Nightmare on Cheney Street

[marmar]

via CommonDreams:



Published on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 by Foreign Policy In Focus
Nightmare on Cheney Street

by John Feffer


Horror movies usually follow the same script. The monster - whether genetically modified, abused as a child, or flown in from Alpha Centauri - picks off the frightened teenagers one by one. After many thrills and chills, the hero drives a stake through the heart of the beast. Finally, just as we're finishing off the last of our popcorn in relief, the not-quite-dead monster makes one last attempt to dispatch the hero. It fails, but not before we've dumped popcorn all over our laps.

If Wes Craven decided to make a horror movie out of the last year of U.S. politics, he would definitely cast Dick Cheney as the monster that can't be silenced. The former vice president is Leatherface, Jason, and Freddie Krueger all rolled into one: lawless, methodical, and unpredictable with firearms. He's had more sequels than Chucky: White House chief of staff, House minority whip, secretary of Defense, CEO of Halliburton, vice president, and now rogue pundit.

In the last presidential elections, the voters repudiated the Cheney legacy. But like Glenn Close in her final scene in Fatal Attraction, Cheney's not yet down for the count. As the various TV appearances and his speech last week at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) suggest, he's still got some fight in him.

Frankly, Barton Gellman's book Angler should have KO'd the man politically. Here's a guy who not only stage-managed the vice-presidential search for George W. Bush and then took the position himself, but also extracted confidential information during the search process that he subsequently used against his potential adversaries. Here's a guy who assembled the crack legal team (or was it a legal team on crack?) that provided the constitutional argument for expanding executive power, upending domestic and international law, and justifying torture. Here's a guy who created a real secret team inside the Bush administration that bypassed the State Department, Congress, and all normal procedures. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/27-6

[Mnemosyne]

1. May he receive what he has earned.

Hope it sucks to be you, Dick, you dick!

[JuniperLea]

2. Maybe we shouldn't stick around gawking at the stunned monster...

You know... that's how the dumbasses in the movie always get killed!