Funny same guy saying 'you can't trust Obama or Hillary' - sold nuclear technology to Iran. #HillarysBigAnnouncement pic.twitter.com/wJBN8E4StV
— The Baxter Bean (@TheBaxterBean) April 10, 2015
Dick Cheney has been given a sickening amount of air time to publicly try and rewrite his own history regarding how the Bush Administration lied us into a war with Iraq and then blame President Obama for its present state. In a preview that will air this Sunday, Bill Clinton tells it like it is.
Over the past six years, it seems as if every time former Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to open his mouth, a television network (usually Fox News Channel) was there with a camera and a microphone to capture his thoughts. On no occasion-at least so far as I can tell- has a pundit dared to wonder why anyone would think Cheney has anything of value to add to the public discourse. Even worse, no one seems willing to ask him tough questions about the lies, deceit, and propaganda that purchased the war in Iraq…or his responsibility for the needless deaths of almost 5000 American servicemen and women.
Cheney has proven himself willing to cast aspersions upon Barack Obama, in essence blaming him for the mess the Bussh Administration created. He’s kibbitzed and condemned virtually every security move and decision made by the Obama Administration, while steadfastly refusing to admit to his part in creating the environment that exists today- primarily because no one seems willing to ask him to account for it on the record.
Gregory: The former vice president Dick Cheney said of President Obama in an op-ed claims that Al-Qaeda is decimated is not true, and in fact is on the march. The argument that America is less safe under President Obama. Do you believe Dick Cheney is a credible critic on these matters?
Clinton: (laughs) If they hadn’t gone to war in Iraq, none of this would be happening.
Perhaps Cheney really does believe that the war in Iraq was a good and noble undertaking. Perhaps he believes that it really did make America safer. He may even believe that neither he nor George Bush did anything wrong in the run up to the war and the conduct of it. He refuses to admit that we invaded a sovereign nation with NO proven involvement in or responsibility for 9.11…though it was sold to us as protecting America from the threat of terrorism. He won’t own up to the lies, the manufactured evidence, and the propaganda that made it possible to convince Congress and the American Sheeple to invade Iraq. And he certainly won’t acknowledge that the almost 5000 young Americans who returned home in flag-draped caskets died fighting a war based on deceit and dishonesty and and NOTHING to do with 9.11.
(Full disclosure: I was one of the sheeple convinced by the parade of evidence. I was opposed to war and everything Bush and Cheney stood for, but more than that I believe there’s a time when the interests and security of America should come before ideology. I will go to my grave carrying the shame of being duped.)
Former President Bill Clinton is the first public figure to really, truly call Cheney on his bullshit. In so doing, Clinton is doing what the press should have been doing all along. Unfortunately for the truth, what the press fears more than anything is losing access, and so they lob softballs at Cheney in order not to aggravate him and risk being cut off. It’s cowardly, and it makes a mockery of journalism, but the days of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Peter Jennings are, sadly, long behind us. Instead, we have Chuck Todd (who’s admitted to fearing losing access to politicians if he pushes too hard) gently prodding politicians and serving as their de facto press attache. We have David Gregory, who seems to have lost the ability to ask tough, probing questions. And we have a roster of journalists who follow their lead and treat politicians, particularly those on the Far Right, with kid gloves. It’s a pathetic display of journalistic malfeasance, but that what passes for news gathering today.
If Barack Obama and his Justice Department possessed any sort of moral courage, they’d have investigated both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes. What else could you call 5000 dead Americans, more than 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians, and who knows how many thousands of maimed and wounded in an illegal and immoral war? Both- and several members of their Administration- should be doing time in the Hague for war crimes. Instead, they’re regarded by the press as statesman and treated with kid gloves. No tough questions, no demands that they account for the lies and propaganda that left so many families without husbands, fathers, sisters, and mothers.
The truth is that if not for our illegal and immoral war in Iraq, ISIS/ISIL would very likely not exist. The Middle East wouldn’t be pretty or perhaps even favorable to American interests…but there wouldn’t have been a vacuum created that religious thugs and zealots scrambled to fill.
WE DESERVE BETTER.
