Here's why Bush should x-out his vp:James Pinkerton [View All]

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Here's why Bush should x-out his vp
James Pinkerton

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-vppin3686180feb26,0,6285777.column
February 26, 2004

The hot rumor around Washington recently is that President George W. Bush is going to drop Vice President Dick Cheney as his running mate this year. Bush has knocked down the rumor, but political logic suggests that the dump-Cheney idea may yet rise again.


Remember when Cheney predicted, last March 16, that Americans "will, in fact, be greeted as liberators"? That was at least 545 dead Americans ago, and the count is still rising. Meanwhile, the United States is scheduled to turn power over to Iraqis - but to which Iraqis? Plans for elections seem to be on hold indefinitely, leaving U.S. forces with the mission of upholding an un-democratic government in a country sliding toward civil war.

Meanwhile, it's now clear that America's real enemies in the Muslim world - the folks who were doing the nuclear proliferating - were inside Pakistan, not Iraq. And they were dealing with other bad guys in North Korea, Iran, Malaysia and maybe even China. How could the Bush administration have been so blind? The trail has always led to Cheney. Bob Woodward, in his 2002 book, "Bush at War," offers this description of the vice president's role in the run-up to the Iraq war: "Cheney was beyond hell-bent for action against Saddam. It was as if nothing else existed." Such monomaniacal focus helped get us into the Iraq quagmire; it has hurt the country in its effort to confront true terror threats.

But for his part, Cheney is utterly unapologetic about the go-to-war decision; he shows no signs of having learned a thing in the last year. Which will lead voters to the obvious question: Will a re-elected Bush-Cheney administration pursue "regime change" in countries beyond Iraq?

Bush will never admit that he made a mistake in Iraq, but without Cheney on the ticket, voters will have some reason to believe that Bush policy would become less warlike in a second term.