Was the Mainstream Media-Hyped Obama/Cheney Face-off Just Another World Wrestling Federation Ratings Event?

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin

The Cheney Enigma Solved. Power is Virtue; Weakness is Evil. Lies on Behalf of Empire are Necessary Truths.

This might explain everything from how Cheney got himself appointed Vice-President (to serve as de facto president over "Fredo" Bush) to his invasion of Iraq (planned along with his sidekick in the assertion of American Empire, Donald Rumsfeld) for its oil and strategic importance in securing a region soaked in fossil fuels.

Cheney and Rumsfeld -- and their "eager to prove his manhood" boy king, George W. Bush -- have a simple belief: if you have power, use it and use it without regard to its impact on the losers in life (the weaker ones).  It's a simple view of the world that goes back to cave men.  If you got a bigger cudgel, beat your competition for food and territory with it -- and make sure they don't get back up.

Cheney, who spent most of his 8 years in a bat cave as Regent to boy king Bush, emerged in an unprecedented media blitz to defend torture, attack a newly elected President, scare Americans again about terror, and call in one of his daughters to back him up on TV.  It was, however, not to assert power, but to try to put a halt to a perfect storm that was brewing that would put him and his loyalists still in the CIA and military -- and those that have left -- in jeopardy of prosecution on a variety of legal issues: including torture, murder, illegal actions, etc.

That was how we ended up with a bizarre television spectacle of a former alleged Vice-President (functioning as President on foreign policy) acting as if he were running against the man who had just a few months ago been elected President by an electoral landslide.

Liz Cheney, who made her own marathon of television appearances in defense of her Dad (who had gotten her a powerful job at the State Department in the Bush years), finally admitted to FOX that Dick was just trying to stay out of prison.

“He certainly did not plan when he left office to be doing this,” Liz Cheney told Sean Hannity. “But I think as we watched in those very first days and weeks after President Obama came into office when he released the memos that lay out for the terrorists — the techniques we used to question them. Then when he suggested in the Oval Office itself that he would be open to the prosecution of former Bush administration officials including many who weren’t political appointees potentially, you know really, I think, made my dad realize this was just fundamentally wrong. We had to speak out.”

From the days when Rumsfeld and Cheney ran the White House under Gerald Ford's brief presidency and presided over America's chaotic departure from Vietnam, Cheney apparently vowed to adopt the doctrine -- if given the chance: "If it's ours to seize, take it. The weak deserve what they get; that's why they are weak."

Ethics, Morality, Decency, Legality: these are all pusillanimous concepts fostered by weak-kneed "liberals" who don't understand the realities of the world. They had no place in the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which was the last ill-fated mob manifesto of American Exceptionalism that Cheney used as a roadmap to a cul-de-sac of failure and illegal corruption.

In the end, Cheney may not be prosecuted because it has been pretty clear that President Obama doesn't want to go there unless his hand is forced.  But Cheney saw that the legal memo revelations of torture -- and the release of more torture and murder photographs -- might lead to further disclosures of illegality that would make it exceedingly difficult for Obama not to have Attorney General Holder pursue prosecutions.

So Dick hit the media -- and hit it hard.  He brought his daughter into the breech to get broader coverage.  He was going to send Obama and the Democrats in Congress this simple message: "If you even think about prosecuting me or any of my staff or Rumsfeld or anyone who worked in the DOD for crimes, I will destroy your political agenda with a media circus and political sabotage that will make Hurricane Katrina look like a mild summer breeze.  Look what I've got my foot soldiers in Congress doing to Pelosi. Let it be a lesson to you. Don't mess with Dick!"

Of course, Bush is down in Texas, saying nary a word, except that he is carrying a plastic bag around on walks to clean up after Barney. If indictments came down, Cheney is probably thinking it would be hard to prove that the idiot understood what was going on -- and besides Cheney probably didn't tell Bush the details.

As for the past week, Cheney can now say with some degree of personal pride, "Mission Accomplished: I Dicked the Country Again!"

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

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