Thursday, August 13, 2009
Since leaving office in January, former vice president Dick Cheney has lashed out at everyone around him like a taunted, caged animal. It’s fascinating to see a former number two break with presidential protocol and wage war against so many people at once. His targets have included President Obama, who Cheney accuses of “making us less safe.” Then, there’s the time-honored canard of the “far left” agenda. Allegedly in the process of writing his memoir in longhand on legal pads, Cheney seems unfazed about saving his thoughts for the book. But no one expected to see Cheney’s sharpest criticism saved for his boss of eight years, former president George W. Bush.
From the Washington Post:
“In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him,” said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney’s reply. “He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming. It was clear that Cheney’s doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times — never apologize, never explain — and Bush moved toward the conciliatory.”
Much of Cheney’s anger with Bush originates with Bush’s refusal to issue a presidential pardon of his close friend and alter ego, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Libby was Cheney’s chief of staff and he was convicted in 2007 of perjury and obstruction of an investigation of the leak of a clandestine CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity:
Cheney tried mightily to prevent Libby’s fall, scrawling in a note made public at trial that he would not let anyone “sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder.” Cheney never explained the allusion, but grand jury transcripts — and independent counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald — suggested that Libby’s false statements aimed above all to protect the vice president.
As impossible as it may seem, Dick Cheney’s wrath toward his former boss may accomplish something no one thought was possible: to make George W. Bush a sympathetic character — an unwilling victim of Cheney’s maniacal world view. It’s entirely possible that historians will grade Cheney as the best to ever happen to George W. Bush’s legacy.
From the Left 
Trying his own reputation in the court of public opinion is just bizarre to me. I think Cheney does it because he knows should he face prosecution for torture, it has an opportunity to dirty up the jury pool now, before he stands trial.
I have to respectfully disagree. Nothing Cheney or anyone else can say will ever make Bush a more sympathetic character to me. I detest both of these men to my bones and I wish they would just curl up and go away.
I disagree with feminazi and agree with Christopher.
Cheney’s constant outbursts about everyone reminds me of Hillary’s embarrassing display before the audience in the Congo.
It’s possible that Cheney just proved the long held rumor that he was in fact, the de facto president, hired by Poppy Bush to do all the heavy lifting so the kid could spend weeks and months out of public view at the ranch, drinking and doing drugs.
Increasingly, Cheney seems like the crazy one and Bush seems like a victim of Cheney’s rigid, world view.
Cheney belongs in prison. He’s guilty of torture and crimes against humanity. It’s a total miscarriage of justice that he’s out and roaming free. A totally despicable man.
You know what annoys me? Cheney will write his memoir and make more millions.
It isn’t enough that he sold his shares of stock in Halliburton for God only knows how much but there are millions to be made because some idiot publishing company is willing to pay him and consumers will no doubt fork over $39.99 to read his lies.
Cheney is an evil man. Why Obama gives him a “kitchen pass” and let’s him get away with torture, murder, obstruction of justice, and violating our rights by using government agencies to spy on its own people without reason is beyond me. I wonder how much of an accident that was when he peppered his buddy with the shotgun?
It would make life worth living to see him roast on a spit.
Is it true Lynne Cheney’s mini me, daughter Liz Cheney, is running for Congress? So, the Cheney legacy lives on. At least Hitler didn’t have kids.
Bush and Cheney both belong in prison.
The “brains” behind Bush really are scrambled!
If memory serves, George Bush wanted his old college pal Tommy Thompson to be his veep. I guess Bush imagined an aging fraternity in the White House.
Anyway, it was Poppy Bush, who like many things in Bush’s life, overrode his son and said Cheney would serve as vice president. Cheney had been loitering about the halls of Washington power going back to the Nixon administration. He knew where all the bodies are buried.
The executive branch during Bush II’s time in Washington has Cheney’s fingerprints all over it. From foreign policy to national security and who headed up each department. Bush was a mere figurehead. Just like Reagan was a figurehead for Poppy Bush.
Now out of office and largely discredited and disgraced, Cheney is scapegoating the kid.
Cheney is an indefensible swine.
I would give anything for him to just take his bitch of a wife and his millions and move to Paraguay or whatever nation gives safe harbor to aging despots from the USA.
Cheney helped draft our torture policy, revealed the identity of a CIA undercover agent for a political vendetta and orchestrated and pushed the reasons to go to war with Iraq leading to the deaths of more than 4,400 Americans and one million Iraqi citizens. Yet, even out of office and nearing 70 years of age, the fat fucker still keeps yapping and yapping and yapping. Why doesn’t a lightening bolt hit him in the ass while he’s out playing golf?
Rehabbing Chimpy is exactly what this is. Unka Dick will end up being the Lynndie England of the power brokers, the one bad apple.
America is so fucking stupid.
I would pay $250 for a front row seat to see Cheney dropped into a pit with hungry Komodo dragons.
How sweet it is………………………., 🙂 🙂 😉
Why would anyone pay anything to read what Cheney writes?