Cheney must end reign of destruction

By Mark Mansperger, In Focus

Like an unending bad dream, Dick Cheney is thrusting himself into the national spotlight again.

His latest claim is that we are being rendered unsafe from terrorist attack by President Obama's policies. This evaluation is from a man who has developed being wrong into a science.

Let's examine his major claim: The Bush policies, which he undoubtedly had a huge hand in crafting, kept us safe.

Perhaps at the time of 9/11, it made sense for the country to forego investigating responsibility for the attack and rally around the president. However, those days are long since past, and we now can look back with a critical eye.

The stark reality is that 9/11, one of the most devastating terrorist strikes in world history, occurred on the Bush/Cheney watch. Moreover, it did not take place the day after they took office but instead eight months later.

By that time, Bush/Cheney had long since been in charge of the nation's intelligence and defense agencies. They were responsible for our safety.

It is rather amazing that culpability still is somehow evaded. The Bush/Cheney failures actually began in the late 1990s, when they criticized the Clinton administration for the cruise missile strike against al-Qaida in Afghanistan, which obviously was the right thing to do.

Later, when Bush/Cheney assumed office, they seemed to be unaware of the danger terrorism posed, even though the millennium bomber, just to name one threat, recently had been thwarted.

It was abundantly clear that we were being targeted by terrorists, yet there is no evidence of significant attention aimed at the problem.

The acting FBI director, Thomas Pickard, later testified that Attorney General John Ashcroft informed him before 9/11 that “he did not want to hear anymore about terrorism.”

The Bush administration did not “keep us safe” as is so often erroneously asserted, instead they were out to lunch during a massive foreign attack against us.

Following 9/11, the main action keeping us safe was not getting caught with our pants down again. Nearly any presidential administration would have accomplished that.

Preceding our invasion of Iraq, Cheney seems to have frequently visited CIA headquarters to twist analysts' arms into justifying administration policies, such as their desire to invade Iraq.

Cheney was wrong in his estimation of the need to invade, how long we would be in Iraq and how much it all would cost.

A full year after it was obvious there was no viable nuclear weapons program in Iraq, he still was touring the nation saying Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear capabilities.

Then there was his insightful statement early in the Iraq war that the insurgency was in its last throes.

All this hawkishness comes from a man who, during the Vietnam War, obtained five draft deferments and later justified his actions by saying that he had higher priorities than military service.

It is difficult to think of an issue in which Dick Cheney has been correct, nor have we ever heard him admit he was wrong.

It now seems plausible that he directed prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to be tortured (waterboarded) in order to fabricate evidence that there was a link between Saddam and al-Qaida. This is medieval behavior. A high percentage of the people held at Guantanamo Bay have turned out to be uninvolved with terrorism, at least until their experience at Gitmo.

With his bleak ambiance, frequent sneer and caustic tone, Cheney is akin to some creepy character out of an Ingmar Bergman film. An unabashed exploitation of 9/11 and fear mongering are his standard practice.

Cheney would no doubt claim than another successful terrorist strike against us somehow validates his actions, but no legitimate validation is possible.

Another attack could just as easily be blowback from what he's done as anything else. Our nation needs to move beyond Dick Cheney.

* Mark Mansperger is an assistant professor of anthropology and world civilizations at Washington State University Tri-Cities. His research includes cultural ecology, development and international economics. Cheney must end reign of destructionBy Mark Mansperger

In Focus