As the end of Bush’s illegal appointment to the Presidency nears, many former and current Bush administration officials are busy trying to rewrite history while trying to justify the many illegal actions they conducted. Vice President Dick Cheney has recently admitted to committing numerous crimes while trying to justify them, and some of his ridiculous assertions are detailed below.
For years the Bush administration has blatantly disregarded the rule of law, oftentimes using the same flawed Nixon-era logic — while illegally expanding presidential powers, which is not surprising since Cheney worked for President Richard Nixon — that whatever the president does, especially during times of war is lawful. Never mind the fact that we’re involved in two wars that were illegally started. Hypocrisy has also played a major role in the Bush administration.
The attacks of 9/11 could have been prevented, but had Bush and his administration not been so complicit in allowing them to happen, all the illegal activities used to fight the “global war on terror” would have been virtually impossible to implement, making it more difficult to ‘justify’ their illegal actions that were planned long before Bush was illegally appointed to the presidency.
As noted by AlterNet, the vaguely defined “global war on terror” served as the catalyst Bush and Cheney felt they needed to assert that the President wields unlimited powers — this ‘war’ is theoretically everywhere and never-ending — meaning that principles of a free republic, with constitutional limits on executive powers, checks and balances and unalienable rights for everyone would be suspended not during a short-term emergency, but would virtually be eliminated forever.
Cheney Says To Quit Whining
Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly has a parting message for Americans: They should quit whining about all the things he and President Bush did to undermine the rule or law, erode the balance of powers between the White House and Congress, abuse and torture prisoners and spy illegally on Americans. It also appears that Cheney played a major in exposing Valerie Plame too.
During Cheney’s most recent attempts to rewrite the Bush administration’s criminal history, Cheney has conducted a series of exit interviews, seemingly to make people believe that Bush did a good job, and everything went great. Cheney’s lies won’t help rewrite the Bush administration’s criminal history.
Despite lying over 900 times and using blatantly false propaganda to goad the American public into the illegal occupation of Iraq, according to Cheney, the postinvasion period was not bungled to the point where over 4000 American soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands wounded, dismembered and paralyzed.
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are country clubs by Cheney’s standards. Just because Cheney endorsed illegal interrogation techniques — and Cheney alleges that only three prisoners were subject to waterboarding, which according to Cheney is also legal — there has been no wrongdoing at either of those facilities. Ironically, even the Bush administration’s FBI Director is calling Cheney out on his lies about torture.
Cheney Lies About Spying and Budget Deficit
Cheney claims the crippling budget deficit was caused mainly by fighting two wars and essential programs like “enhancing the security of our shipping container business,” which is reality has been mired in delays and cost overruns and questions about effectiveness. Never mind the fact that Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy are the biggest reason the budget went into the red.
Cheney is almost as delusional as Bush is when it comes to being ‘successful’ and doing nothing wrong. Cheney also lied about Bush’s decision to authorize spying on Americans, especially when you consider the fact that the illegal spying began the day after Bush took office — after he was illegally appointed to the White House by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cheney claims the White House kept Congressional leadership fully briefed on the illegal spying program starting in 2001. No surprise there, but he wasn’t being completely honest. Cheney claims he personally ran a meeting at which “they were unanimous” that the program was essential and did not require further Congressional involvement.
Senator John Rockefeller IV, then vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a July 17, 2003 letter to Cheney, said “the activities we discussed raise profound oversight issues” and created “concern regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to security, technology and surveillance.”
Terrorism Threats Do Not Justify Monarchy
Cheney believes that the threat of terrorism justifies other executive powers — to the point becoming an imperial presidency in which illegal spying, ignoring habeas corpus, torturing prisoners or bombing any country in the world is okay — so much so that he thinks the president’s wartime powers trump laws passed by Congress. He believes the president can interpret or ignore any law he wants.
Fortunately, by a very narrow margin, the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the Bush administration’s argument that Bush’s presidential powers allow Bush to reject fundamental individual rights incorporated by the U.S. Constitution, which Cheney also has delusional ways of interpreting to satisfy his fantasies. A few of the U.S. Supreme Court ‘Justices’ rule on their personal beliefs and loyalties to the corrupt Bush administration instead of the rule of law.
If it were up to Cheney, Americans would effectively become subjects to a monarchical president who would allow or deny freedoms as he sees fit. Unalienable rights for individuals would be destroyed.
Los Angeles Times Questions Bush’s Criminality
Some question the culpability for flouting national and international conventions against torture and spying — contemptible disregard for the law in the miserably failing “Global War on Terror” — as well as many of the other policies of the Bush administration that can only be described as lawless.
A Los Angeles Times (LAT) Editorial states that if the Bush administration violated criminal law as part of the post- 9/11 response to terrorism — terrorism that again, could have easily been diverted had Bush and his administration not been so complicit in allowing to happen in order to establish implementation of majorly flawed, illegal ‘policies’ — that it would be all but impossible to prosecute them successfully.
The LAT editorial states that the scandal of the Bush administration wasn’t a matter of individual politically motivated violations of law, but rather it was a systemic failure to take seriously the spirit as well as the letter of this country’s commitment to the humane treatment of prisoners or the privacy rights of Americans. However, if you look at how we arrived where we are today and all the secrecy used by the Bush administration to cover up their crimes, it’s easy to make the argument that the author of that editorial is full of it.
Congress, for the past eight years, has played a major role in the culpability of the Bush administration. The 110th Congress has set a major precedence in condoning the illegal actions of the Bush administration by repeatedly passing ‘legislation’ ex post facto, which is strictly forbidden by the U.S. Constitution while at the same time destroying this country’s system of checks and balances and devoiding the federal government of any accountability.
The LAT Editorial argues that as enticing as it may be to put Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the rest of Bush’s criminal regime on trial, neither a trial nor a truth commission would be the right way to expunge or atone for the abuses of Bush’s administration. Personally, I disagree. Either the law applies to everyone, or it applies to no one. It’s long past time to put them all on trial, from those who perpetrated the crimes to those who knowingly and willingly allowed them to happen. It’s time to expunge the criminals in politics and fix the badly broken political system.
Vice President-elect Joe Biden believes that “we should be looking forwards, not backwards” when it comes to prosecuting Bush officials for their crimes. Whenever anyone says something like that, it’s usually because they are involved in those crimes. A lot of Congress, particularly the leadership, is just as guilty as Bush administration officials for allowing those crimes to happen. As I said, either the law applies to everyone, or it applies to no one. The only way we will ever see justice is if we the people demand it. As noted by The Guardian UK, heinous crimes are now synonymous with the Bush administration. If they aren’t held accountable, what does that say about us?
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