Watch out for the Lord of Darkness

Joseph Galloway of the McClatchy-Tribune Information Service has a must read article aptly titled
Desperation in the White House
He explains why the Decider's "new way forward" is nothing but a deadly folly,

This hardly amounts to a "new way forward," unless that definition includes a new path deeper into the quicksand of a tribal and religious civil war in which whatever Bush eventually decides is already inadequate and immaterial.

But he concludes with something I have been thinking a lot about, what will Dick Cheney do?

What will happen in the coming year if the congressional Democrats begin to do their job, issuing subpoenas and holding oversight hearings into the looting of billions from the national treasury by defense contractors and other fat-cat donors to the Republican Party?

What will happen if everything that Bush does to string things along in Iraq fails (as has everything he's done there so far), and the Iraqis ask, order or drive us out?

Did you notice that at every stop on the president's information-gathering tour last week, there was a very familiar face looming over his shoulder? There was Vice President Dick Cheney, looking as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Should the president suddenly have an original thought or seem to be going wobbly, Cheney will be right there to squelch it or to set him straight.

It can be argued that Bush understood little about war and peace and diplomacy and honesty in government. Cheney understood all of it, and he bears much of the responsibility for what's gone on in Washington and in Iraq for the last six years. Keep a sharp eye on him. Desperate men do desperate things.

I have followed politics for 40 years now. I cut my political teeth during the war in Vietnam. I followed the Watergate hearings. I have disliked many elected officials, disagreed with most at least some of the time. I have thought that many politicians were lying crooks but never have I felt that an elected official was genuinely evil - until Dick Cheney that is. The man, if indeed he is a man, has worked his entire life to get and keep nearly unlimited power. Galloway is right, he is desperate and it is probable that he will do desperate things to hang onto the power he has. Keep an eye on the Lord of Darkness - the source of evil in the Bush administration.