Okay let’s get this straight we’re supposed to believe that former Vice President Cheney’s recent appearances on these talk shows is motivated by his concern for our national security? Then there are those who contend that it’s all about his concern for his legacy. Of the two, the legacy thing is far more plausible when one considers Cheney’s history. When reviewing his record the last area that seems to concern him is our national security. Most of what we see is a guy continuing to try to cook the books and dictate the narrative.

Let’s not forget this is the same guy who made a practice of surreptitiously passing information to certain news organizations and then he would appear on Sunday talk shows citing the articles as evidence that the point he was making on the talk shows was supported by the articles in leading newspapers. These were articles he had all but written himself.  

To justify the administration’s decision to invade Iraq the Vice President is reported to have issued orders that the detainees be tortured to elicit false confessions that there was a connection between Al-Qaida and Sadam Hussein. This does not fall in the category of “concern for our national security.” File this under (CYA) Covering Your Ass.  

Robert Windrem, who covered terrorism for NBC, reports exclusively in The Daily Beast that:
*Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection.
*The former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, in charge of interrogations, tells The Daily Beast that he considered the request reprehensible.

Cheney’s decision to punish former American Diplomat, Joe Wilson, for reporting back after a fact finding trip to Niger that the rumor was false that Sadam was seeking to acquire Yellow cake uranium was telling. In outing Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative it showed that national security took a backseat to vindictiveness with Dick Cheny.   

This American super-patriot, Vice-President Dick Cheny, when eligible to serve during the Vietnam war sought and received five consecutive deferments. When the CIA issue became a legal matter, he allowed his trusted Chief-of-Staff, Scooter Libby to take the fall. When interviewed after the Libby trial, a number of jurors felt Libby was covering for the vice-President. Bravery is not an attribute we can assign to Cheny. There is no PT 109 in his background.

As for Cheney’s judgment, particularly when it comes to putting American lives at stake,   he failed. He predicted that we would be welcomed as liberators in Iraq, a contention he confidently repeated in interviews, speeches, and public forums rivaling his current television barnstorming tour.

He insisted that he had intelligence that the  Iraqi regime harbored vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons; that it was actively developing nuclear weapons; that it either possessed already or soon would possess effective means, including long-range missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, for delivering so-called weapons of mass destruction far beyond its borders. This turned out to be unadulterated lies. Over four thousand American soldier’s lives and upwards of thirty-five thousands maimed and disabled men and women later, not to mention the hundreds of thousands Iraqis casualties, we find that none of the Cheny contentions were true.

History will show that the Bush Cheney administration made one of the all time bone-head military blunders in American history and rather than improving our national security they managed to do the exact opposite. It began with the decision to downplay  the threat of Bin Laden in Torah Bora and Afghanistan and opting to go to war with Iraq.

Unintended consequences, has become the consistent fallout of the Bush Cheney decisions with which we are now confronted. Iran has been elevated to the preeminent power in the Middle-East now that Sadam has been removed. Going after Sadam Hussein and invading Iraq created widespread resentment toward the United States in the Arab Muslim world. It increased exponentially the number of Arab Muslim men and women willing to become terrorists against us. Then you throw in Guantanamo, torture, and Abu Ghraib, and that pretty much guarantees the kind of recruiting poster that should have Bin Laden salivating.

The irony is that Cheney’s chattering may have already begun delivering the ultimate unintended consequences of creating a climate whereby the administration is compelled to move forward towards making those higher-up in the Bush Cheney administration accountable. The process has already commenced that will expose Cheney’s actions as devious, self-serving war crimes. It is difficult to see how he will ultimately be able to avoid disgrace at the very least and jail time is not beyond the realm of possibility.