DAYS

Thursday, November 17, 2005

BIG DICK PILES ON
"He has the least interest in human beings of anyone I have ever met."
-- John Perry Barlow, former Cheney supporter

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Mmmmm, baby blood.

Someone let Dick Cheney out of his cage last night. After Bush on Monday and Rumsfeld on Tuesday, Big Dick delivered the third and dirtiest punch in the administration's 1-2-3 'hit-back' strategy to counter mounting criticism of their war. He said the accusation that Bush deliberately misled the nation into war is "one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city." Pretty funny coming from perhaps the most dishonest and reprehensible person to ever air his vitriol in that city. Really, in a town as historically crooked as DC, that's a pretty hefty charge.

Today, Representative John Murtha, a Democrat, fired back at Big Dick:

Mr. Murtha was disdainful of the vice president's remarks, saying that "people with five deferments" had no right to make such remarks. Mr. Cheney, like millions of other young men of the era, avoided military service during the Vietnam war.

Mr. Murtha's demeanor and personal history as well as his status on the Appropriations Committee may lend extra weight to his words. He generally shuns publicity and does not often speak on the House floor. After serving in the Marines in the early 1950's, he re-enlisted in 1966, at the age of 34, and served in Vietnam, earning a Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts and the Vietnamese Cross for Gallantry, according to The Almanac of American Politics. When he won his House seat in a special election in February 1974 he became the first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress.

So, uh, the Swiftboating of John Murtha begins now, right? I mean, I'm sure he shot some Vietnamese kid in the back, hung out with Jane Fonda, tossed his medals over a fence or something, right? Right?? Paging Turdblossom!! You watch, they'll go there. If they can smear a triple-amputee veteran, they can smear anyone.

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Turdblosom is Smearalicious.

You know what's really scary about Dick Cheney? I don't think he thinks he's lying about all this shit. I think he's a delusional, paranoid, psycho with a chip the size of Wyoming on his shoulder. I think he still believes Saddam possessed those phantom WMDs. I think he still believes Saddam had something to do with 9/11. I think he still believes the insurgency is in its 'last throes.' I think he believes torture actually works (or maybe he just gets off on it, I'm not so sure about that one). And I think he believes that if it weren't for him, all of us would've been blown to bits and/or been converted to radical Islam by now. He knew what he wanted to believe a long time ago, and he doesn't want to hear any evidence to the contrary.

So that explains the paranoid/delusional/psycho aspect, but why the big chip on his shoulder? Basically it comes down to the fact that he's been nothing but a big loser all his life. Seriously, check out the guy's history, he's managed to fuck up pretty much everything he's touched. And he's pretty much running the country, which is really, really disturbing.

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Big, Scary Loser.

While most on the Right are cheering Dick and Bush on, commending them for fighting back (on that side, they'd rather fight than think apparently), many people, including Bob Kerrey on the Colbert Report this week, have wondered why the president, and now his cronies, have come out so aggressively. They're beginning to ask why he can't be contrite and own up to the obvious mistakes that have been made along the way. Miscalculations and errors have been made in great number and at great cost at all stages of this war, from the planning to the selling to the execution of it. Because of these massive and undeniable foul-ups, the president no longer has a leg to stand on with the American people.

Really, it seems that one way for Bush to reclaim at least some of his squandered credibility would be to admit that mistakes have been made, recognize that we have a new war on our hands, one they didn't plan on, and call on the country to unify and work forward together on a solution. But no, instead Bush comes out and goes all Joe McCarthy on us, crying out 'treason!' and painting his critics as unpatriotic.

Billmon smartly noted recently that Richard Nixon too turned to this aggressive rhetoric just before the shit came down. Just like Bush, he thought "contrition was bullshit."

And we know where that got him...

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