Still Crazy After all These Years

“But I was a lone voice. After I finished, the president asked, ‘Does anyone here agree with the vice president?’ Not a single hand went up around the room.”

Yep, another book I am not going to read myself.  That is, Cheney's memoir.   Glad to know that there reached a point where only VP Dick (what is it about the administrative Dicks of the world?) was alone in thinking that bombs are like magic beans--drop a few and everything will be swell.  Yes, we just have had a demonstration this past week that airpower can work--under limited circumstances with a pretty limied notion of what "success" looks like.  We have no clue what will happen in Libya post-bombing. And the bombing would did not work on its own but was a key complement to the rebels on the ground.

In 2007, with a surge just underway in Iraq, did another bombing campaign on another Arab/Muslim country make sense?  Not to anyone in the room but Dr. Strangelove Jr.  I have often exclaimed that Rumsfeld was the worst SecDef ever and that Qaddafi's favorite fashonista, Condi Rice, was the worst NSA ever.  But they have an advantage over Cheney--only sixty so years of folks with whom to compete.  Cheney has to compete with VP's going back to John Adams in the 18th century.  I don't know my arcane American history well enough to figure out if there were worse VPs, but I would have to guess that if one measures worse in part of having a detrimental effect, instead of just dumb, stupid or evil, then Cheney is pretty close to the worst.  He empowered Rumsfeld (well, he picked him), he picked himself (which means everything he did counts either twice or is squared--the math can be fuzzy), and he fought to keep all folks who were knowledgeable far away from Iraq reconstruction.  He was amazingly successful in that last part.  Oy.

And then he shoots a friend in the face and the friend has to apologize?  Topping it all off, Cheney then gets to be on TV all the time after being part of an entirely crappy administration to criticize his successors.  So, he is a hypocrite with no class and a poor record to show.  Am I reading his book?  Hell no.