fan of transparency in government, who on earth says, “What?! I've never heard this before! Why don't you give us some cites to prove that other people are saying this, or is it just your opinion only?”
Of course, that's not what AR said. He certainly didn't seem shocked that a left winger was writing these things about Cheney- but what he did ask is whether this was just another regurgitation of those talking points agreed upon by the left, or whether there was some other basis for it.
Undertoad says:
“Then you should also be concerned that shaun's weak cheese adds nothing but bile to your understanding of it.”
Please don't attempt to be the judge of what “understanding” I gather from reading an article.
Thank you
Kathy -
The order of events is relevant.
I did not initially ask for ANY cites. I asked if he was just ranting against Cheney, or if he had any analysis to add to his stream of thoughts. There was no indication at that time this was anything other than a typical venting, but somewhat low-key for Shaun, as I said.
He is the one that introduced the concept that this was a 'researched article' in his reply to me. So, at that point, asking for cites was a perfectly reasonable request.