While I was writing this
piece, V.P. Cheney’s second in command, Scooter Libby, a man who left a
golden life in law to reach the much higher altitude of the most powerful
government in the world, was convicted on four counts of lying and
obstruction of justice. Turns out the jurors reacted like many of us,
believing Scooter was the fall guy for the rest of the gang, especially
Cheney, the man who orchestrated the vendetta against Joe Wilson with a
vengeance to prevent the unraveling of all his deceptions in the run up to
Iraq, the man who stood by without a word and watched his friend plunge
like Icarus from the heights of power.
So much
for Bush’s promise in 2000 to bring honor and dignity to his office.
Okay, the last time I saw
Vice President Cheney on television, his remarks stirred me from a
prolonged period of quiet to write the following rant. The most generous view of Cheney
is to believe that he has had one foot in a make-believe universe,
considering he recently told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “We’ve had enormous
successes.” No doubt Wolf was near to choking so as to restrain himself
from crying “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” And when asked by Wolf about a
possible anti-surge resolution, snarly Cheney replied: “It won’t stop
us,” a response so typical of a man whose arrogance has known no
boundaries. He also told Wolf, he was worried that Americans might “not
have the stomach to fight,” conveniently forgetting WWII, when Americans
had the stomach and the will for that legitimate cause. And may I
mention post 9/11 when we and much of the world were one?
Continue Here....... So, with remarkable timing, our
sterling
Cheney,
who likes to tell us we are not supporting our troops, escaped some of the
unpleasantness of the trial of his second-in-command, by
traveling round the world. But then to his misfortune he found himself a mere
mile from the carnage of a suicide bomb at the gate of the main American
base in Afghanistan; all of which highlighted with some embarrassment the
resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Yes those ugly, vicious, and persistent
gangs, in case you don’t recall, that our military had beaten to a pulp
after 9/11. Remember that moral victory?
Of course, that
success was just after Bush was elected based on his good-‘ol-boy
compassion and family values bull, and Darth Vader accompanied him to the White House.
That was when we still had a unified America with the will to fight, to
take revenge with the support of our allies, when the snooty French, of
all people, told the world: “We are all Americans.” Remember that? Before
we were scammed about Saddam and WMDs? When we backed away from capturing our
primary target, Osama bin Laden, at Bora Bora? When we gave up on
Afghanistan through the withholding of the thousands of troops needed to
cement our victory, and plunged these same thousands of young men and women into the
debacle of Iraq. Remember?
I do. And do you recall this
baiting and switching achieved by morphing with arrogance and ignorance
into the phony democratization of Iraq, which in reality was an invasion
for oil and
bucks? Yes, because in reality Saddam made a major mistake when he let the U.S. know, in
September 2000, that his country would no longer accept dollars for oil.
He would move to the euro as Iraq’s oil export currency, which threatened the
U.S.'s dollar supremacy. And so the shock and awe invasion
took place which would provide the U.S.'s stepping stone into Iran
to establish a regime change in that ****oil rich
country.
**** (The same for Iran? Quote
from William Clark in the Energy Bulletin: The invasion of Iraq may well be
remembered as the first oil currency war. Far from being a response to
9-11 terrorism or Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction,
Petrodollar Warfare argues that the invasion was
precipitated by two converging phenomena: the imminent peak in global oil
production, and the ascendance of the euro currency.)
And do you remember how this
administration succeeded in intimidating the wimpish congress,
senate and media into silence by flat out suggesting that the right to
dissent was traitorous? And ignoring Sen.
Carl Levin’s idea of diplomacy
and multilateralism, and not the black and white go-it-alone Bush
strategy? Remember that? And then Bush/Cheney, having achieved the
muffling of the opposition, proceeded to whack away at the amendments to
our Constitution while trashing our nation’s reputation and alienating
everyone beyond our borders; remember?
And
don’t you wonder: if so many administration failures and scandals hadn’t
ensued like a thousand cuts, and the voiceless media and left-of-center
hadn’t smelled the blood and woke to the notion that it might now be safe
to issue an objection to what bordered on the criminal; that if this
hadn’t happened, how many more of our inalienable rights would be
challenged and even removed? Remember when leadership required courage to
do the right thing? Remember what silence achieves, in the extreme,
in response to dictators? Recall how the founding fathers risked hanging
by their necks ‘til death when they challenged imperial Britain, an
aggressive country in possession of the world’s most powerful army and
navy? And isn’t it sickening and shameful when one compares their courage,
and the courage and dedication of today’s American troops, to Cheney and
Bush who never hesitate to risk everybody’s blood but their own?
Today, as in the past, there is
often extraordinary heroism, making you wonder: where do we get such fine
young men and women? Yet there is never glory in carnage, never “a good
war;” but wouldn’t it seem so much less senseless and tragic if this
invasion of Iraq, which has produced so many limbless and brain-damaged
young people, if it hadn’t been so cynical and greed driven; but instead
had been a war that was solely in defense of our cherished freedoms?
Is it
really surprising that these
administration thugs who are the most obstinate and the least
patriotic--not to mention heads-in-the-clouds Democrats--have allowed the
neglect of our terribly wounded vets at Walter
Reed’s building 18? Or that following this indifference they tried to pass the buck
,as usual,
to lower ranked caregivers? And finally, adding to this insulting
disrespect of our troops, they punished the wounded patients by waking
them at 6 a.m., for speaking to the media. These are the same thugs who
have frequently and without conscience accused those who wanted our
military out of harm’s way, of “not supporting our troops.” These same
people who will now send under-equipped and under-trained young soldiers
to fill the ranks of those who have been returned again and again to
Iraq--much to the agony of their loved ones.
What have the Bush/Cheney crowd
ever supported beyond their own unconscionable interests? Certainly not
our troops!
Cheney still refuses to admit, he
and Bush have permanently uncorked Sunni/Shiite divisions which hark back
more than a thousand years to the death of the Prophet Muhammad, divisions
which today are so efficiently exploited by die-hard Baathists, Al Qaeda,
Shiite militias, and outside political opportunists; while Bush in an
aw-shucks mode suggests that maybe after all, and after much
consideration, that yeah, maybe Saddam was not linked to Al Qaeda;
while still insisting that the war in Iraq was, and is, the central battle
against the war on global terrorism.; aka Jihad.
Jihad, according to who is
interpreting,
can be viewed as violent and non-violent; these days most cruelly and
aggressively violent. And Cheney will never acknowledge that his and
Bush’s foreign policy disaster has been responsible for providing the
extremists an additional rationale to kill Americans, strengthening
Jihad’s much harsher version with its merciless treatment of those it
deems to be in opposition-- Islamic or infidel, innocent or
otherwise; and it may be that the worst is yet to come with the spawning
of a plague of suicidal teenagers.
Have you ever speculated that if
our military had had sufficient support and been allowed to capture or
kill bin Laden, that this symbolic completion of a job well done, would
have made Bush/Cheney’s pretext for their invasion of Iraq--so much less
compelling to Americans? No? Well I have. And if Afghanistan had had the
major oil fields, would we be in Iraq today? Huh?
SAMMY
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