Dick Cheney Still Doesn't Get It

One of the worse figures of the Bush/Cheney years of misrule and the attendant destruction of American values is Emperor Palpatine Cheney, a man I truly view as evil. Indeed, the man needs to be prosecuted for war crimes, convicted and dealt with accordingly. In addition to his unbridled greed and lack of compassion for virtually anyone, Cheney suffers from an insufferable hubris. The man has a heart of stone and is incapable of admitting error no matter how many deaths he caused or how much torture he authorized. Bob Woodward has a column in the Washington Post that looks at Cheney's arrogance and hubris and the fact that he learned nothing from the Iraq War fiasco. Here are some highlights:

A key lesson of the 9/11 decade for presidents and other national security decision makers is the importance of rigorously testing intelligence evidence: poking holes in it, setting out contradictions, figuring out what may have been overlooked or left out. It is essential to distinguish between hard facts and what is an assessment or judgment.

The so-called slam-dunk case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction illustrates the failure. If anyone should have learned this, it is former president George W. Bush and former vice president Dick Cheney.

Yet in his new memoir, “In My Time,” Cheney shows he has not fully absorbed that lesson when he writes about the administration’s response to the 2007 discovery of a nuclear reactor in Syria that the North Koreans had helped build.

Bush didn’t reveal, however, that his vice president wanted a military strike in the face of “low confidence” intelligence that the reactor was part of a nuclear weapons program. Cheney said he wanted the United States to commit an act of war to send a message, demonstrate seriousness and enhance credibility — a frightening prospect given the doubts.

Two participants in the key National Security Council meeting in June 2007 said that after Cheney, the “lone voice,” made his arguments, Bush rolled his eyes.

At the CIA afterward, the group of specialists who had worked for months on the Syrian reactor issue were pleased they had succeeded in avoiding the overreaching so evident in the Iraq WMD case. So they issued a very limited-circulation memorial coin. One side showed a map of Syria with a star at the site of the former reactor. On the other side the coin said, “No core/No war.”

Arrogance, hubris, and a total lack of empathy for others or other views sums up what is so wrong with many in the USA today. Cheney and, of course, hate-filled Christianists and the neo-cons bear as much responsibility for what the USA has become as do the Al Qaeda terrorists of 9-11.