We Americans seem to be trapped in a Groundhog Day scenario featuring a sneering Dick Cheney, over and over again defending the invasion of Iraq and the use of torture, a term his tender sensibilities converts to “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Cheney doggedly defends the dark legacy of the nexus of lies fabricated by the Bush administration to justify the invasion of Iraq. Unfortunately his monumental delusion has found support in the Wall Street Journal’s editorial declaration that Cheney was “right about Iraq.” Really! This is nothing more than an abject abandonment of journalistic integrity, not unexpected since the Wall Street Journal is now owned by Rupert Murdoch.
In the decade before he nominated himself as vice president on the Bush presidential ticket, Cheney had been attempting to get the United States to invade Iraq so as to take control of its vast oil reserves. He tried to get Bush I to invade. Bush I declined, as did Clinton later, but with Bush II, Cheney found his man. In light of this persistent lobbying to secure Iraq’s oil, why did Cheney, on the occasion of the Gulf War, say that invading Iraq would result in its breaking up into three parts: the Kurdish north, the Sunni center, and the Shite south. Ironically, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 set in motion the fulfillment of Cheney’s prediction.
The Bush/Cheney invasion of Iraq was both immoral and criminal. Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11, 2001, and did not possess weapons of mass destruction. The lying combo of Bush/Cheney is responsible for the deaths of more than 4,000 American soldiers, another 30,000 maimed in body and mind, plus at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Add to this outrage the $1 trillion cost of the war, coupled to the Bush tax breaks for the wealthiest, depriving our treasury of $1.3 trillion. Only the likes of Halliburton, Cheney’s former company, gained by the war, gladly fattening its bottom line with heaps of taxpayer dollars. If true justice prevailed Cheney would be issuing his rants standing next to Bush behind prison bars.
Denton May
Dolores