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Cheney, again Vent, O Veep!By Rick Horowitz
Put yourself in his shoes, and you'd be angry, too. Your long-time chief of staff -- your go-to guy, your fixer -- has been convicted of multiple felonies for doing (or so nearly everyone believes) your bidding in trying to take down a critic. Unless and until there's a pardon, your go-to guy is going to prison. Meanwhile, the company you used to run -- the company that so personifies the American entrepreneurial spirit, the company that so nobly serves our fighting men and women, asking only a reasonable profit and the occasional billion-dollar overcharge -- has just announced that it's establishing a second corporate headquarters, slightly east of its current digs in Houston. In Dubai, in fact. Embarrassing?
Meanwhile, the administration of which you're such a central part suddenly has its fingerprints all over the mass firing last December of all those U.S. attorneys. The latest crumbs in the paper trail certainly make it look like politics over performance, and "We didn't have anything to do with it" has morphed into "We don't have any specific recollection" -- always a bad sign, don't you think? Meanwhile, your objections have been overruled when it comes to talking to those bad guys from North Korea, or sitting down in the same room as those bad guys from Iran and Syria, and the papers are filled with stories about your diminishing influence with the president whose strings you pulled so deftly for so long. And your leg hurts. And then there's Walter Reed -- a mess that just gets messier with every news cycle. So it's the perfect time for Dick Cheney to lash out. "When members of Congress pursue an anti-war strategy that's been called 'slow bleed,'" Dick Cheney declares, "they're not supporting the troops, they are undermining them." Vent, O Veep! It's not every day that a vice president of the United States accuses another branch of government of undermining the troops. Actually, it's starting to feel as if it is every day that this particular vice president makes that particular accusation. When he's not accusing them of "validating the al-Qaeda strategy," that is. Which is to say, of daring to criticize the vice president's judgment, or his predictive powers, or his grip on reality. Among other things. The nerve of them. But it's Mr. Cheney who's the nervy one. "Anyone can say they support the troops," he declares, "and we should take them at their word. But the proof will come when it's time to provide the money. We expect the House and Senate to meet the needs of our military and the generals leading the troops in battle on time and in full measure." Testosterone talk from the bunch that "supported" the troops by sending them off on a war of choice in insufficient numbers to do the job. With insufficient planning to do the job. With inadequate equipment to do the job. With inadequate body armor to do the job. And then when they were wounded, as so many of them were? When they were sent stateside to try to recover from their wounds and rebuild their lives? How much "support" did the troops receive in Building 18? How much "support" in dealing with the mice and the mold and the mountains of unending, unfathomable paper work, at Walter Reed and elsewhere? You want to talk about "undermining"? Let's talk. The Walter Reed fiasco, and all it represents, is worse than embarrassing for an administration that loves portraying itself as the friend of the warrior; it strips away the last tattered illusions of competence or compassion. So why be surprised that they'd try to change the subject? If you were in Dick Cheney's shoes, wouldn't you? Posted 3/13/07.
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Rick Horowitz
