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How did the USA manage to get such
an incompetent and belligerent character into the office of the
Vice-Presidency of the United States of America? Here's Dick Cheney the
man, hiding from the public most of the year in his "secure
location" as far away from camera's and the public as it is possible
to be - surrounded by the Secret Service.
He's reminiscing now about his
long political march to this lonely peak of pure unbridled power. It had
begun in the darkest hours of the Nixonian era, while he was in the Gerald
R. Ford administration, a mere asterisk among American presidencies because
Ford was the man ensconced to pardon Richard M. Nixon. Cheney no doubt
learned much from Alexander Haig, from Henry Kissinger, and later on from
all the other crooks and liars of those long and perverted Reagan years.
From Notorious-Newt he learned how
to shut down the government, from Colonel Oliver North, Cheney confirmed
what he always thought about military men, that they were simply there to
be used and discarded. And of course there were others like John Negroponte
the infamous American ambassador that raised death squads in his spare
time. There was the daring-do of Iran Contra & the Arms-for-Hostages
scam. He was able to watch the drug smuggling of the CIA, and all the other
adventures of the illegal but potentially politically profitable variety -
not as a commoner or an outsider - but from the depths of the inside of all
of these dark and disturbing deeds. Then he coasted through the tedium that
was the failed presidency of GWH Bush, the former head of the CIA that left
such deep scars upon this once proud nation.
All of that was only preparation
for this dream job that he had personally designed and shaped to fit his
role in The New World Order. He, Dick Cheney, had now become a major player
in the remaking of this nation - not from the dark bunkers of the periphery
- but from within the glaring lights of news conferences and in high
profile meetings with the shoddy resurrected creatures of the New World
Order. Dick had arrived! His presence could be felt in Cabinet meetings,
not-to-mention the testosterone he'd expended on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Yet all the while he 'knew' he was no longer someone to be trifled with -
because now He was the man! There was Rummy of course but Rumsfeld was
melting away in his own private pool of self-inflicted incompetence,
leaving him a clear path to unchecked power.
In all that time that he had
labored, he's studied what he'd need to know to bring his plans to full
completion. So when star-crossed George needed someone to select a
Vice-President as a running mate - he knew he'd gotten exactly what he
wanted. Because that throw-away office was the perfect place to launch and
monitor his schemes and plans, to create the pathways needed, and to punish
any who resisted his impassioned hunger for the powers that should always
have been his!
'The Fools' he thought, 'I have
found that lethal loophole in the Constitution, the one that will allow a
blade to penetrate, where only trust and courage should have been. 'There
is NO oversight - none that is except for outrage from the public - and
that shall never be allowed to grow!' he thundered to himself within the
shadows of his secret and secure location. Then Cheney went from there and
graciously accepted the appointment as the Vice-Presidential candidate on
the Bush-Cheney ticket for the Presidency of the USA.
It was 1999, and the world was
standing on the brink of that abyss that would welcome the new millennium
and would also usher in the darkest American presidency in the history of
the free world. And he knew that he, Dick Cheney, would be the solitary
power beneath the muck and promises, that necessary unseen force, the
go-between between the Money-changers and the stolen-puppets every move.
Then it was September eleventh, 2001, and finally he and they were ready to
begin the dismemberment of the Republic, and their conquest of the world.
It was a neat trick, but so far; he's gotten away with nearly all of it.
True, he took an oath of office to
protect and defend the Constitution and the people, but that was just some
words on paper and the laws of the land in reality only really mean what
the president says they mean. That's how Dick Cheney become the lone
renegade whose duties seemingly have no legal limits - especially if you're
the strong Vice-President serving an incompetent pretend-president: then
you get to do whatever you want and tell congress and the world to go to
hell!
Cheney's first official function
involved convening an Energy Task Force that would write the Bush
administrations Energy Policy for the first term. The meetings were
classified and were kept secret, by presidential decree: Secret from the
same people that these policies were supposed to serve and secret too from
the Congress who needed to know how those policy decisions were arrived at.
Now years later the public has discovered who was there at least - even if
we don't yet know exactly who said what. But what is known is that profits
for the energy companies have never known such heights, and never dreamed
of such overwhelming profits!
During the run-up to Iraq Cheney
appointed himself to go over to the CIA and sit on the desks of reluctant
analysts (22 times) - where he used a combination of threats and demands to
coerce that agency into giving the Commander-in-Chief the kind of
intelligence that he wanted from that pivotal agency of the government.
This happened despite the CIA's best efforts to get to the bottom of what
was real and what might be a fabrication. The White House then
cherry-picked the whole report and "used" only what would justify
the President's completely bogus policy decision- to launch the
War-on-Iraq. Cheney has still not been called before the Congress to
testify about either the Energy Task Force, or his interference in
determining the tone or the truth of those intelligence reports, from the
CIA: he was called but he hid behind "Executive Privilege."
Cheney has been the
person-without-portfolio from the White House, the one who routinely slams
the press and beats the drums of war, while continuously directing the
attentions of this country and the world toward an ever-deepening hysteria
of FEAR, regardless of the cost. He has very occasionally agreed to
tolerate some interviews with selected journalists - but he has in no way
ever explained "his right" to behave as he does - being outside
the Chain of Command militarily (except as the person in waiting) - and as
one apparently beyond any real oversight by the Congress. Cheney's more
than a loose cannon, he's an Outlaw-in-Office - whose actions are not
subject to any governmental oversight or responsibility. When he is wrong,
as he most often was on everything related to the war, there was never an
apology, or a lessening of his fuming belligerence.
If the Vice-President of the
United States can freely intimidate members of the intelligence community
without consequences and freely associate personally with Supreme Court
Justice Anthony Scalia - who then fails to recuse himself on key court
decisions that directly affect the policies of the White House: then why
did congress even bother to write the conflict of interest laws at all?
When the president gets himself
into deep trouble, Cheney bails him out. That is not in Cheney's job
description, nor is Cheney's behavior in the best interests of the American
public. People have the right to know what is going on with those who were
supposedly elected to office (even when those individuals obtained their
offices illegally - see the first note below).
Cheney's private business
associations with Halliburton and their subcontractor's have made Dick
Cheney a very rich man. Those secret, no-bid contracts were sweetheart
deals, made SECRET by the government and approved through the offices of
the White House - yet no investigation of his actual influence over those
contracts has ever been conducted which begs for a real answer.
The Constitution provided a system
of checks and balances between and within various areas of government to
prevent aberrations like Cheney from taking root and spreading - but in
this case that stricture apparently failed. The War Department, before they
changed their name to The Department of Defense, was controlled by the
Executive branch with oversight by congress. Today - Defense is still there
but since the White House is in charge, there is no oversight by congress.
The Department of State was to oversee diplomacy, but that too was taken
over largely by the White House and the military which killed any official
emphasis on talk, in favor of bullets & bombs. And again there is no
longer congressional oversight of that division of the Executive Branch.
The CIA and the FBI were supposed to each have different realms for
intelligence, for wet work, and for investigations; that was part of the
protocols put in place by Truman when he created the CIA from the old OSS
or Office of Special Services. The National Security Agency is the larger
umbrella under which CIA and others operate.
When Bush combined the 22 agencies
that were forced into becoming HOMELAND Security the lines between turf and
responsibilities became theoretically non-existent, along with
responsibilities for any and all failures. The CIA was to have been headed
by a civilian, as opposed to a military man, but there was at least one
military director previously. Since CIA was charged with oversight for all
overseas intelligence and matters pertaining to American interests -
outside the USA - it hardly mattered then.
Now however as CIA has been tasked
to spy directly on all American citizens, under the direction of the NSA -
its directorship matters greatly. When congress rubber-stamped Air Force
General Hayden's nomination; the same man who initiated the Spy Program on
Americans - to head the current CIA - this combination amounted to a
deepening attack upon the Constitution, and served notice that all
Americans are now "targets" of the government's Spy Services.
This new American SS is worldwide and is administered in this case by the
National Security Agency through the ISP's and telecommunications giants.
Again - there is still no congressional oversight and perhaps more
importantly, when these people are called before congress they are free to
stonewall the hearings citing "National Security" as their shield
against divulging whatever it is that they might be doing to Americans with
our personal information that they have illegally stolen from our lives.
This too appears to have been one
of Cheney's pet projects - but we'll never know the truth of that
possibility, because this government has turned open government into a
sealed coffin that keeps the secrets of their misadventures from the world
- for at least the next hundred years.
The idea that America could allow
an outlaw officer of this government to run roughshod over the entire
government and the people - at his own discretion - does not comport with
the structure or the laws of what was once the United States of America.
Furthermore, citing that erroneous phrase, "this country is at
war" - should not be an excuse for the criminal actions of a
vice-president of this or any other government. Cheney is hiding his
actions and his profits from the people he is supposedly serving - it is
way past time for Dick Cheney to be held fully accountable for all of what
he's tried to do...
George H.W. Bush once said:
"If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the
street and lynch us." It is way past time that the people 'knew' just
what it was that the forty-first president of the United States was talking
about!
Jim Kirwan
Was the 2004 Election Stolen
www.commondreams.org/
Senators won't grill Phone Companies
www.crooksandliars.com/
Senator accuses Cheney of meddling Specter says VP went behind his back
www.sfgate.com/
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