Griper Blade: The Mad Neocon

If you ask Dick Cheney, changes in counter-terrorism tactics by the Obama administration mean we're all going to die in a big terrorist attack. And that's what CNN's John King did this weekend; ask Dick Cheney. As always, he was less than convincing. I don't think Dick's capable of excitement and this makes him a pretty bad liar -- his warning of the inevitable destruction of the world's first modern democracy was delivered in the same tone of voice he might use to talk about a flat tire. The destruction of America's unfortunate, of course, but that's just the way things are. No use getting all riled up about it.

Maybe Dick's like Cassandra, who was able to predict the future, but cursed in that no one would believe her. Why knock yourself out with histrionics if no one's going to buy it?

Another possibility is that Dick's not especially worked up over our oncoming doom because he knows it's a bunch of crap. That'd put him in the same boat as most of us, who also aren't extremely concerned about Cheney's doomsaying either. Other than the wingnut right who'll believe anything, we're all pretty sure that Dick's a BS dispenser and we don't lose a lot of sleep over his warnings.

There's a third possibility; that Dick believes what he says because he's a dangerous lunatic prone to paranoia. Cheney's not especially animated at the thought of another 9/11 because he's used to living in a world where disaster is always right around the corner. His lack of excitement doesn't indicate a lack of earnestness, it's just the consequence of living in constant fear... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: Planet America

Things are looking good for former Bush administration officials. You wouldn't think this would be the case, looking at some of the news stories that have come out after they'd packed up their stuff and left the White House. But that'd be because you think rationally; that doesn't fly in DC anymore. Post-Bush, the nation's capital is still dominated by denial.

Sure, Bush was an abuser of the law and -- under the paranoiac Dick Cheney's guidance -- played a little fast and loose with legalities. But that doesn't mean he actually broke the law and, since we don't know for sure, we should probably forget the whole thing. When it comes to anti-Constitutional behavior, human rights abuses, and war crimes, it's probably best to ignore things -- no one wants to open up that whole can of worms. We used to say that no one was above the law, now we worry that upholding the law might be inconvenient or embarrassing. As it is now, some people are above the law -- but only if those people are members of the Bush administration.

Outside the US, people don't get this. They insist on bringing this stuff up over and over. Out in the big, wide world, they just don't get that the Bush administration gets a pass for anything and everything, because to do otherwise would be bad politics. Forgive and forget. Look forward, not backward. Let's move on. Some people don't get the simplicity of solving a problem by pretending it never happened.

Take David Crane, an international law professor at Syracuse University. As a former UN prosecutor, Crane is a citizen of that big, wide world and doesn't see things through the lens of political expediency and an insular American media. For Crane, the United States is not a separate planet in its own orbit and things that happen in one nation inform and set precedent for things that could -- and sometimes should -- happen in other nations.

In Crane's world -- which, admittedly, is that part of the world that isn't the US -- a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir means that other leaders could be held accountable for their crimes.

Crane says that the Bashir warrant "may even be extended to the former president George W. Bush, on the grounds that some officials in terms of his administration engaged in harsh interrogation techniques on terror suspects which mostly amounted to torture." Turns out that when something's a war crime for one leader, it's a war crime for all leaders.

Crazy, huh?... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]


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Griper Blade: The Man in the Iron Bubble

Maybe if we all take up a collection, we can raise enough money to bribe Dick Cheney to just go away. He may be the most politically tone deaf politician in recent history, acting as if everyone agrees that the Bush administration's policies have been dazzling in their genius. You wonder if Dick actually checks any news sources or if he just relies on a circle of fawning sycophants who only tell him what he wants to hear. If Bush was the boy in the bubble, Cheney's may be the model that bubble was based on.

Or maybe "bubble" is the wrong word. More like "armored iron sphere." Not only doesn't truth seem to reach Dick, but it seems to be actively repelled. Nothing sinks in, because no truth ever gets close enough to touch him. There's a certain segment of the population who seem to believe that you can force your beliefs to become fact. All it takes is a sincere and fervent faith that your view of the universe is correct and it magically becomes true, true, true. You see it with creationists, Holocaust-deniers, global warming naysayers, free market moonies, and other various and assorted species of flatearthers. No fact can get in, because facts are the enemy of faith. Every bit of evidence that your position is wrong -- no matter how damning or conclusive -- is rejected immediately. The logic of this illogical thinking is simple; you're right, therefore, any evidence to the contrary must be wrong. That's all the proof you need to keep believing that the Earth is in the thrall of UFO overlords or that Vladimir Putin is really a robot or that Dick Cheney is right.

Of course, it may just be that the former-VP is just slinging propaganda when he pretends to be as ignorant and stupid as he often seems to be. It may just be that Dick's familiar with reality, but uses lies and fearmongering to try to change our perception of it. It may just be that he's not wrapped in a cocoon of yes men.

But, as always when we're talking about neocons, I'll go ahead and take them at their word on what they believe and don't believe. I'll assume that Dick Cheney's not a lying sack, but just a stupid and ignorant man. Honestly, you can't be generous with these people -- it's completely impossible. Your choices are always "they're lying" or "they're stupid." Somewhere along the line, we've established that it's a terrible, terrible thing to call these guys liars, so we're left with stupid. And that's being charitable... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: It's Torture. We Tortured. There was Torture.

Let's start out with a few quotes.

I think on the left wing of the Democratic Party there are some people who believe that we really tortured.
--Dick Cheney

It's torture. It's a means of extracting information that I didn't even believe these people probably had. It's a means of making their lives more miserable.
--Chris Arendt, formerly stationed at Guantanamo

We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case [for prosecution].
--Susan J. Crawford, convening authority of military commissions

Some on the left may think "we really tortured" Dick, but those in the know do too. We've gotten to the point where simple denial isn't going to be good enough. "We don't torture" doesn't wash when everyone knows we do. When cases are thrown out of court because the accused was tortured, then there was torture. When people who work in the prisons say they saw torture, then there was torture. When people coming out of those prisons say they were tortured, then there was torture.

At this point, denial isn't just useless, but it's insulting to everyone's intelligence -- the denier's included. There was torture... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: A Little Free Advice

There's no shortage of people willing to give incoming president Barack Obama advice. Even Readers Digest has gotten in on the action with advice ranging from the jaw-droppingly hypocritical (Karl Rove advises him to "encourage debate") to the solid (former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says, "Restate the Case For U.S. Leadership Abroad"). I always say that free advice is often worth only what you paid for it. Luckily, the advisee's under no obligation to take it.

For a great example of worthless advise, we can turn to the reclusive Vice President Dick Cheney. Many believe Dick's the power behind the throne, the real president using Bush as a figurehead. I think it's probably a little more complicated than that, but the portrayal's probably true enough for brevity. George can barely manage the English language, so someone's doing all the mental heavy lifting in the Bush administration. That someone seems to be Dick.

The problem, of course, is that while Cheney's more articulate than Bush, he's not any smarter. He just thinks he is. If Cheney's as hands-on as everyone believes he is, then he shares the blame for what a freakin' disaster George W's two terms have been. For example, Cheney -- like the rest of the neocons gathered around the White House -- thought invading Iraq was the best idea anyone ever had. No matter what you think about the idea that Dick Cheney's the true leader of the Bush White House, everyone agrees that he plays the part of a top adviser, at the very least. So recent history shows that we can put Dick's free advice in the "worth what you paid for it" column.

To get an idea of just how poor Dick's advice can be, we can look at his interview with Rush Limbaugh yesterday, See, the vice president will not sit down with anyone who's likely to ask him difficult questions and no one else is guaranteed to throw softballs the way Rush did... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: KBR, a Typical Privatization Story

Today, our service men and women continue to inspire and strengthen our Nation, going above and beyond the call of duty as part of the greatest military the world has ever known. Americans are grateful to all those who have put on our Nation's uniform and to their families, and we will always remember their service and sacrifice for our freedoms.
- George W. Bush, Prayer for Peace, Memorial Day, 2008

There's "above and beyond" and then there's "above and way beyond." Bush, in his "prayer for peace," neglects to tell us just what America's fighting forces are expected to face. We know about the nuts with guns and RPG rounds. We know about the roadside bombs and sectarian violence. We even know about the heat. What we don't get a lot of coverage of is how they're expected to live. Turns out, that's a really big story. And, despite having broken yesterday, it's still not getting a lot of press.

Military Times:

A Georgia man has filed a lawsuit against contractor KBR and its former parent company, Halliburton, saying the companies exposed everyone at Joint Base Balad in Iraq to unsafe water, food and hazardous fumes from the burn pit there.

Joshua Eller, who worked as a civilian computer-aided drafting technician with the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing, said military personnel, contractors and third-country nationals may have been sickened by contamination at the largest U.S. installation in Iraq, home to more than 30,000 service members, Defense Department civilians and contractors.

“Defendants promised the United States government that they would supply safe water for hygienic and recreational uses, safe food supplies and properly operate base incinerators to dispose of medical waste safely,” according to the lawsuit, filed Nov. 26 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. “Defendants utterly failed to perform their promised duties.”

The details are horrific.We're told about suffering from "skin lesions that subsequently spread, filled with fluid and burst," about "vomiting, cramping and diarrhea," about "severe abdominal pain." Worse, the lawsuit tells the story of "a wild dog running around base with a human arm in its mouth. The human arm had been dumped on the open air burn pit by KBR."

KBR also reused ice from mortuary trucks. Troops were served ice that "still had traces of body fluids and putrefied remains in them..." That's above and beyond the call of duty. That's way beyond anything that should be expected of anyone...

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Griper Blade: Regrets, He's Had a Few

It's one of the most embarrassing moments from Bush's presidency. At a press conference in 2004, he was asked to name his biggest mistake since 9/11. For President Clueless, this was a stumper.

"I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it..." Bush said, hemming and hawing. "I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet."

He went on to name some things he didn't consider mistakes, then realized that he was drifting. "I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't... you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one," he said, leaving the question unanswered. It's ironic that standing in front of the cameras trying to figure out the least embarrassing answer was a mistake in itself. Politicians field these questions all the time -- the trick isn't to not answer, but to deliver a non-answer. There's a difference.

"No one scores 100% in this office and I'm sure you'd be able to find many of my critics who can answer that question better than I," a smarter Bush might've said. "But we need to look forward, not backward. Americans aren't interested in navel gazing, they're interested in solutions. Next question please..." Instead, Bush spent a long time trying to find a convincing, but unembarrassing answer -- there wasn't one...

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Griper Blade: Creating a New Mandate

I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.
-Franklin Roosevelt, comment to reformers

Yesterday, I wrote that the winners of the 2008 election were the people and that the winners shouldn't go home. We can count on Obama to work on the agenda he spelled out on the campaign trail, but there is still a place for activism after your guy wins. While the right is trying to launch an "Obama doesn't have a mandate" narrative, this seems doomed to failure to me, since it requires you to believe BS about what it is you want. I kind of think you're the expert there. You really don't need some jerk explaining to you what you think. As spin jobs go, this one seems a little pointless.

But Obama only has a mandate to do what he proposed in his presidential campaign; restoring tax fairness, reforming health care, rebuilding the economy, getting out of Iraq, investing in infrastructure and green energy, etc. These are the things we can expect the new president to address in his first term.

But there are issues that weren't brought up on the campaign trail. In discussing the president-elect, we tend to forget the sitting president. George W. Bush hid out during the campaign, an invisible president who avoided the public spotlight the way a vampire avoids sunlight. One big issue was fairly successfully avoided by John McCain and that was what the hell to do about George W. Bush and company...

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Griper Blade: What Did You Do Today?

It's one of those election day traditions. Every four years, a bunch of media remote trucks show up at Dixville Notch, New Hampshire to report the earliest election results in the nation. The polls open at midnight and everyone in town casts their votes right away. The results? Barack Obama by a nearly three to one margin. Every single Dixville Notchian -- or whatever the hell you call them -- has voted and the results of this 100% turnout is McCain 6, Obama 15. It's the first time in forty years that the town has chosen a Democrat. Only a gazillion more votes to go.

Dixville Notch always has 100% turnout -- I think if you don't show, the Children of the Corn come by your house and stone you. The media gods must be appeased. Nationwide, many have already cast their ballots in early voting. Voice of America reports that "more than 28 million people in 34 of the 50 states" have already voted. The turnout for election day is expected to be even bigger.

"We have statistics that we can point to right now that suggest that 28.8 million people have so far voted in this election," Michael McDonald, an elections expert at George Mason University in Virginia told VOA. "We are expecting 40 million people when all the numbers are compiled. And that will be about 30 percent of the 136 million people that we are expecting to vote." If that 136 million figure is correct, that would represent a turnout of 64% of all eligible voters.

"We may quite literally see turnout of a magnitude that we have not seen in a century of American politics," he said...

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Griper Blade: Vote or be Dicked

Some endorsements mean more than others. For example, I don't know who Jay Leno is voting for and that's probably because I'm just like everyone else -- I don't care. Celebrity endorsements don't mean too much, because anyone who looks to celebrities for guidance is probably not going to vote. Other endorsements may help a little, because it bumps the candidate up in the news rotation. The more a candidate is mentioned in a positive light, the better.

But some endorsements can't possibly be seen positively. For example, John McCain scored the less than coveted al Qaeda endorsement. Turns out that having the US dumping money and blood down the drain in Iraq is pretty much exactly what the terrorists want. "Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election," reads an internet posting from the organization. "[We] will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America."

But it seems that Americans are done with giving a damn what terrorists want. Good on us. They're freakin' insane. We should've stopped making decisions based on what crazy people want or don't want a long time ago. Al Qaeda's endorsement probably didn't do much to change anyone's mind. In fact, most media sources reported it as a "News of the Weird" piece, if at all. It wasn't the sort of thing that anyone really took seriously...

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Griper Blade: Not Even a Bump in the Road

I had to go to Fox News to find the headline, but I knew someone out there must've written one. I ran "Palin won debate" through Google News and came up with "Sarah Palin, McCain’s Secret Weapon, Wins the Debate," from Andrea Tantaros -- billed as a "Republican Political Commentator."

There, we learn that Sarah Palin is a "Lazarus in lipstick," who "won the debate because she exceeded expectations and connected with the American people on a personal level."

"Governor Palin breathed life into the McCain campaign and rectified public opinion about her competency, which was crucial," Tantaros writes. "Republicans, heave a sigh of relief." In other words, all she had to do was avoid drowning in a glass of water and the right would declare it a triumph of statesmanship. Low expectations do that for a candidate. But isn't this a confused metaphor? If Sarah Palin "breathed life into the McCain campaign," then she's Jesus -- McCain is Lazarus. You've got to be careful with those biblical references.

After watching the debate, I scored it to Biden. I wasn't alone. Early polling from CBS gave it to Biden, as well -- 46%-33% among undecided voters. In fact, that polling showed Biden nearly twice as successful as Palin at recruiting converts to the cause; while 10% said Palin convinced them to back McCain, 18% said that Biden brought them over to Obama. Still, 71% didn't commit either way...

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Griper Blade: The Trojan Trust

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Congress isn't authorizing the $700 billion bailout immediately! Good freakin' God, if they don't pass it five minutes ago, we're all doomed! If Wall Street doesn't get all that lousy debt bought up, we'll return to the stone age. We'll be reduced to hunter/gatherers, chasing down white tail deer with rocks and spears. The only thing we'll have to wear will be smocks made from our now useless money. What is the holdup? What is the holdup?!?

Sen. Chris Dodd:

It would do nothing in my view, to help a single family save a home, at least not upfront. It would do nothing to stop even a single CEO from dumping billions of dollars of toxic assets on the backs of American taxpayers. While at the same time do nothing to stop the very authors of this calamity to walk away with bonuses and golden parachutes worth millions of dollars. And it would allow the Secretary and his successors to act with absolute impunity without review of any agency or court of law. After reading this proposal, I can only conclude it is not just our economy that is at risk but our Constitution as well.

OK, so there's that. The bill authorizing the bailout, as written, is freakin' awful. The White House tried to buffalo Congress into passing the bill, trying to whip up panic and using the crisis as cover. They'd managed to pull that off once before, and we got the PATRIOT Act. They thought they could do it again.

But the problem with the Trojan Horse is that you can only use that tactic once, then everyone's on to it. If the Achaeans had shown up at the gates of another city with a big wooden horse a few years later, I doubt anyone would've said, "Cool! Let's bring it in."...

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Gustav Forces 'Substantial' Changes to RNC

clipped from www.cnn.com President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will not attend the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, because of Hurricane Gustav, White House press secretary Dana Perino said Sunday. In addition, "substantial" changes to the Republican National Convention program will be announced Sunday because of the storm, two Republican officials said. One option is delaying the planned Monday opening of the convention, both sources said, though one of the officials said "that has not been decided. We need a few more hours to look at all of the contingencies. But there will be some substantial adjustments." A senior McCain source said Saturday that officials were considering turning the convention into a massive telethon to raise money for the Red Cross and other agencies to help with hurricane aid. They are also hoping to get McCain himself to a storm-affected area as soon as possible. Other changes were being contemplated Saturday afternoon.

Making lemonade from meteorological lemons. Bush and Cheney were both big problems for the RNC this year, being about as popular as athlete's foot. People will be glad to see them elsewhere. The telethon idea reminds me of the blood donor bit from Primary Colors.

Still, Gustav demonstrates how sadly unprepared we still are -- there are still people living in FEMA trailers. Let's hope everything goes well for the Gulf States.

Cheney-Connected Contractor Sued for Slavery

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com A Washington law firm filed a lawsuit yesterday against KBR, one of the largest U.S. contractors in Iraq, alleging that the company and its Jordanian subcontractor engaged in the human trafficking of Nepali workers. Agnieszka Fryszman, a partner at Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, said 13 Nepali men, between the ages of 18 and 27, were recruited in Nepal to work as kitchen staff in hotels and restaurants in Amman, Jordan. But once the men arrived in Jordan, their passports were seized and they were told they were being sent to a military facility in Iraq, Fryszman said. As the men were driven in cars to Iraq, they were stopped by insurgents. Twelve were kidnapped and later executed, Fryszman said. The thirteenth man survived and worked in a warehouse in Iraq for 15 months before returning to Nepal.

KBR is one of the no-bid contractors in Iraq and is a former subsidiary of Cheney's old company Halliburton.

Can we just go ahead and say that neocons are literally evil now?

Access to the White House - For a Price

clipped from thinkprogress.org The Sunday Times reports Stephen Payne, a Bush pioneer and a political appointee to the Homeland Security Advisory Council, was caught on tape offering access to key members of the Bush administration inner circle in exchange for “six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency.” In an undercover video, Payne is seen promising to arrange a meeting for an exiled leader of Krygystan with Dick Cheney or Condoleezza Rice. (Not President Bush because “he doesn’t meet with a lot of former Presidents these days,” Payne says. “I don’t think he meets with hardly anyone.”) All it will take for him to arrange this high-level meeting, says Payne, is “a couple hundred thousand dollars, or something like that”: PAYNE: The exact budget I will come up with. But it will be somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush library. […]

The piece goes on:

The Times reports, “The revelation confirms long-held suspicions that favours are being offered in return for donations to the libraries which outgoing presidents set up to house their archives and safeguard their political legacies.” Bush loyalists previously said they had “identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry as potential ‘mega’ donors” to the Bush library.

Says Carpetbagger's Steve Benen, "[T]his kind of corruption is striking, even by the Bush administration’s standards."

White House Loses Secrecy Fight

clipped from rawstory.com A federal appeals court on Friday set back the White House's efforts to keep the names of its visitors secret. The Washington court threw out the government's appeal in the case in which a watchdog group is trying to find out how often prominent religious conservatives visited the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's residence. Despite the ruling against the White House, the decision does not necessarily mean that visitor logs will be subject to public disclosure. But appeals court Judge David Tatel said the document request from the private group is narrowly drawn and can be processed. The document request from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington would not require the president, Cheney or their staffs to sort through mountains of files, said Tatel. The burden "should prove minimal," Tatel added.

You've got wonder what they're trying to hide. Why should Cheney be embarrassed by visits from "prominent religious conservatives?"

Oops! Stupid question -- they're all freakin' crazy.

Nice to see sanity and transparency win out for once, though.

Cheney Censored Climate Testimony

clipped from www.mcclatchydc.com Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the White House demanded that all mention of how global warming harms human health be cut from testimony to Congress last fall, a former Environmental Protection Agency official who had a key role on climate policy said Tuesday. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., charged that the new information from the former official showed that the White House and Cheney were covering up the dangers of global warming in an attempt to block the EPA from taking action. The former EPA official, Jason Burnett, said in a letter to Boxer dated Sunday that the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Cheney's office wanted to cut any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change from testimony to Congress last October by Julie Gerberding, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At issue was the EPA's denial of a waiver to California allowing them to set stricter emissions standards. In fact, EPA staff supported the waiver, but it was denied anyway.

The Bush administration has had a long history of politicizing science -- which is basically denying facts... Which is basically lying.

Cheney Motivated by Iraq Oil

Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan appeared on CBC Radio One's The Current, where he told the host that Vice President Cheney wanted to invade Iraq for oil and personal gain.

clipped from thinkprogress.org Inquiring about Vice President Dick Cheney’s motivations to go to war, host Jim Brown noted that Cheney “doesn’t strike me as someone who would be particularly motivated by idealistic visions.” McClellan agreed, adding that Iraq’s oil occupied Cheney’s mind more than anything else: MCCLELLAN: Certainly you can’t discount the large oil reserves inside Iraq and how much that plays into our national security interests and I don’t think you can discount how much that plays into the vice president’s thinking. BROWN: Or his portfolio for that matter. MCCLELLAN: Or his portfolio for that matter, absolutely with that being a former chief executive officer for Halliburton and that certainly played heavily into his thinking more so I think than the idea of transforming the Middle East into a beacon of democracy.

McClellan's not really saying anything everyone doesn't already know -- Dick Cheney's a soulless, conscienceless, venal POS.

Can you believe we couldn't get this guy impeached? I'm beginning to think that Pelosi and Reid would've let Nixon off the hook.

Griper Blade: You've Been Robbed

Call it a parallel to George W. Bush's energy policies:

Associated Press:

A choir director who hopes prayer can bring down high gas prices is trying out his approach at some of the costliest pumps in the country.

Rocky Twyman of Washington, D.C., came to San Francisco over the weekend to stage a pray-in at a Chevron station. He is also calling on churchgoers to ask for God's intervention where he says politicians have failed.

Gas costing $4 a gallon or more has become common around the San Francisco Bay area.

For the record, I don't think that's going to work. Neither are any of Bush's ideas. The president's big idea on cutting gas prices is to drill in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR). The problems here are many. First and foremost, you've got to actually get the oil -- which involves laying roads, constructing buildings and rigs, finding the oil, pumping the oil, getting it to refineries, etc. You want immediate relief? This ain't it.

Second, there's about five minutes worth of oil up there. You've got to wonder if the oil used to get it will be worth the oil recovered. In 2004, Bush's own Energy Department determined that drilling in ANWAR would have almost no effect on prices...

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Griper Blade: The Solution to Iraq

I think Dick Cheney's probably a sociopath, which is the technical term for someone without any conscience. He's supremely self-centered, putting his ideas and his vision for the world above all else. A few days ago, Dick was interviewed by ABC News, where he'd gone to declare the occupation of Iraq "a major success." When interviewer Martha Raddatz pointed out "recent polls that show about two-thirds of Americans say the fight in Iraq is not worth it," the Big Dick was ready with a snappy comeback.

"So?"

Let's, for the sake of argument, assume that Cheney's just an arrogant prick with more self-love than brains. Let's assume he's just an idiot and not a sociopath. It's just a thought experiment.

What sort of thing would he have to tell himself late at night, to keep from sitting down on the edge of the bed with a gun in his mouth? What would it take for this man, who was absolutely essential in getting us into this needless war, to keep from feeling like a mass murderer?...

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