It's All About Cheney

I have been saying since I first started MEJ that the source of all evil was Dick Cheney. An Index of early posts can be found here and more recent ones can be found here and here. With Cheney's recent declaration that he is accountable to no one and the four part series in the Washington Post I feel vindicated.

David Broder has attempted to jump on the anti-Cheney bandwagon with a commentary that reads like something written by an 8th grade civics student after reading the Cliff Notes of the WAPO series. Fortunately we don't have to depend on the brain dead DC punditry. Sidney Blumenthal comes to the rescue.

The imperial vice presidency

Two months after 9/11, on the day of the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov. 13, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney appeared in the Oval Office with a four-page executive order designating terrorism suspects as enemy combatants to be held indefinitely, with no right to have their detention reviewed by any court except newly created military commissions, where they would not be permitted to learn the accusations or evidence against them, or be represented by counsel, or even know that their case had been heard and decided.

The secretary of state and the national security advisor were deliberately kept uninformed as the White House staff secretary prepared the order for signature. According to a four-part series published this week in the Washington Post on the extraordinary power of the vice president, "When it [the order] returned to the Oval Office, in a blue portfolio embossed with the presidential seal, Bush pulled a felt-tip pen from his pocket and signed without sitting down. Almost no one else had seen the text." Colin Powell was stunned when he learned of the fait accompli. "What the hell just happened?" he asked. Condoleezza Rice was described as "incensed." But neither of them, then or later, effectively challenged Cheney's usurpation of executive authority. And, as can be gathered inferentially, Bush never bothered to ask Cheney about their opinions on the executive order or to call them; nor did he seem to care.

That pretty well sums up the entire Cheney Vice Presidency. One of taking advantage of a none to bright President to take on imperial powers of his own.

Cheney has crushed the normal interagency process that permitted communication, cross-fertilization and cooperation at the sub-Cabinet level through all previous modern administrations. At the same time, he has isolated Cabinet secretaries, causing them to be fired when they contradicted him, as he did with Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill.

Cheney thrives in darkness, operating by stealth within the government, and makes a cult of secrecy. None of these insights are new, except for additional telling details. Reports the Post: "Man-size Mosler safes, used elsewhere in government for classified secrets, store the workaday business of the office of the vice president. Even talking points for reporters are sometimes stamped 'Treated As: Top Secret/SCI.'"

Blumenthal has many more examples and you should read the entire piece.

As I have said before Cheney is dangerous because he is both evil and insane. The United States has drifted far from it's roots and the world is a more dangerous place because of Dick Cheney. So what to do now? Can the US and the world survive another 18 months of Cheney? Bruce Fein says no and that we must
Impeach Cheney
The vice president has run utterly amok and must be stopped.

Under Dick Cheney, the office of the vice president has been transformed from a tiny acorn into an unprecedented giant oak. In grasping and exercising presidential powers, Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III. The most recent invention we know of is the vice president's insistence that an executive order governing the handling of classified information in the executive branch does not reach his office because he also serves as president of the Senate. In other words, the vice president is a unique legislative-executive creature standing above and beyond the Constitution. The House judiciary committee should commence an impeachment inquiry. As Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime against the nation. Cheney's multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify.

[......]

In the end, President Bush regularly is unable to explain or defend the policies of his own administration, and that is because the heavy intellectual labor has been performed in the office of the vice president. Cheney is impeachable for his overweening power and his sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law.

It should be noted that Bruce Fein is no liberal head hunter. He was the Deputy Attorney General under President Reagan, and is a card carrying member of the American Enterprise Institute.

Note
Updated above

Many more reactions can be found at memeorandum.