Cheney's 180
Homemade sign outside a local ESL classroom: "Practice reading, speak the most often you can." That's OK. It sounds a little like Yoda, but I get it, and have no doubt it's better than what the student could have done a year or two ago. Buena suerte, amigo.
Our town was famous for a minute or two this last weekend. A local young man, famous as a fire- breathing college linebacker went #38 in the annual NFL Player Draft. The young man himself wasn't thrilled. He had thought he was going to San Diego (in the first round, of course), but instead is bound for Cincinnati, which is the NFL equivalent of Mogadishu. Anyway, good luck to him, too.
I read an odd little item in the paper today. I knew things in Zimbabwe were pretty bad (as much as you can know from sitting here reading, anyway), but they are evidently even worse than I had thought. Whole herds of elephants, numbering in the hundreds, have crossed the river out of Zimbabwe into neighboring Zambia in their daily wandering for food. This isn't a laughing matter to the Zambians, because elephants are well-known big eaters, and can do plenty of damage to things just by ambling through. Let's hope these animals, whose only natural enemy seems to be Man, can find a way through this before the locals reach for the rifles. I'd like to speak for a pachederm myself: "He followed me home. Can I keep him? I promise to feed him every day. Can I? Can I?" I guess the whole thing gives new meaning to the phrase "voting with your feet."
On to our title subject. There's no getting around the fact that Dick Cheney is my least favorite former public servant. A particular trait he was known for in his White House stint, which even his friends, I believe, would have to admit, is his obsession with secrecy. Normally people couldn't even pry out of him the normal details of his office, which he thought of as some kind of White House neocon Bat Cave. Ask him a question and he would tell you exactly what he wanted to, and no more, assuming you got anything at all.
That's why his latest claim and request seems so disingenuous. On FOX News (where else?) he claimed that it wasn't fair to talk about torture without knowing the whole story. "Yeah, well maybe we roughed up a few of those terrorist towel heads" he said in so many words. "but we got so much from these gutless wonders just from squeezin' their cojones a little, you know, we saved lots of American lives in the process. All that needs to be in the record, not just the so-called 'torture' part. Anyway, we hired lawyers to tell us it was OK, and they did."
Wait. If Cheney had information that was supportive of the un-torture they were conducting, why didn't he leak it in order to get McCain elected and improve his own (under two bits) popularity numbers? He asks for disclosure NOW in a classic 180 degree flip flop. when he could have disclosed for years, but didn't. Has he any proof, other than his own oft proven wrong say-so, that such information even exists? Most military familiar with the practice say it is unlikely to produce credible information. How does Cheney know better?
How indeed? The more I think about our former VEEP, the creepier he seems. I think we may have dodged a bullet while he was in office. Did you know he claims to have personal moles keeping him in the information loop even today? I hope the next time I see him he's being played by someone else in a movie. I'm pretty sure his character won't be the good guy.
Our town was famous for a minute or two this last weekend. A local young man, famous as a fire- breathing college linebacker went #38 in the annual NFL Player Draft. The young man himself wasn't thrilled. He had thought he was going to San Diego (in the first round, of course), but instead is bound for Cincinnati, which is the NFL equivalent of Mogadishu. Anyway, good luck to him, too.
I read an odd little item in the paper today. I knew things in Zimbabwe were pretty bad (as much as you can know from sitting here reading, anyway), but they are evidently even worse than I had thought. Whole herds of elephants, numbering in the hundreds, have crossed the river out of Zimbabwe into neighboring Zambia in their daily wandering for food. This isn't a laughing matter to the Zambians, because elephants are well-known big eaters, and can do plenty of damage to things just by ambling through. Let's hope these animals, whose only natural enemy seems to be Man, can find a way through this before the locals reach for the rifles. I'd like to speak for a pachederm myself: "He followed me home. Can I keep him? I promise to feed him every day. Can I? Can I?" I guess the whole thing gives new meaning to the phrase "voting with your feet."
On to our title subject. There's no getting around the fact that Dick Cheney is my least favorite former public servant. A particular trait he was known for in his White House stint, which even his friends, I believe, would have to admit, is his obsession with secrecy. Normally people couldn't even pry out of him the normal details of his office, which he thought of as some kind of White House neocon Bat Cave. Ask him a question and he would tell you exactly what he wanted to, and no more, assuming you got anything at all.
That's why his latest claim and request seems so disingenuous. On FOX News (where else?) he claimed that it wasn't fair to talk about torture without knowing the whole story. "Yeah, well maybe we roughed up a few of those terrorist towel heads" he said in so many words. "but we got so much from these gutless wonders just from squeezin' their cojones a little, you know, we saved lots of American lives in the process. All that needs to be in the record, not just the so-called 'torture' part. Anyway, we hired lawyers to tell us it was OK, and they did."
Wait. If Cheney had information that was supportive of the un-torture they were conducting, why didn't he leak it in order to get McCain elected and improve his own (under two bits) popularity numbers? He asks for disclosure NOW in a classic 180 degree flip flop. when he could have disclosed for years, but didn't. Has he any proof, other than his own oft proven wrong say-so, that such information even exists? Most military familiar with the practice say it is unlikely to produce credible information. How does Cheney know better?
How indeed? The more I think about our former VEEP, the creepier he seems. I think we may have dodged a bullet while he was in office. Did you know he claims to have personal moles keeping him in the information loop even today? I hope the next time I see him he's being played by someone else in a movie. I'm pretty sure his character won't be the good guy.
posted by Mark at 9:12 PM
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