The resolute wrongness of Cheney

David Sarasohn has a good commentary on Dick Cheney in The Oregonian this morning, and his support of such wonderful charaters like Ken Lay and Dr. Chalabi.
Support of Ken Lay:

"We get politicians who want to go out and blame somebody and allege there is some kind of conspiracy," Vice President Dick Cheney warned firmly on "Meet the Press" in May 2001, "whether it's the oil companies or whoever it might be, instead of dealing with the real issues."

At the time, Cheney knew that it couldn't be the fault of the energy companies because he'd spent the entire spring meeting with them in planning the new Bush administration energy strategy, including six meetings with Enron head Ken Lay. So California was just going to have to take what was coming to it, meaning a summer of blackouts, and nobody should think there would be much to gain from conservation, which Cheney sneered at as a "private virtue" that would have no effect on California's problems.

Actually, California did avoid blackouts that summer, and conservation did have something to do with it. And just a little while later, the feds discovered that there had indeed been "some kind of conspiracy."

Cheney on Chalabi:

The next month, according to Knight Ridder News Service, the vice president was introduced to Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, and the two of them went off on a two-hour walk alone together.

Was the vice president having a big spring, or what?

In a few weeks, Cheney went directly from endorsement of Ken Lay to alliance with Ahmad Chalabi.

Chalabi, of course, is one of the few people having a worse time this week than the Enron power traders. Once the Bush administration's top candidate to run post-Saddam Iraq, Chalabi has now had his information discredited, his Baghdad offices raided, his name excluded from the new Iraqi government, and this week the Bush administration charged that he had given crucial U.S. secrets to Iran.

The resolute wrongness of Cheney