Dick Cheney Is A Cowardly, Gullible Fool
I love this take on Dick Cheney by Josh Marshall:
This [Cheney] is someone who not only organized and seemingly directed a policy of state-sponsored torture. He did it in large part to get people to admit to crankish conspiracy theories he got taken in by by a crew of think-tank jockeys in DC whose theories most even half way sensible people treated as punch lines of jokes. So it’s Torquemada or 1984 but only after getting rescripted by Mel Brooks.
This is an extremely gullible man who has just come off being the driving ideological force in an administration that most people can already see produced more fiascos and titanic, self-inflicted goofs than possibly any in our entire history. By any standard the guy is a monumental failure — and not one whose mistakes stem in some Lyndon Johnson fashion from tragic overreach, but just a fool who damaged his country through his own gullibility, paranoia and bad judgment. Whatever else you can say about the Cheney story it ain’t Shakespearean.
Investigative reports have shown that Dick Cheney was obsessed with Iraq. It was reported in Ron Suskind’s One Percent Doctrine that Cheney had CIA resources chasing down some crackpot link between Saddam Hussein and the 1993 WTC bombing, while ignoring real human intelligence that showed there was no WMD program in Iraq. Cheney’s obsession led him to trust the wrong people, like Ahmad Chalabi and his dishonest, alcoholic cousin Curveball. We went to war based on these bogus allegations and many people have died as a result.
One reason that Josh’s take resonated so strongly with me is the psychological aspect of the observation. I was taught that what you say and do is a reflection of what you’re thinking, and if you say something a lot it’s because you’re unsure about it. In other words, you don’t have to tell everyone you are something, you just are. Only insecure people talk about how smart they are, how rich they are or how good-looking they are. For example, you’ll never see this in an interview with Bill Gates:
Gates: I’m very rich. Have you noticed how rich I am? I’m super-duper rich.
Cheney was telling us in his dishonest speech, that he’s uncertain about the course of action he took. He knows he did things wrong, and he’s using a lot of bluster to cover it. In fact, he was still pushing the Iraq-al Qaida link, years after it’s been debunked. His dishonest rhetoric like “we only waterboarded 3 detainees” is some pretty clever parsing, but we know a whole range of torture techniques were used on prisoners, some of whom were victims of mistaken identity.
Cheney is a private citizen now, and he has every right to criticize the current government. I don’t buy into this B.S. that ex-politicians have to put up and shut up. Cheney needs to be judged not only by what he’s saying, but what he’s not saying.
how good-looking they are.
you are now my enemy
UI, I’ve met your enemy. I don’t think insecurity is a problem. lol
On the Cheney front, the Josh Marshall post is an interesting read. I can see his points, although I had not really reached his conclusions. My take on Cheney’s motivations ranged from childish (avenge Bush I), to simple greed (let’s corner the oil market and ensure our friends stay wealthy for the next 50 years), to evil (world domination for the next 100 years).
It’s always the same with you liberals every conservative is out for person gain. You liberals are just so selfless….what a bunch of hypocrits
“we know a whole range of torture techniques were used on prisoners”
Well, firstly…”a whole range WAS used”…but I digress, you are just following in the speaking style of our Benevolent Leader.
Citation please?
Cowards run from fights. Can it be argued that Cheney is gunning for a fight?
Jim, everyone, conservative or not, is out for personal gain on some level. That’s ok. Capitalism and ethics are not mutually exclusive.
Starting a war on false pretenses to steal natural resources is unethical. Torturing people to obtain bogus intelligence that creates the false pretenses gets into Darth Vader, evil empire type unethical.
A lot of techniques were used – extreme hot and cold, stress positions, psychological torture (spiders in the box with KSM), sensory deprivation (which turned Jose Padilla into a “piece of furniture), nudity and sexual humiliation are among the techniques we know.
Cheney is extremely dishonest. The so-called EITs were ended in 2004, when Abu Ghraib broke. So, it’s dishonest to say that Obama ended them. If they were so useful, Cheney would have kept them going, wouldn’t he. Cheney knows what he was ordering was wrong, why else would he be so afraid of people finding out about them.
Cheney only wants to have a “debate” on his own terms. He’s trying to shut down an investigation. If he was so confident of the rightness of his actions, he could have declassified some of those documents when he was VP. Instead he just refers to some mystery document he can’t produce.
He’s using fear-mongering, rumor and innuendo. These are not the actions of someone who believes in his own rightness.
DV,
I thought we had a special relationship. Does it end so suddenly?
“Cheney is a private citizen now, and he has every right to criticize the current government. I don’t buy into this B.S. that ex-politicians have to put up and shut up. Cheney needs to be judged not only by what he’s saying, but what he’s not saying”
No thanks, the problem is not what Cheney says or doesn’t say it is the actions of an incompetent President named Obama.
Mike Protack
And here you are, sharing your special understanding of incompetence with the rest of us. Your party needs that more than we do, guy.