With apologies to the late Gen. Douglas MacArthur, old politicians never die. They just become thorns in the side of those elected to follow them.
Case in point: Former Vice President Dick Cheney. More than any other member of the failed administration of George W. Bush, Cheney is working overtime in a vain attempt to rewrite history in real time, sometimes twisting facts and more often lying outright.
In the gospel according to Cheney, President Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership of Congress have left America open to new attacks from terrorists, stripping the nation of a so-called aura of security created by Bush and his cronies.
Talk about revisionist history. Cheney conveniently forgets that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, occurred during his and Bush’s watch and real history has already documented how their administration ignored warning signs that the attack was coming.
Cheney led many of the efforts that turned America from a relatively-free nation into a police state ruled by a Gestapo-styled Department of Homeland Security. He promoted efforts to spy on ordinary Americans and supported the rights-robbing USA Patriot Act that strips away many of the protections once guaranteed by the Constitution.
Cheney and his partner in crime Donald Rumsfeld used manufactured intelligence to assure the U.S. invasion of Iraq and he and the Defense Secretary rewarded the Vice President’s old pals at Haliburton with no-bid contracts that pillaged the U.S. Treasury and killed U.S. soldiers with faulty equipment.
Cheney, more than any member of the Bush Administration, deserves to rot away in prison, pounding rocks at Leavenworth until he day he draws his last breath.
Sadly, such a fate does not await Cheney. President Obama doesn’t have the balls to prosecute the crimes of the Bush Administration. Neither does Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
So Cheney is free to roam the talk show circuit like a sexual predator stalking his latest victim. He is free to spill verbal diarrhea at will, knowing right-wing propaganda arms like Fox News will provide a platform.
President Obama finally fired back at Cheney Monday, saying the Vice President "got his facts wrong" as usual in his claims about the proposed closing of the torture chambers at Guantanamo Bay and other rollbacks of abuses by the Bush Administration.
But Cheney will continue shooting off at the mouth and the shrill Greek Chorus called the Republican Party will continue to echo his lies.
Old politicians never die.
But they should, at the very least, follow the advice of Gen. MacArthur and just fade away.
(Revised to change the ending which was, as some readers pointed out, over the top)
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