Reminder: This man is somehow not in prison and is happily giving interviews to WIN THE MORNING.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says President Barack Obama is the worst commander in chief the United States has ever had, in view of the recent Iranian nuclear agreement.
Asked about the deal by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, the former vice president said the Iranian regime is “one of the most radical” in history and that “Obama’s about to give them nuclear weapons.”
“I vacillate between the various theories I’ve heard, but you know, if you had somebody as president who wanted to take America down, who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world and reduce our capacity to influence events, turn our back on our allies and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what Barack Obama’s doing,” Cheney said when asked whether he thought the president is naïve or something else.
Funny, I would have made the same argument about Shrub/Penguin. So would millions of others in the Middle East, except they’re dead as a result of these two meatballs.
Why is Dick Cheney tolerated in polite society and not repeatedly smashed in the balls with a mallet made out of quantum lava bees whenever anyone sees him? The guy who ignored intelligence to get us into one war and falsified intelligence in order to take us into another does not get to make judgments on who is the worst anything of anything.
Put him in stocks, place the stocks in Baghdad’s largest public square, hand out three tons of moldy durians, and play O Fortuna over loudspeakers. The people will figure out what to do from there.
Baud
Because he makes liberals angry, and polite society likes people who make liberals angry.
Mustang Bobby
The only good thing about the tenure of George W. Bush as president is that he didn’t die while in office.
MattF
My view about Cheney is that his soul is already in Hell– what we see here is just a simulacrum for whatever loathsome creature happens to be tormenting him.
Zandar
@Baud: Society sucks and is bad. :(
Baud
@Zandar:
That’s why I’m always calling myself a sociopath.
Betty Cracker
It’s as if Mohammad Atta returned from hell to criticize Capt. Sully Sullenberger’s landing techniques.
aimai
@Betty Cracker: Perfection.
I would also just like to add that “Frankly” and the overuse of the word “fundamentally” are two of Cheney’s tells that everything he says afterwards is going to be a lie.
ThresherK
Are we not worried that Politico will never get the taste of that Dick out of its mouth?
Baud
@aimai:
And before
debbie
Please, if Kissinger’s still walking free, how can anyone else be held accountable?
Roger Moore
@Mustang Bobby:
I’m not sure I agree 100%. It’s not as if being in charge directly would have substantially increased Cheney’s power, since he was already calling the shots. But the whole reason Cheney wanted to be the power behind the throne is that he was loathsome enough that he’d have a hard time getting elected. If W had died before the 2004 election, Kerry might well have won the election, which would have been a net very good thing.
NotMax
Pace Rick Blaine.
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of time, history will incinerate him like a cheap hot dog over a campfire.
Brutusettu
Does Cheney have a book coming out soon?
weaselone
Exactly who is it that dick thinks is supporting our side in these negotiations? Or do we only count major recipients of our foreign aid as allies?
biff diggerence
Absolutely right about mallet strikes to his desiccated testes. This man needs to be put in the ground by the five people who’ll attend his wake.
fdrlincoln
Cheney is, literally, a murdering torturing war criminal who should have been sentenced to hang by Nuremberg rules. Failing that we can do “life” such as his may be, in prison in the Hague. Or we can extradite him to Iraq and let their justice system take care of him.
Phylllis
I don’t know why the media isn’t bored with Cheney by now. Why bother to interview him? Just write Cheney continues to sing ‘I’m ‘Enery the eighth I am, I am’.
biff diggerence
@Baud: Who the fuck are you, Judge Smales?
Baud
@biff diggerence:
I googled Judge Smales, and Google changed it to Judge Smails from Caddyshack. Is that who are referring to?
biff diggerence
@Baud: Yes. His little speech to Danny about “polite society”. Did I miss the irony in your first post?
Baud
@biff diggerence:
I…I don’t know. But I’m suddenly in the mood for a Fresca.
Gene108
I almost feel sorry for the media. On the one hand you have Democrats, who behave like a typical political party, on the other hand you have modern Republicans who use Lenin’s tactics to grab power and evaluate success.
Republicans no longer view good governance as a reducing unemployment or raising the standard of living, but rather how closely Republicans can move the Conservative Revolution forward.
Cheney’s ( and Bolton’s) existence as VSP, is just another facet of pushing the Revolution forward, results be damned because Cheney and company failed so miserably with non-proliferation with N. Korea, but the Revolution demands “America show strength” results be damned.
If the media called Repyblicans on their dedication to their Revolution over results, they may have to do actual work and abandon access to free Republican cocktail-weenies.
Patrick
Dick Cheney has been wrong about just everything related to foreign policy, let alone the Iraq war. Yet, he is being interviewed for his “take” on what we should do.
Here’s the question: Do our enemies give a big megaphone to their former leaders who were wrong on past policies? Or do they, unlike us apparently, demote them (ie no more meaningless interviews)?
Comrade Dread
For the record, you soulless asshole, the UK, France, and Germany are our allies who participated with us in the negotiations and are perfectly fine with the deal. China, while not an ally, is our largest trading partner.
Israel is not a treaty ally and is simply a client state that cooperates with us when it is in their interest and spies on us or shoots the occasional US Navy ship out of the water when our policies are not in their perceived interest.
At this point, I’m more inclined to trust the British and especially the French who refused to join us in the little war you and Bush the Lesser lied everyone into, than I am the Israeli government.
Cervantes
@MattF:
Funny you should say that!
@aimai:
I can’t think of even one significant truth uttered by Cheney or Bush between 2000 and 2008.
Ryan
“Why is Dick Cheney tolerated in polite society and not repeatedly smashed in the balls with a mallet made out of quantum lava bees whenever anyone sees him?”
Because, and I am sorry folks, but I did not choose journalism as a profession. I opted for academia instead.
Davis X. Machina
Cheney-o-latry is an extreme version of the Cult of the Savvy.
It’s very important, if you’re a VSP, to not take that whole democracy-governing-yourself-common good seriously, or to be seen taking it seriously.
Cheney’s the opposite in human form of whatever the better angels of our nature might be.
Throwing in with him shows just how realistic, janded, disillusioned, you are.
Mike J
The funny thing is, people have said for years that the actions Bush/Cheney took were exactly those an Iranian agent would have taken. Destruction of Iran’s biggest opponent and handing the country over to people backed by Tehran (because they were the most anti-Saddam).
My guess is Cheney heard this argument and is just using his old trick of turning the attacks against him against his enemies.
chopper
nine out of ten blood-gargling psychopaths prefer to bomb.
Svensker
@Betty Cracker:
Ha ha ha.
Also, “quantum lava bees”? Don’t know what they are but they sound buzzy.
MattF
@Cervantes: Hah– appears to be an established trope. So, you’re saying I don’t actually need to put my fingers into an electric socket to connect with the Zeitgeist?
nancydarling
@Phylllis: I do find a small comfort in the fact that Hugh Hewitt is only a third or fourth tier (if that) conservative gasbag.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Baud:
“I didn’t want to give him life, but I felt I owed it to him.”
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
One could argue quite easily that Cheney is a worse person than Atta was — for one thing, Atta did his own dirty work — but why bother? The comparison is wonderful the way you wrote it!
jake the antisoshul soshulist
I take your point about polite society, but he was on Hugh Hewitt’s show.
kc
Yes. Somehow.
g
“I vacillate between the various theories I’ve heard,
Yes, I’m sure he does. One day, he’ll read Newsmax. The next day he’ll read Gateway Pundit. And then Michelle Malkin will say something that gets his attention.
Cervantes
@MattF:
Well, that’s how I do it!
kylefresh
@Steeplejack (tablet): “I’ve sent boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didnt want to do it; I felt I owed it to them.” -Smails
japa21
@Cervantes: Well, the Dick did say, shortly after 9/11, that we would have to go to “the dark side”. Intelligent people knew exactly what he meant. The media just thought it was cute.
PaulW
Cheney still has his friends in the media corporate world who will eagerly invite him on because he validates their existence.
The media elites exist in the same epistemic closure bubble as the political elite, which is why they easily ignore the cries that Cheney is a lying war criminal from those outside that bubble. And they must dread the possibility that if Cheney is truly ever confronted with the reality of his crimes, they too will have to answer as accessories during or after the crimes were committed.
We really need our allied nations to charge Dick Cheney with war crimes as most of the sins of the Iraq invasion and occupation came from his office. We need extradition requests up the wazoo for his criminal hide and for those who aided and abetted him. There is no political will within the United States to make this bastard answer for the thousands he maimed on his orders, for the rivers of blood he’s spilled for his self-importance and greed.
TriassicSands
The most odious politician in American history (move over Joe McCarthy–you were a corrupt POS, but you weren’t responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings) has a choice: Obama’s approach to Iran could be based on a different opinion (from Cheney’s) about what keeps the US safe or it could be because Obama hates America and wants to bring it to its knees. What a surprise Cheney opts for the latter.
The idea that this monster is still spewing his nauseating bile is sickening. How did he get a heart transplant — he should have been last on any rational/humane list. Isn’t there some way to strip him of his citizenship and exile him to N. Korea?
Zandar
@kc: #LookingForward
@Svensker: Well yes, lava bees. Like bees, only 6,000C and cranky. Only quantum lava bees, so that groups of bees can be compelled by atomic forces to form into shapes like, say, mallets for ball-smashing.
Very complex, requires a lot of energy for magnetic containment of the quantum lava bees, but hey, still cheaper than the cost of Cheney’s wars.
SRW1
@Comrade Dread:
Comrade, Gerhard Schröder is very much non-plussed what you did to his nationality there. On the other hand, Tony Blair sends a note expressing his deepest gratitude.
Cervantes
@japa21:
In that statement, it was the “have to” that was the lie.
Cervantes
@Zandar:
I hear the Iranians are working on it.
Elie
All of this bluster just shouts to me of a man who is scared of the judgment of history and downright resentful that Obama has successfully challenged the world order that he and the neocon minions so destructively but effectively put in place. The move on Iran and the other changes such as ACA have been put in place against a gradient of unparalleled opposition. That opposition has been showing itself as increasingly strident and corrupt – both in its affiliations with the corporate masters and the sheer lunacy of its utter contempt for the rule of law as well as for the rights of average citizens. These people are becoming more and more extreme and I believe this cannot be sustained. I don’t know what’s next, but this screed penned by this evil corrupt and spiritually ill person is not worthy of our attention. To borrow someone’s comment from another blog, I hope that his next book is “How to get into a Coffin”.
Elizabelle
Why are we giving this asshole a thread and using brain cells to discuss him? (I speak of Cheney, not of Zandar.) Cheney is a failed former leader, who drew no insight from his experience, apparently, but too much of our media serves up controversy rather than truth or accountability.
Could we have an open thread?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: It depends how you interpret “have to.” Was it necessary for our security? No, of course not. Was it what the nature of Cheney and his henchmen to go there given the slight excuse? Unfortunately, yes. It’s who they are.
JCJ
@Comrade Dread:
Wait, I get confused on which one is the client state. I thought it was the other way around.
Elizabelle
@Elie: Truth. History will not be kind to Dick Cheney.
Why must we give him a thread?
CONGRATULATIONS!
Sorry Dickie, that was your old buddy and mentor, Richard Milhaus Nixon.
Elie
@Betty Cracker:
Well said….
JCJ
Since it seems unlikely that Cheney or the others will ever be charged with war crimes would it be possible for President Obama to issue a blanket pardon to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, et al in a master stroke of trolling on his last day in office?
Elie
@Elizabelle:
I hear ya…. agree
Cervantes
@Elie:
If he ever writes that book, it will be about grave-robbery.
Booger
Moldy durians? I’m not sure even Darth Cheney deserves that.
Keith G
A cur dog growls. Film at 11.
Elie
@Cervantes:
True. But I want him 6 ft under, Lord willing. I don’t like to wish people dead… its just bad Karma – but when its God’s time.. … I hope that is sooner rather than later…
Yatsuno
@JCJ: Dubya Cheney et al will still have massive trouble travelling internationally. From what I understand both have been charged in Spain and if they set foot outside of the US or Canada (fuck you Harper!) they will be arrested. In a way they are prisoners as both were quite the international jet setters before this.
@Elie: Indeed. Graves don’t piss on themselves.
(Watch the fucker get cremated and scattered just to piss off libruls one last time.)
Peale
@Comrade Dread: Yep. Israel and the US have lost a net nothing from the sanctions that were put on Iran to get them to the table to discuss their nuclear program. We didn’t have much trade going on with them at all. Our actual allies did. It is actually quite good considering that Germany, France and the UK actually don’t face a threat from Iran, that they took our side and decided that Iran should not simply be allowed to develop a bomb.
After reading about Tom Cotton and this Dick Prick statement, it is a wonder that we actually have allies left in the world.
Cervantes
@JCJ:
He could issue such pardons — even if not asked to do so — but in Burdick v. United States (1915), the Supreme Court held that (among other things) accepting a pardon is tantamount to admitting guilt; and (therefore) that no one can be forced to accept a pardon.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t believe that even they had to; they wanted to.
Peale
@Cervantes: Can we issue them in such a way that they have to sue the government to prevent their own pardons? If we can’t try them for their crimes, can we try them for their innocence?
Cervantes
@Peale:
If you’re determined, try this.
hoodie
My wife has a childhood friend of the wingnut persuasion who worked in the State Dept. during Jim Baker’s reign. She once told my wife that she felt that Cheney was the quintessential “kindly old grandfather.” Makes you wondered how fucked up her childhood was. Understanding the perceptions of others can be difficult, and often impossible. I guess Cheney arouses some hidden longing for a particular type of father figure, even though Grandad is a sociopathic asshole and crazy as a shithouse rat.
Elizabelle
@hoodie: Do you think something happened to Cheney cognitively and he might have changed?
Because I don’t see Scowcroft or any of Dad Bush’s keepers letting Cheney anywhere near Junior if they knew the damage RBC would do. They thought they were getting a James Baker and ended up with — what?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Elizabelle: Yes. No question. Like a great deal of other folks, he took 9/11 as a personal attack on him, and I genuinely think he lost his shit afterwards.
JoyceH
@Booger:
Or even fresh durians! I tried a durian once…
Mike in NC
When he dies, Cheney’s corpse should be dumped in a landfill somewhere in Wyoming and not buried with honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
Cervantes
@Elizabelle:
Changed? When?
He was an opportunistic war-monger even as a young aide to Rumsfeld in Ford’s White House, in ’74.
sfHeath
There’s the cabinet secretary character in the novel World War Z that did more than anyone else in the novel to enable the zombie apocalypse and waste soldier’s lives. The character ends up shoveling shit in rural Texas, IIRC. In my mind, I’ve always cast Cheney in the role. But I distinctly remember that being the least believable part of the book: that “polite society” would exile Cheney for any reason. Look at Kissinger, for f’s sake. America: once an elite, always an elite.
hoodie
@Elizabelle: Possibly, or at least some things he kept suppressed during the Baker years. Cheney may have slipped in under the radar and got close with GWB because Jeb was the anointed one. From what I understand, it was known that Cheney was a bit of a rightwing nutjob (voting against MLK day, etc.), and was generally kept out of the action while Baker was running the show, but he was loyal and generally behaved himself. He really let his freak flag fly after he become VP and Baker lost influence in relation to wackos like Cheney and Rumsfeld. I’ve known people who have some really off the wall beliefs that they hold very deeply but generally keep under wraps because they fear negative feedback. They can fool you for years, but eventually they come out.
Culture of Truth
What an evil fucker. Even by his own standards, he allowed terror attacks on America, screwed up Afghanistan, let bin Laden get away, botched basic intelligence, misled the American people, started a war by mistake, destabilized the middle east, begat a civil war, failed to provide Americans with adequate troops or proper body armor, empowered al-Qaeda and ISIS, allowed Iran to progress on a nuclear weapon, and allowed North Korea to build a nuclear bomb.
Elie
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
He also might have “pump head”. He has been on cardiac by-pass during his multiple heart surgeries and trust me, it is not an uncommon complication. The results can be minor or severe and resemble a stroke that changes a person’s personality. I am definitely giving him the benefit of the doubt but my guess is “ol gramps” is probably a bear to live with and the charming nature we see him display here is shared with others close to him as well. Some of that might come out once he is safely in his coffin, surrounded by garlic with a stake through that shrunk up heart of his.
Sherparick
@Baud: Bingo! Have you notice how much both he and Rush resemble “trolls.” All I can say Dick, is that Obama has not managed to let 3,000 Americans get killed on a single day like you did on 9/11.
Sherparick
@Elie: No, he has always been an evil jerk. Go back to see the games he and Rumsfeld played in the late Nixon and Ford administrations.
Cckids
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating; imagine the devastation of knowing your loved one’s heart went to keeping Cheney alive.
Lihtox
Eric Holder should announce plans to investigate Cheney for war crimes; that might help move Lynch’s nomination along.
Frankensteinbeck
A) Cheney is a neocon true believer, and a serious narcissist. He is absolutely convinced he was right about Iraq and everything else. He cannot fail, he can only be failed. This is the guy who co-wrote a paper about how conquering, oh, Iraq under any flimsy pretext would create peace and prosperity and Westernism in the Mideast because everyone would admire how manly we are. He’s thoroughly pissed that we keep failing him.
B) National media is a social group dominated by Republicans. They like war and screwing the poor. They also don’t know why we keep failing him.
C) Nobody is going to charge him with war crimes. Well, some tiny countries he would never visit anyway might. A look at Google tells me that as of the middle of last year (and there’s one from last month), the international courts specifically have no warrants for his arrest. No first world country is going to slap America in the face so hard as to arrest a former vice president. Why should they? Seriously, why? They have their own issues to be concerned with. Some independent international groups want Cheney’s head, but the countries they’re in gain nothing, not even sleeping better at night, from meaninglessly insulting the US. It’s not going to happen.
D) There was never, ever any chance of trying him successfully in the US. Congress retroactively made his actions legal. Whether it’s legally allowed to try a former president/vice president for their policies is undecided law. What do you think the Supreme Court would have decided? That the men they bent the law to put in office were guilty, or that everything they did was legal from now on, officially?
E) God, I wish I was wrong about either of those two things. The man is a war criminal by any reasonable standard, and his (and Bush’s) punishment would be a good thing. Unfortunately, that’s in the same line as ‘It would be a good thing if the entire GOP realized they only dislike Obama because of racism, and work with us to make the country a better place.’
Chris
@Sherparick:
There’s a moment in Colin Powell’s biography about Cheney’s conduct in the Gulf War that I found revealing.
Basically, Gorbachev had some hope of brokering an agreement with the Iraqis that would involve them pulling out of Kuwait (this was just a few days before the ground war began). The entire H. W. Bush cabinet is in a quandary… not over whether it’s a good idea or whether it’s genuine, but over how to reject it without alienating Gorby. They really wanted their war.
Colin Powell eventually hits on the idea of agreeing to Gorbachev’s proposal, but putting a deadline of a few days on it – “sure, we’ll agree to an agreement, as long as the Iraqis are out basically instantly.” The consensus goes around the room, and Cheney (then Secretary of Defense) finally agrees to it, but “looks like he’s been handed a dead rat.” Not enough that war is basically guaranteed – even the slightest empty gesture towards resolving the conflict without further bloodshed turned his stomach.
All that to say that yeah, the guy really is an utter psychopath and pretty much always has been. (Though no one really comes off looking glorious).
Lurking Canadian
@debbie: I suppose the fact that Cheney does not hold a Nobel Peace Prize can be read as progress, of a sort.
The Golux
@Yatsuno:
I will not piss on his grave; that would be disrespectful.
To my piss, that is.
jc
The problem is that individuals have to see for themselves that they’re being lied to, but the lie is society-wide. The cherry-picked media catapult Cheney’s vile lies half-way around the world before the truth has a chance to get its boots on.
mr_gravity
I was at Annapolis in 2006 when Cheney spoke to the graduating class. I remained resolutely in my seat as the crowd stood in standing ovation.
I basked in the contemptuous glare of those around me.
It was one of the proudest moments of my life.
brantl
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Cheney is the quintessential brick-shitter, he used to carry a hazmat suit around with him wherever he went. He’s as paranoid as a duck in a Chinese restaurant.
Rand Careaga
@Mike in NC: Couldn’t we just use an existing Superfund site?
Tree With Water
“Why is Dick Cheney tolerated in polite society..”?
Because congressional democrats- a significant percentage of whom collaborated with the administration in unleashing war- refused to face facts and abdicated their Constitutional responsibilities to investigate and, if need be, impeach the Executive Branch for their crimes. Superfluous to note, those ranks include Hillary Clinton.
To this day I remain amazed that democrats who know the score; who know this country was lied into waging war (and my guess is that includes 90% of the rank and file) remain committed to the political careers of those who abdicated that responsiblity. They support politicians who look them straight in the eye and claim that good people were misled by faulty information. And that is a lie.
Paul in NC
The Hague. Then Spandau to consort with the ghost of Rudolf Hess.
Citizen Alan
The best description of the Left Behind series is “Christian revenge snuff porn.”
RaflW
When broderists complain about the lack of civil discourse in society, why isn’t Dick “vampire” Cheney trotted out as a fine example of a snarling, uncivil jackal?
Chris
I somehow missed this when I first read,
Christ.
I don’t even know what he’s referring to as “the regime,” but it’s wrong either way. Does he mean the presidency? There’s no way Ahmadinejad would’ve lent himself to even the pretense of a nuclear agreement as Rouhani has, and he was far more of a radical domestically as well, to the point that he and his network of allies in the paramilitary agencies were seen with a lot of discomfort among more established elites – including, ultimately, the Supreme Leader.
Or does he mean the Supreme Leader? Again, it’s hard to imagine by what metric. Khomeini was the radical who actually started the revolution, had some hopes of exporting it, and installed a regime where there was pretty much no law other than his word. It’s under Khamenei in the last 25 years that Iran’s gone from its “Lenin” stage (revolution!) to its “Brezhnev” stage (a new generation of elites and apparatchiks emerging, establishing and entrenching themselves). The current regime’s main interest is to keep its power and privileges, with pretty much everything else coming second. That’s part of the reason Khamenei & co grew uncomfortable with Ahmadinejad eventually.
Cervantes
@Chris:
Rule of thumb: Every word Cheney et al. utter is a lie.
Epicurus
I have often fantasized about meeting Darth, and inviting him to lunch. Microwave burritos, at the 7-11. “Here, Dick, lean in a little bit closer to the magentron.” While I will not go so far as to wish him dead, I expect to take great pleasure in reading his obituary. (Yes, I stole that line, but it’s too perfect not to use here.)