Dick Cheney is the greatest threat to our security

Dick Cheney Really Is That Bad

By Scott Ritter, Truthdig

Posted on August 24, 2007, Printed on August 24, 2007

http://www.alternet.org/story/60474/

Karl Rove, interchangeably known as "Boy Genius" or "Turd Blossom,"

has left the White House. The press conference announcing his decision

to resign has been given front-page treatment by most major media

outlets, but the fact of the matter is the buzz surrounding Rove's

departure is much ado about nothing, especially in terms of coming to

grips with the remaining 16 months of the worst presidency in the

history of the United States.

Rove is a domestic political marauder, the personification of a

conservative movement which lacks a moral compass and has a complete

disregard for facts. The master of exploiting mainstream America's

predilection for news-as-entertainment, under which the likes of

Rupert Murdoch can manufacture headlines out of thin air, Rove helped

turn "fair and balanced" into a national joke which everyone laughs at

but few actually comprehend.

Rove served as the maestro of a political-smear orchestra composed of

such intellectually challenged muckrakers as Sean Hannity, Rush

Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, manipulating the NASCAR/professional

wrestling crowd's addiction to seedy gossip in an effort to maintain

the all-important 51 percent majority needed to win elections.

Perhaps if the Democratic Party had possessed a semblance of

organization and cohesion (not to mention a post-Clinton message that

could be sold to a majority of America), then Rove would be but a

footnote in history, known simply as the man who helped the worst

governor in the history of Texas get elected. Even the self-

destructive campaign run by Al Gore in 2000, in which he distanced

himself from a sitting president who, despite all of his faults, would

have defeated Bush in a landslide if the Constitution permitted a

third term, was enough to deny Rove his beloved 51 percent -- it was

Gore, not Bush, who won the majority of votes in that contest. It took

a Republican governor of Florida, backed by a compliant Supreme Court,

to put George W. Bush into the White House, not any genius on the part

of Rove.

"Bush's Brain" may claim that it was his careful manipulation of

fiction over fact that carried the 2004 election, in which the term

"Swift-boating" became synonymous with political character

assassination, but it was the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in

Iraq which sank the Democratic Party and its candidate for president,

John Kerry.

It is very difficult to unseat a president in a time of war,

especially when so many Democrats voted in favor of the concept, first

by buying into every post-9/11 policy put forward by the Bush

administration (find me one Democrat who actually read the Patriot Act

in its entirety before it was voted into law) and second by rubber-

stamping the lies that led to Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March

2003. Remember, it was Kerry's inarticulate defense of his decision to

vote in favor of granting war powers to the president that sank his

election hopes, not his Vietnam War record.

Certainly, Karl Rove played a significant behind-the-scenes role in

supporting Bush's war policies. The perjury trial of "Scooter" Libby

forced the collective of deaf, dumb and blind pseudo-journalists who

populate what is known as the mainstream media in America to recognize

how pathetically duplicitous and petty the Bush administration could

get when it came to defending the policies propping up the so-called

Global War on Terror and the awful tragedy of Iraq. Rove's

fingerprints were all over the decision by Vice President Dick Cheney

to leak CIA officer Valerie Plame's name to the media in an effort to

thwart the truth-telling of her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson.

But that is about as deep as Rove's involvement in the two issues that

will define the presidency of George W. Bush gets. While Rove might be

the "genius" behind the kind of winner-takes-all dirty politics that

won the Republicans a majority in Texas (and brought down the likes of

Tom "The Hammer" DeLay), he was way out of his depth when it came to

the reality of national security policy. Unlike unsubstantiated rumors

of wrongdoing which can stain a political opponent's record for the

brief moment needed to gain political advantage, regardless of what

the actual truth is, the never-ending flow of dead American service

members from a war based on a foundation of lies cannot be overlooked

indefinitely, even by the most subservient of media outlets.

Try as Rove and his political operatives might, one cannot forever

suppress the images of flag-draped caskets, row upon row of white

grave markers sprouting up in cemeteries across America, or the

thousands of wounded veterans left to rot in hospitals, forgotten by

an administration that, with few exceptions, never knew war and used

the military as an electioneering prop. Eventually, those patriotic

Americans who were fooled into believing there was actually some

coherent planning behind the global conflict Bush had dispatched their

youths to fight and die in were bound to get wise. Rove never had the

depth needed to navigate such serious waters.

Being the Brain of the most vapid, intellectually shallow president

ever creates an apt epitaph for Rove's tenure at the White House. The

Bush administration has never won accolades for its substance. Its

best frontman, Colin Powell, self-destructed in front of the U.N.

Security Council in February 2003. Powell's nemesis, Donald Rumsfeld,

followed suit shortly thereafter, unable to coherently explain where

Saddam Hussein had hidden all those WMD we went to war for, and

ultimately telling the average foot soldier to pound sand when it came

to the lack of adequate equipment needed to fight and survive in

occupied Iraq.

Bush's singular appeal has been the impression of steadfastness in the

eye of the storm, even if the storm is for the most part self-created.

For this we must look not to "Bush's Brain," but instead peer deep

into the dark recesses of the White House, where we can glimpse the

awful "soul" of the president -- Dick Cheney.

The vice president is the single greatest threat to American and

international security in the world today. Not Osama Bin Laden. Not

the ghost of Saddam Hussein. Not Ahmadinejad or Kim Jung Il. Not al-

Qaida, the Taliban, or Jose Padilla himself. Not even George W. Bush

can lay claim to this title. It is Dick Cheney's alone. Operating in a

never-never land of constitutional ambiguity which exists between the

office of the president and the Congress of the United States,

Cheney's office has made its impact felt on the policies of the United

States of America as had no vice president's office before him.

Granted unprecedented oversight over national security and foreign

policy by executive order in early 2001, many months prior to the

terror attacks of 9/11, Cheney has single-handedly steered America

away from being a nation among nations (albeit superior), operating

(roughly) in accordance with the rule of law, and toward its present

manifestation as the new Rome, a decadent imperial power bent on

global domination whatever the cost.

The absolute worst of the rot that has infected America because of the

policies and actions of the Bush administration has originated from

the office of the vice president. The nonsensical response to the

terror attacks of 9/11, seeking a "global war" versus defending the

rule of law at home and abroad, taking the lead in spreading the lies

that got us involved in Iraq, legitimizing torture as a tool of

American jurisprudence, advocating for warrantless wiretappings of

U.S.-based communications (regardless of what the Fourth Amendment

says against illegal search and seizure), and pushing for an expansion

of America's global conflict into Iran--all can be traced back to the

person of Cheney as the point of origin.

America today is very much engaged in a life-or-death struggle against

the forces of evil. The enemy resides not abroad, however, but at

home, vested in the highest offices of the land. Neither Osama Bin

Laden nor Saddam Hussein threatened the life blood of the United

States--the Constitution--to the extent that Cheney has. Not Hitler,

Stalin, Mao or Ho Chi Minh. Not since the American Civil War has there

been a constitutional crisis of the magnitude that exists today,

threatening to rip the very fabric of American society apart at the

seams, courtesy of Dick Cheney.

That Congress today remains relatively mute on this crisis is one of

the great mysteries of our time. Perhaps the vagaries of national

politics can be blamed. The Democratic majority in Congress appears to

have ceded its leadership role to unelected presidential candidates

who seem solely empowered to comment on current events, domestic or

foreign, and who, out of fear of any misstep which could hurt their

chances to seize the White House as their own, refuse to actually take

a substantive stand against the policies of the Bush administration.

In an effort that is curiously Rovian in the quest for electoral

victory, the Democratic candidates (with a few notable exceptions)

have been less than bold in their opposition to the heinous policies

that are currently in place concerning Iraq, Iran, the war on terror,

torture and constitutional violations--unless you count empty

rhetoric.

In many ways, the leading Democrats, both those running for office and

those currently holding office, are a far greater insult to American

values than the conservative standard-bearers for the policies of

Cheney. No one of substance takes seriously the manic ranting of the

Hannity/Limbaugh/Coulter triad. These Democrats, on the other hand,

have mastered the art of compromise to the point that they stand for

nothing at all--this at a time in American history when the policies

of the administration, derived from the dark abyss of Bush's soul,

Cheney, provide the most concrete example of what we as Americans

should be standing against.

The Democrats need to stand for something. Cheney has provided the

sort of political ammunition that would enable them to fight, and win,

a constitutional battle over the heart of America, the kind of

defining struggle which I believe the vast majority of Americans would

rally around. Unless the Democrats start separating themselves from

the policies of the Bush administration, and take an active role in

outing and suppressing the true evil that is Dick Cheney, all they

will achieve in the coming years is a change in the titular political

orientation of America, without the kind of deep-seated break from the

failures and crimes of the past six-plus years that have taken our

nation, and the world, right up to the edge of chaos.

"Bush's Brain" may be gone, but his "Soul" lives on. It is high time

all of America put Dick Cheney fully in the spotlight of collective

accountability, purging our nation of this scourge which has harmed us

in so many ways. If there is any case for impeachment to be made

against any member of the Bush administration today, it can be made

against a vice president who has shamed our nation, destroyed our

moral standing and broken our laws.

Editor's note: this article has been corrected.

Scott Ritter served as chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991

until his resignation in 1998. He is the author of many books,

including, Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement.