The ugly Mr Cheney

Yup, our fearless Vice President Dick Cheney is consistent. He’s heartless, homophobic, belligerent and a shameless aristocratic stooge. But at least he’s consistent.

Recently it was reported that the Vice President has called out the democratic Congress for their efforts to bring about a designated end to the Iraq war. He says the Congress are “undermining” our troops with their “meddling” in the war. There are so many odious notes in the perfume of Cheney’s hawkery that I have difficulty deciding where to start. But let’s begin with the words themselves. “Undermining”? By his words Mr Cheney is defining the efforts to bring the soldiers home from being pointlessly slaughtered as an effort to cause harm to the soldiers…somehow. These are the words of a man whose political and family priviledge neatly allowed him to avoid any kind of soldierly risk. He vocally supported the Vietnam War, but applied for and successfully received five draft deferments. He was reported to have said, when asked point-blank In 1989 about his deliberate avoidance of service: “I had other priorities in the 1960’s than military service”.

Uh….okay. Now that I’m finished tearing my hair out…what about the hundreds of thousands of other Americans who were drawn or pressed into service, and lost their lives? What of their priorities? Were they less important than his own? Clearly in his opinion, yes. Like most of the Bush administration, he manipulated the law and used family connections to avoid the service which he now ‘supports’ with such vehemence.

This man has never raised a rifle in his life (unless you count a hunting rifle used to shoot a crony after three martinis) or suffered the inescapable terrors of combat that last for a lifetime and from which so many soldiers continue to suffer. Yet he is qualified to force our soldiers into a death trap for a pack of lies long since exposed as fabrications? Who is he to denounce the efforts of others to bring about the troops’ safety as quickly as can be contrived? How can his own efforts to not only keep the army in harm’s way but to abhor anyone else’s having a say in the matter be construed as anything but negligent at best, and criminal at worst. What, we might ask, are his actual motivations?

This leads to the last foul note of the Veep’s tone: morbid fear of invaded secrecy. This administration has from the very start fought to retain a cloak of mystery over everything it does, and has utterly discouraged anyone not in their chosen circle having acquaintance of the workings of the wars or any of the other pet projects (Energy Task Force, anyone?), much less any real say in their prosecution. The Republican Congress was for their part blissful with ignorance but this new Congress are rudely sticking their noses into matters over which Cheney and his puppet President have so far enjoyed near-complete hegemony.

Dick Cheney is a criminal, a liar, and a master manipulator. He supports nothing but his own agenda of subsidizing the oil industry and major campaign contributors. Why should any of us believe a word of his propaganda?