Spotlight on Dick Cheney

The Vice President has always been a shadowy, Wizard of Oz-like figure presumed to be pulling levers behind the scenes in the Bush White House. Of late, he's garnered attention for his involvement in the unfolding Valerie Plame/CIA leak scandal. Indeed, it appears Cheney may have even started the entire mess. But as Karl Rove and the VP's pal, Scooter Libby, practice their perp walks, the roguish Cheney continues to walk freely while doing his best to shame the United States and earn the scorn of the entire world.

His latest misguided project is ensuring that CIA interrogators retain the right to practice torture on detainees. This is an interesting move by Cheney considering he doesn't even think the CIA should be charged with its primary functions, gathering and analyzing intelligence. As he demonstrated in the lead-up to the Iraq War, Cheney doesn't trust the CIA, so he and SecDef Donald Rumsfeld set up the Office of Special Plans within the Defense Department to build the case for war (Newsweek lays the entire story out here.). According to the British newspaper the Guardian,

"The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war. "

In another time and with a less compliant news media, Dick Cheney would be a ridiculed figure. His public statements would be laughed at by reporters much like the words of the infamous Iraqi information minister. To wit,

"The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." -Cheney, June 20, 2005.

"Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." -Cheney, March 16, 2003.

Meanwhile, his current, er, former employer, Halliburton, continues to win huge contracts from the U.S. government despite innumerable shady dealings. Cheney continues to receive a deferred salary from the company and owns stock options worth as much as $8 million.

Now, the Vice President is battling with a torture survivor, Sen. John McCain, to protect the right of our government to commit torture. This is coming from a guy who received five deferments from serving in Vietnam.

The man is truly shameless.