Dick Cheney Wins BuzzFlash's GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award

Dick Cheney

Welcome back to the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

"Secrecy" is practically Dick Cheney's middle name. He famously went as far as suggesting that, as king president of the Senate, he wasn't a member of the executive branch so he doesn't have to say nothin' to nobody. I mean, Google Earth didn't even know where he lived exactly, and everyone knows Google owns the planet.

Cheney's hobbies also reflect his love of secrets. Seymour Hersh revealed recently that the vice president had his own secret assassination team (hmm... wonder where they scrimmage?). Cheney even seems to have a weird paper shredder fetish, if we can believe Dubya.

Not that he doesn't have a sense of humor about it. Remember that time back in 2007 when we found out about Cheney suggesting the oversight unit at National Archives be completely abolished so that he wouldn't have to turn over documents to them? Hilarious.

But, much like Bill O'Reilly's take on privacy, Cheney is only protective of himself. When it comes to someone else's secrets, Cheney is gung ho about disclosure, especially if it results in retribution against his enemies. Thus, Valerie Plame's secret identity was leaked at Cheney's request in order to punish her husband for dissenting.

Cheney's hypocrisy was rehashed again this week with his abrupt shift regarding whether sensitive national security memos should be released to the public. Cheney was one of the many former Bush Administration officials who criticized the president for releasing sensitive national security information when Obama released memos about the CIA's classified torture and rendition programs last week.

Granted, one of the reasons Obama agreed to release the memos was that almost all of the information was part of the public record already. Now Cheney wants to secure the release of memos that supposedly show that torture yielded helpful intelligence. These memos can not be argued to have already been part of the public record -- as far as BuzzFlash knows, anyway.

We liked The New York Times' take on Cheney's change of heart:

When he was vice president, Dick Cheney never acknowledged the public's right to know anything. Now, suddenly, he has the full disclosure bug. He told Fox News this week that President Obama's decision to release memos written by the Bush Justice Department authorizing the abuse and torture of detainees inspired him to ask the Central Intelligence Agency to release transcripts of those interrogations...

Mr. Cheney was not being entirely honest (he made the request last month), and his logic is confounding. If releasing the memos leaves this country open to a devastating terrorist attack -- as Mr. Cheney claims -- imagine the potential harm from revealing all of the secrets gleaned from the three most "high value" terrorists captured since Sept. 11, 2001.

The best part of the op-ed is how it ended. The editorial board called for an investigation of the Bush Administration torture apologists:

We can't imagine how such an investigation can move ahead without Mr. Cheney's testimony. But given the former vice president's new devotion to full disclosure, we're sure he'll be happy to comply.

Yeah, we'll see about that.

For protecting his own secrets with the tenacity of a bulldog, while at the same time being willing to expose sensitive national security information that could put our nation in jeopardy, we bestow upon Dick Cheney BuzzFlash's GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award.

Remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon.

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