Letters to the Editor
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One Other Thing...
Great article. I would add that Cheney learned, from Watergate, that control of the media message was paramount.
What the rest of us learned from Watergate was the ramifications of the failures of leadership. What Cheney and Rumsfeld learned was that if they controlled the message they could get away with anything.
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Re:The long march of Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney: Full of shit in the seventies about the war in Vietnam, full of shit in the eighties with his wildly overestimated categorization of Soviet power and their ability to project that power worldwide, full of shit in the nineties with his Project for a New American Century, and finally, full of shit in the 21st century with his over-stated clarion calls about the abilities, will, and WMDs of a tinpot middle-east dictator in an oil-rich country.
When, oh when is someone going to indict this man for having a clear conflict of interest in the Iraq war, and the larger war on terrorism? When Cheney first took office, Halliburton stock was hovering somewhere around nine dollars a share for taking a beating in the Dresser asbestos lawsuits. Halliburton's stock is currently in the neighborhood of sixty dollars a share. Dick Cheney has four hundred thousand stock options, 400,000, just so you can see it in numerical terms. If he exercises his options at this point in time, buying for nine dollars a share, and selling for sixty dollars a share. He he will then spend 3.6 million dollars to buy shares which he can then sell for 24 million dollars, a profit of over 20 million dollars, and all because of Halliburton's no-bid war contracts pumping up their stock price over the last three years.
After reading this article, I have come to the following conclusion, Dick Cheney isn't Darth Vader, he's Senator Palpatine, and George W. Bush is still Luke Skywalker, which means the real Darth Vader was George H.W. Bush. Cheney has powerful aspirations, and let's just hope he never gets the chance to reveal the Emperor, or we as Americans are going to be in truly deep shit.
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Cheney
It does seem evident that Cheney is the central madman in the vast right wing conspiracy that is the Bush administration, and it sounds from the article as though his own self-aggrandizement is the point of all of these efforts. We can only hope that he eventually brings upon himself all the pain and grief that he has brought upon others. Liberals and moderates must learn from Cheney's career that we can never compromise with someone like him. He must always be smashed flat and smashed flat again and then smashed flat yet again until he goes away and never comes back (what a nice thought that is!)
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Dick Chaney and Halliburton
I have never quite comprehended why Chaney's relationship with Halliurton is de-emphasized with relation to Halliburton's profiteering from the Iraq conflict. He received a handsome severance payment when he left and retains a more modest stipend of $160,000/year for which he allegedly needs do nothing further for Halliburton. Are we supposed to believe he is impartial towards the Administration's relationship to Halliburton? Isn't it more likely that he retains some "gratitude" toward his past and present benefactor, even though he no longer has any formal obligations towards his former company? All sorts of irregularities are reported from time to time regarding Halliburton's billings to the government, yet we never hear anything about followup investigations or resolutions. Am I paranoid for suspecting that Chaney is a powerful factor in Halliburton's continued good fortune?
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From Nixon's Grave...
I have nothing of substance to add to this workmanlike summary of Cheney's dark career. I just want to pass on to this generation the words of one of my dear friends, now deceased, who had risked a great deal to oppose the Vietnam conflict in her day. When Nixon died, she said to me, "Somebody better put a stake through that man's heart, because he'll be back". And now here is his imperial heir, stronger and more cunning than ever, wily enough to seek power just behind the throne. What I want to know is, which of his disciples will pick up the banner when he is gone. That's the one we need to watch.
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Cheney
The article mentions Cheney's war with the Nelson Rockefeller whose brother built the World Trade Center. Google Bush and Rockefeller for more information on their multi-generational family history.
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Beyond a Right Wing Conspiracy
This fantastic piece of journalism connects many dots and lends evidence for what we intuit has happened to our country. It reveals a timeline that illustrates this cabal is beyond a right-wing conspiracy. What has happened to us is not on the continuum of ideological dialectics. This article describes a gathering dark cloud that has nearly enshrouded our country in the effort to engage in a coup d'etat. What is sickening is the complicity of "we the people".
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Final Answer
The article is brilliant. My only quibble is with the title. Since Blumenthal's sketch provides a clear, concise, and easy to follow answer to the question everyone has been asking, I think a more appropriate title would have been, "Why We're In Iraq. Final Answer."
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Bush isn't on the cabal, nor is diplomacy
Sydney Blumenthal has busted the operations of the white house. It�s a bust whose features include little of President Bush and more of Dick Cheney et. cabal. Blumenthal describes Bush�s role in the cabal as passive, which directly contradicts the campaign image of Bush, given us by Karl Rove. Since America voted for a seemingly tough president, it follows that they want one, but Bush�s recent trip to China lets them down and further proves Blumenthal correct. America must vociferously back Chinese dissidents and reporters who have been jailed for raising their voice. State-side, even the administration agrees with this. But upon arriving in Beijing, Bush choose conviviality over censure. He pacified President Hu Jintao with a joke upon his reception, and clowned for the cameras all weekend. His inability to keep a firm jaw in-person (when it counts) not only marks him for all history as a real weakling, but it highlights our diplomatic vulnerability under what Blumenthal has correctly identified as a Cheney-lead cabal.