Cheney
By 
Dick Cheney, one of America’s worst war criminals, is dead.
Born in 1941 in Lincoln, Nebraska, which amazingly makes University of Nebraska football only the second most grotesque American cultural phenomenon out of that city, Dick Cheney’s family moved to Wyoming when he was a child, if such a figure ever had the innocence of youth. He went to Yale and flunked out, making George W. Bush the most successful Yalie in the upper heights of his administration, before graduating from the University of Wyoming.
For a man who would show tremendous joy at killing brown people around the world from an office in DC, Dick Cheney cowered away from doing so personally. He applied and received a mere 5 deferments so he could avoid fighting in the Vietnam War. In 1989, a Washington Post reported asked him about this. He replied, “”I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.” So did a whole lot of other people in the 2000s, but of course that never stopped Cheney from dooming them to fight.
Cheney’s political career began in 1969 when he became a staffer for Rep. William Steiger from Wisconsin, a man far greater than his more famous acolyte. He then joined the staff of a rising Republican star named Donald Rumsfeld. He rode the Republican lightning along with Uncle Don, holding a variety of positions in the Nixon and Ford administrations, including White House Staff Assistant in 1971, Assistant Director to the Cost of Living Counsel from 1971 to 1973, and Deputy Assistant to the President from 1974 to 1975. When Gerald Ford named Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense, Cheney was called on to replace Rummy as Chief of Staff. While working for Ford, Cheney decided that the best way his boss could fend off Reagan was to declare war on unions. He convinced Ford to break promises to labor, vetoing legislation to liberalize picketing around construction sites, so outraging Secretary of Labor John Dunlop that the latter resigned in protest.
This was a time when the Church Committee was investigating the executive branch abuses of the Nixon administration. Cheney’s reaction to this was outrage, as he already believed in the imperial presidency, an idea that the Trump administration is running with as part of its fascist play. And sure, yes, Cheney hates Trump and has actively opposed him in the Republican Party, but do not let that distract you from the rest of Cheney’s evil life. From that point forward, through his time in Congress and his role as Vice-President, Cheney consistently argued that Congress should cede power to the presidency, especially on the issue of national security. This has caused tremendous damage to the nation and contributed significantly to the deaths of millions of people.
Cheney then went to Congress, being elected to the House from Wyoming in 1978. He served five terms, leaving office in 1989. He was as horrible as you would expect. He voted against creating the Department of Education. He hated the idea of a holiday to honor Martin Luther King. He voted to defund Head Start. Of course, all of this just made him a rising star in a party increasingly committed to extremism. He was elected to be Chairman of the House Republican Conference in 1987 and then House Minority Whip in 1988.
Cheney also supported apartheid. Calling the African National Congress “a terrorist organization,” in 1986, Cheney voted against a congressional resolution calling for the freeing of Nelson Mandela. Of course, he had support in that position from Ronald Reagan, but with the Republican Party significantly less racist in the 1980s than it is today, the veto was overridden, no thanks to Cheney. In 2000, he defended this position, saying, “I don’t have any problems at all with the vote I cast 20 years ago.’’ He actually justified his opposition to South African sanctions by saying that sanctions don’t work, a policy he would remain remarkably inconsistent about through his long, putrescent career.
Cheney came to national prominence as Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush. Elected to the office by a 92-0 vote after the Senate rejected John Tower, a move that probably turned out unfortunate in the end, Cheney was the top officer overseeing the invasion of Panama, the last old-school U.S. invasion of Latin America to get rid of a troublesome leader. He of course also held the job during the Gulf War. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991. But in truth, he was not terrible at this job, reducing the size of the military budget as the Cold War finally ran down. In particular, he resisted Congressional pressure to buy weapons system that just so happened to benefit particularly congressional districts. He also strongly supported NATO, a position that today is not a given by a new generation of Republicans.
After leaving government, Cheney got butt naked in bed with his defense industry friends. He earned a mere $44 million during his time at Halliburton. He became CEO of the company in 1995 after hanging out on a fishing trip with Halliburton executives in Canada. Not every recreational trip with Cheney would go so well for his friends, if someone so reptilian can be said to have had “friends,” instead of sycophants. They loved him because he was had close relationships with such benign regimes as the Saudi monarchy that he could use to vastly expand their business opportunities. While heading Halliburton, Cheney figured out ways that the company could avoid the U.S. sanctions against Iraq, Libya, and Iran by using subsidiaries that also allowed the company to avoid paying taxes.
In 2000, George W. Bush, the dimmest bulb in the room, asked Dick Cheney to head his vice-presidential selection team. Who better to represent the administration of a wannabe Texan than the CEO of Halliburton? Cheney only had one logical name for the job: himself. He really had to sacrifice too. Since he could not technically be a CEO and a VP (what innocent times those were!), Halliburton sent him off a mere $20 million severance package. He also sold his Dallas home and moved back to Wyoming so he wouldn’t be from the same state as W. When the Supreme Court and Ralph Nader gave the election to Bush, Cheney recommended only the best people to the Cabinet. His good friend Don Rumsfeld returned to Defense. He did lose out on his hope to have Paul Wolfowitz placed as the head of the CIA. That would have gone well. But Wolfy was instead handed over to Rumsfeld and the three of them would plan ways to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
Then 9/11 happened. Mr. Imperial Presidency was ready for action! Cheney knew before the Iraq War began that Saddam Hussein likely did not have weapons of mass destruction. As early as September 21, 2001, Bush received CIA briefings arguing there was no connection between Iraq and the attacks. Do you think that mattered? Ha ha ha. Those reports continued. And yet Cheney lied consistently, over and over again making the case that Saddam Hussein was the greatest threat to the United States. He repeatedly went on national television to say that Saddam was a great danger to Americans. On March 16, 2003, he stated, “We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” When we did not find any reconstituted nuclear weapons or anything else that was a threat to the United States, Cheney doubled down, saying that those who opposed the Great War for Iraqi Freedom to Sell Oil to the United States were pushing “cynical and pernicious falsehoods.” As typical for a 21st century Republican, for Cheney, this was all about projection. When confronted by a reporter that the majority of Americans opposed the war, his response was a dismissive “So?”
And of course Cheney was instrumental in creating the torture regime that completely dismissed all shreds of humanity the U.S. could ever claim during those eight years, engaging in a completely ineffective interrogation regime that was more concerned with sadistically punishing supposed enemies of the nation rather than finding out information. Cheney was responsible for devising the NSA program to monitor the e-mails and phone calls of American citizens suspected of terrorist activities or sympathies without a warrant. It was his behind the scenes maneuvering immediately after 9/11 that set up the indefinite detentions, as he had his lawyer write up a document in secret that Bush signed without even informing Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice that it existed.
Cheney’s close relationship with Iraqi dissident Ahmed Chalabi worked out great for both Iraq and the United States. Chalabi had a great scam going on: telling Dick Cheney and his friends the lies they wanted to hear about Saddam Hussein. Sure, it all fell apart when the U.S. invaded Iraq, nothing Chalabi said was true, and no one in Iraq had any interest in hearing anything Chalabi had to say. But hey, he strung Cheney along for a long time. And Cheney wanted to be hooked. Even after the New York Times reported that Chalabi was giving U.S. secrets to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Cheney still wanted him placed at the head of the Iraqi government. As late as November 2005, long after Chalabi had been completely discredited, Cheney was inviting him to the White House.
Cheney received a little bit of credit from liberals for supporting at least the broad idea of gay marriage, but this is not earned. It is typical Republican “I oppose everything that would bring greater equality unless it personally affects me” because his daughter is a lesbian. This is the Cheney version of Bob Dole’s passion for the American Disabilities Act because of his World War II wounds while opposing anything else to make people’s lives better that don’t personally affect him.
Cheney typically engaged in all sorts of sketchy behavior while vice-president while seeking to cover it all up under his imperial presidency ideas. Working with his Enron buddies to craft energy policies backfired when Enron went under, but Cheney refused to provide the National Archives all sorts of documentation and used arguments about executive privilege to deny congressional requests for information. And of course, it was his office that exposed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. He did all he could to undermine environmental standards, promote dirty energy, and sought to force the Center for Disease Control to delete information from a report about the effects of climate change upon health.
Also, going hunting with Cheney was a bad idea. But remember, if the VP shoots you in the face, you apologize to the VP. That’s the way the Imperial Presidency works.
Cheney barely lived for years. He has a heart transplant but was utterly indifferent to the story of the individual who died to give him that heart. This is hardly atypical of a man who condemned thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to death, who played a critical role in creating ISIS, and who was a cancer on the American body politic for decades. Now, this leads us to the 2018 Adam McKay directed film about Cheney, Vice. It doesn’t work that well as a film and is certainly less effective in style and substance than his previous The Big Short. But the premise is great—the narrator is Jesse Plemons and at the end of the film, we find out that he is the voice of the person who was killed and whose heart was transplanted into Cheney. And I mean, really, can you imagine—you want to be a good person and give over your bodily organs as transplants if you die and they are usable. You imagine all sorts of people your heart could go to. What you don’t imagine is your sacrifice leading to more years of Dick Cheney. If you wanted to argue against organ transplants (and my organs are listed to be harvested if need be), I can’t imagine a better argument to kill it than “your heart is going to keep a human monster alive for another 15 years.”
Finally, Cheney’s late life hatred of Trump does not make up for the rest of his life. That’s fine, good, you had some standard that couldn’t be crossed. That is noted. It does not make up for Iraq or for laying the groundwork for the Imperial Presidency that Trump drives his gold-plated tank down today.
And maybe now that Cheney is dead, the Cheney Vice-Presidential Library can finally open.