Monday, June 29, 2009

Dick Cheney Is Back - Testifying in His Own Defense


But not under oath, of course….
Yesterday, Cheney told The Washington Times' America's Morning News radio show that America cannot withdraw from Iraq yet:
But what … concerns me: that there is still a continuing problem. One might speculate that insurgents are waiting as soon as they get an opportunity to launch more attacks.

I hope Iraqis can deal with it. At some point they have to stand on their own. But I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point…
This is consistent with what Cheney said last year. On 10 April 2008, Cheney was on Sean Hannity’s radio show and fear-mongered about the consequences of withdrawing from Iraq. He told Hannity,
For us to walk away from Iraq I think would have at least that bad an effect, probably worse, because if al Qaeda were to take over big parts of Iraq, among other things, they would acquire control of a significant oil resource. Iraq has almost 100 billion barrel reserves, producing 2.5-3 million barrels of oil a day. If you take a terrorist organization like al Qaeda and give it that kind of revenue, there's no telling the amount of trouble they could get into.
Ten days earlier Cheney had told Virginia Republicans that withdrawing US troops from Iraq would be 'an act of betrayal.'
The only way to lose this fight is to quit. That would be an act of betrayal and dishonor, and it's not going to happen on our watch.
What's going on here is nothing short of thinly disguised attempts to save his sorry ass legacy.

When Americans were understandably scared out of our minds in the aftermath of the 911 attacks, our incompetent government lost their minds.

Talk about not being able to handle that 3 a.m. call (in the form of hijacked airliners)!

Dick Cheney and his puppet president, Bush, totally freaked out, striking about blindly and randomly. In his 'post 9/11 mind set', Cheney did a complete flip-flop and decided on invading Iraq.

Cheney had better judgment in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, (Gulf War I). In 1991, Cheney's mind was cool and collected when he wisely counseled against following up the Liberation of Kuwait with an invasion of Iraq:
Once you get to Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime, a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that going to have if it's set up by the American military there? How long does the United States military have to stay there to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens once we leave?
Three years later, Cheney interviewed at the A.E.I., level-headedly counseled that invading Iraq was not rationally in the national interests of the United States. He said we would find ourselves in a Quagmire:
Nevertheless, after 911, the once-cerebral Cheney became the impulsive Cheney. Invading Iraq became the way for America to prove its military potency, "because Afghanistan was not enough" of a target. Moreover, he assured us on the eve of the invasion that "we would be received as liberators". Nine months later he told us, "There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government". Four years ago this month he told us that in Iraq "they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

Well, this is the record of willful deceit and fraud which Cheney wants to obscure by kicking the Iraq can further down the dusty road toward continuous and indefinite occupation. He wants and expects President Obama to invest even further in his geo-political ponzi scheme. After all is said and done, he and his puppet president have squandered:
  • 4,321 American lives. (That's counting five soldiers shot down today in Baghdad, but not counting the life-altering injuries sustained by our WIA's.)

  • 3,000,000,000,000 of our treasury (Not counting the fact that as a nation, we are fucking broke).

  • Our two century-plus record of not starting international wars (not counting countless interventions in Banana republics)

  • Our reputation of adherence to international laws and covenants (including the use of torture of prisoners)
As long as our world-renown international war criminal can manipulate his followers to house, feed and tender to the beast which he has bequeathed our current and future generations, the more he can hope to delay any reckoning with his responsibility for I-Wreck.

I cannot understand how any public appearance by this liar is not greeted with thrown shoes and cat-calls of "Guilty".

I do not want to hear another minute of self-serving public testimony from this war-mongering perp which is not received under oath.

11 Moderated Comments:

Blogger DB Cooper said...

Speaking of "ponzi schemes", which was worse, Bernie Maddof's scheme for cash or Dick Cheney's scheme for oil?

Which one hurt more innocent people?

Didn't we at least get an apology from Bernie?

6/29/2009 11:46:00 PM  
Blogger LTE said...

"Ponzi" scheme works for me as far as describing what's in store for us in Iraq. We've been investing good resources after wasted resources in there for eight years.

Absent 150,000 of our troops, Iraq will no more easily fall apart now as it would if we were leaving 10 to 20 years from now. It's funny how Obama who "never had a real job" recognizes that sunk costs shouldn't affect future decision making, while the GOP (party of- and for- business) remains blissfully oblivious to this basic business principle.

6/30/2009 07:03:00 AM  
Blogger Emily said...

Back in '06, I posted excerpts from Barry Schwartz' (professor of psychology at Swarthmore College) piece in the Los Angeles Times about sunk loss theory. Here are some excerpts from that:

Psychologists, decision scientists and economists ... tell us that it's a mistake to continue with a project or an activity because of what you have already invested in it. The time or money you've already spent is gone. You can't reclaim it. Using a past investment to justify a future investment is what they call the "sunk-cost fallacy."

Instead of thinking about the past, what we should be doing is thinking about the future.

The sunk-cost fallacy took many lives in Vietnam ..... Continued involvement must not be justified by appealing to the imperative not to allow the dead to have "died in vain" .... Yet people seem willing to waste even more (time, money or lives) to justify what they have already spent and avoid that sick feeling of failure . . . .And troops haven't really "died in vain" as long as you continue to press on in the fight, no matter how disastrous the results.

. . . . it is unacceptable to justify continued involvement in Iraq or any other conflict on the grounds that we "owe" it to those who have already fallen. That is a justification that has strong emotional appeal, but it is fallacious, and no one should be allowed to get away with it.

6/30/2009 07:19:00 AM  
Blogger Vigilante said...

Good comments, here. I should have added that Cheney's Weimar-Republican angle, der Dolchstosslegende, is old as the hills - vintage 20th Century.

6/30/2009 08:41:00 AM  
Blogger Mike said...

Any balance sheet of the Iraq invasion and occupation should include all those Iraqi deaths and the three million or so Iraqis displaced from their their homes. They're people too, after all. Their lives are important, too.

6/30/2009 09:03:00 AM  
Blogger Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

And Christians now have to worship in secret. Yeah, that's right, folks, Christians had more rights under Saddan Hussein. And you're right, Stimpson. The Iraqi refugee problem is one of the most under-reported stories out there. Hell, it's one of the main reasons that violence is down; the fact that the "country" has already been ethnically-cleansed, etc..

6/30/2009 03:04:00 PM  
Blogger Jack Jodell said...

Regrettably, Dick Cheney will never be convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, although I wish he WOULD be and he really SHOULD be. WHY will he escape conviction? Because his defense will be based on grounds of insanity, and no one will be able to disprove that!

6/30/2009 07:11:00 PM  
Blogger Soros' Proxy said...

LTE & Emily

Jon Soltz served as a Captain in Iraq. Yesterday, he asked Has There Really Been a Policy Change in Iraq?

..... beneath the surface, there's been no political progress. There still is no oil sharing agreement, no resolution to the strife that has continued to affect Kirkuk, and no settlement among the many factions that will allow them to live side by side in peace.

And so, if the US pulls back, there's a powder keg ready to explode, with an ill-equipped Iraqi military left to try to hold things together. Frankly, the Iraqi military will never be well-trained enough to handle major explosions of violence, only minor disputes. Iraqis know this, which is why they'll continue to rely on us as a crutch as long as they can.

The problem with that is, if we have one foot in Iraq and one foot out, we are going to have a scenario when Americans think this was is over and one day they wake up to 8 or 9 dead troops in the streets of Iraq. Besides being a disaster in and of itself, it becomes a political problem for President Obama and Democrats, who own the situation now. To borrow a phrase from John McCain on Afghanistan, we'd merely be "muddling through" Iraq. That's not in US troops' interest, and certainly not in American interests.

Now we see that, indeed, the surge meant nothing without political progress.....

President Obama ..... absolutely has to resist any temptation to buy more time for political progress by keeping troops there to continue to coddle Iraq. All it will mean is more violence that has American troops in the cross-hairs. The President must tell the Iraqis that, if anything, we're going to speed up our timeline to leave Iraq if they continue to stall political progress - that their internal political problems aren't worth American blood.

..... If the Iraqis aren't committed to dealing with their internal problems then we should expedite our withdrawal. American troops should never be more committed to the peace and security of a foreign country more than those who live there.

6/30/2009 10:37:00 PM  
Blogger Buckeye said...

Excellent post Vig. What I wouldn't give to smack that chickenhawk down and shut his sorry ass up.

7/01/2009 03:36:00 PM  
Blogger Kentucky Rain said...

While I am tired of hearing that Michael Jackson has died the one positive effect of the news saturation has been to knock the silly Dick off the air and out of the headlines. Who wants to listed to The Dick anyway, except of course, other Dicks...

7/02/2009 11:37:00 AM  
Blogger Commander Zaius said...

Cheney under oath? Cold day in hell with glaciers in purgatory.

7/03/2009 05:18:00 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home