united colours of vruz

by Robert Scheer, TruthOut

vruz: well… it’s a deceit of shakesperean depth, nature and style. I’m not sure about proportions, unless it’s a lie of astronomical or gargantuan proportions… which it is.

[…] Those 40 years, interrupted by a lucrative stint at defense contractor Halliburton, saw Cheney rise to become secretary of defense and later vice president, presiding over wars that put him in considerable conflict with Colin Powell. It is Powell — who was experiencing the reality of war in Vietnam at the time Cheney was winning bureaucratic battles in Washington — who is scorned in Cheney’s memoir as the hopeless dove.

It was the more cautious war veteran Powell who, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Iraq war, proved to be far more effective a leader than Cheney, who was then secretary of defense. What is confirmed by Cheney’s memoir is that he seized upon the second Iraq invasion as a way of settling scores with his adversary by assuming the role of an ultra-militarist.

Powell, who inside the administration clearly opposed the invasion of Iraq — “If you break it, you own it” — was cast as a puppet who in a dramatic appearance before the United Nations lied to the world about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. But despite Powell’s woefully misplaced sense of loyalty to President George W. Bush, Cheney is merciless in condemning the general for allegedly undermining the administration. Powell has fired back at what he termed Cheney’s “cheap shots” and reminds us that “Mr. Cheney and many of his colleagues did not prepare for what happened after the fall of Baghdad.”

It’s not clear that Cheney is a true believer in military mayhem as much as he is an uncontrollable careerist who finds war talk a convenient tool for advancement. He seems to have no real sense of the cost of the Iraq War beyond what it might have done to hurt his own legacy. If his memoir has any enduring value, it is not as another offering of hollow excuses for an unjustifiable war but rather as a study in what the famed historian of European fascism, Hannah Arendt, termed the “banality of evil.”

by William Rivers-Pitt, TruthOut.org

It is axiomatic by now: when someone leaves government service, especially from a high-profile position, they write a book. They all do it, sometimes more than once. Richard Nixon is the main example of one who produced a multi-volume apologia; by the time he went into the ground, he’d penned enough books to fill a wide shelf. Henry Kissinger was similarly prolific, which leads one to wonder about the relationship between criminal activities and the printed page. Nixon was chased from office after a series of crimes that, at the time, had no precedent, and Kissinger is still so infamous that he cannot travel abroad for fear of arrest. Both wrote enough books to take up half the political science section of any local bookstore, perhaps in the vain attempt to explain away the lasting damage their actions did to the republic.

Speaking of damaging the republic, Dick Cheney has a book out. I’m sure you’ve heard about it by now; he laid the groundwork for its release by claiming the contents would cause heads to explode in Washington, causing a lot of people who should know better by now to say, “Ooooh, this should be good.” It isn’t, at all, but I must confess that my head did come very close to launching itself off my shoulders…not because of what’s in the book, but because I have to deal with the rancid reality of a free and un-convicted Dick Cheney appearing in the public eye once again.

If there were any justice to be found in this deranged country, Dick Cheney would have penned his pestiferous, self-serving little memoir by the light of a bare bulb inside the cell of a federal prison. If there were any justice to be found, Mr. Cheney would be forced to contend with the “Son of Sam Law,” which, according to World Law Direct, “refers to a type of law designed to keep criminals from profiting from their crimes, often by selling their stories to publishers. Such laws often authorize the state to seize money earned from such a deal and use it to compensate the criminal’s victims.”

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