It takes a special kind of chutzpah for Dick Cheney to publish an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, saying things like this:
Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is “ending” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — as though wishing made it so. His rhetoric has now come crashing into reality.
Yup, this is Dick Cheney, who famously espoused so much neo-con bullshit:
- “And he [Saddam Hussein] is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time.” (March, 2002)
- “I think it will go relatively quickly. Weeks rather than months.” (March, 2003)
- “My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” (March, 2003)
- “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” (July, 2005)
The editorial even claims:
Mr. Obama had only to negotiate an agreement to leave behind some residual American forces, training and intelligence capabilities to help secure the peace. Instead, he abandoned Iraq and we are watching American defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.
Except that Cheney seems to forget that it was George W. Bush who signed the agreement mandating the removal of all American forces from Iraq by the end of 2011.
Dick, STFU.
UPDATE: Senate majority leader Harry Reid responds “Being on the wrong side of Dick Cheney is being on the right side of history.”
UPDATE 2: Cheney lied us into war, and he personally profited from that war by giving no-bid contracts to Halliburton. He also had his hands in illegal torture. There were no terrorists in Iraq before we invaded. I completely agree with Thom Hartmann’s opinion, “Dick Cheney should be rotting in a prison cell at The Hague, not writing editorials for the Wall Street Journal.” Yes, Obama did do something wrong. In my opinion, it was in not bringing the greedy lying perpetrators of the Iraq war to justice.
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Except that Cheney seems to forget that it was George W. Bush who signed the agreement mandating the removal of all American forces from Iraq by the end of 2011.
THANK YOU! In all the torrent of coverage of this topic, yours is the first mention I’ve encountered of Bush’s Status of Forces agreement and Iraq’s refusal to modify it in any way.
Why don’t GHW & GW Bush clamp down on this asshole?
I can only say that his mother named him correctly… he is clearly a DICK.
And pigs can fly….
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/06/18/megyn_kelly_to_dick_cheney_time_and_time_again_history_has_proven_you_got_it_wrong_on_iraq.html
PSgt, thanks for that link. When I wrote this post I was wondering if Cheney knew he was lying, but that interview on Fox News seems to verify that he is indeed delusional. He thinks the preemptive invasion of Iraq was a good idea, and still claims that Saddam Hussain was developing nuclear weapons, despite the fact that he was completely unable to find even a smidgen of proof (and even knowingly tried to fake proof, as shown in the Valerie Plame mess, which to me was treason on his part).
He would be sad if he weren’t the cause of so much suffering and death.
As I have said before, the day Bush got on helicopter in January 2009, I wrote the UN (they have no e-mail) I said these thugs need to be tried for war crimes.
And that was that. We have this big organization that has no credibility at all. (I did tell them that if the thugs weren’t tried, the UN would have no credibility. Wilson and Plame are still around to testify. Cheney will soon be beyond the pale.
And Boehner is pushing Obama to interfere in the Mideast mess started by Bush and Cheney.
Am I surprised Megyn Kelly went after Cheney that hard? Sure. But she soft-balled the Cheneys several questions after that that allowed them to do their little dog and pony show without ever really challenging the substance of what they were saying.
As to jailing or even trying Bush and Cheney, it was never going to happen. Do they deserve it for Iraq? Yeah, probably. Almost certainly. But expedient politics were never going to let that happen. The Obama Administration would have spent what political capitol they had on a fruitless prosecution and the UN would have found itself completely wiped from the map of US political importance. I very rarely want to be the guy who says “it’s too hard, so don’t bother” but in this case, I don’t see that anything could have come of it other than a landslide Republican victory in 2012 and the further crippling of the UN.
I agree, Cheney should be in jail, as should half the Bush administration. Too bad we’re not part of the ICC.