Do I believe in the demonic?

So long as Dick Cheney draws breath, I do.

Read Juan Cole's reflections / context / perspective on Dick the Dick's concerns about wasted sacrifice.

It starts like this:

Dick Cheney reacted to the cessation of unilateral US patrols of major cities in Iraq, saying that he had concerns that the "insurgents" might launch more attacks and that “I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point."

First of all, Cheney didn't make any sacrifices in Iraq. He deferred his own military service five times because he 'had other things to do.' The 'sacrifices' were caused because he purveyed falsehoods to the US public in order to get up that war, hinting around that Saddam was in bed with Usama Bin Laden and telling senators that Iraq was two years away from having a nuclear bomb. So the sacrifices were of other people's children, and his role was merely that of an Aztec high priest cutting the heart out of the victims.

For my money, Cole is too kind.

--the BB

Every time he opens his mouth a fetid evil envelops the planet

Where to begin?

Asked by Schieffer if he believed that anything the president does in time of war is legal, Cheney said there is "historic precedent of taking action that you wouldn't take in peacetime."

Cheney referenced Abraham Lincoln as an example of another president who "suspended the writ of habeus [sic; s/b habeas] corpus" during a war, prompting this exchange:

SCHIEFFER: But nobody thinks that was legal.

CHENEY: Well, no. It certainly was in the sense he wasn't impeached. And it was a wartime measure that he took that I think history says today, yeah, that was probably a good thing to do.

[From Raw Story]

Uh, Dick? The Supreme Court decided that Lincoln's act in revoking habeas corpus was illegal, even unconstitutional. But you wouldn't know the meaning of legal or constitutional if they bit you on your toxic ass. What parallel universe of infinite malignity did you come from?

Oh, and Nancy? Did you notice the mocking implication that everything Cheney and Bush have done is legal because YOU DIDN'T IMPEACH THEM?!!!!!!!!!!!!!

)$()$^)($^%)_$*^_$(_#$(%+#$(#)(56098!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There. I feel better.

[In case anyone is wondering, I made only one resolution this year - one more than I usually make - and being nicer was not it.]

h/t Dependable Renegade

--the BB

Leaving behind a trail of cement-melting slime

This graphic could only come to us
via Jesus' General to whom a tip of the helmet.

Greg Miller reports in today's Los Angeles Times:

Reporting from Washington -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA, and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely.

That's the short version in the lede. The headline and subhead read:
Cheney was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics
The vice president says that the use of waterboarding was appropriate and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should stay open until 'the end of the war on terror.'

They might have screamed:
Cheney: unrepentant torturer

I rather like the theological response of the Rude Pundit:

Yes, indeed, the gastropodic, nearly amorphous globularity that occasionally forces itself into a frightening figure we haltingly refer to as "man," known as "Dick Cheney," has heaved its mass up to the surface of the earth, pustules popping, leaving behind a trail of a cement-melting slime. Ah, Christ, the people of the nation think, is it feeding time again? Will he never be satisfied? Have we not sacrificed enough virgin children for him to engorge? The very existence of Dick Cheney has turned more people into atheists than all the storms and wars in history, for if something that degraded and hideous is allowed to not only live, but thrive, then there can be nothing we might call "God" in the universe.

You have to admit, Dick Cheney does make theodicy difficult.

I don't like the devastation of tsunamis, inflicting, as they do, vast suffering. But they make sense in terms of geophysics behaving as geophysics must - following laws and devoid of moral content.

What laws does Cheney follow? He seems to embody the sort of evil - a will to power combined with indifference to the plight of others - that we usually associate with a whiff of sulfur. Just saying.

We're back to the issue of war crimes, lack of justice, and lack of notice discussed by Glenn Greenwald in the article noted in the previous post.

Every time Saruman Cheney makes an appearance I forget the world's beauty. I suppose that is what happens when one travels through Mordor.
--the BB