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Dick Cheney's
Fingerprints
Author’s note
There’s been an incessant complaint on the part of the
Bush administration, that the pitfalls of war in Iraq could not
have been known.
Wrong. Many of us knew.
Ordinary citizens, who perhaps kept
more closely in touch with what was going on in the world outside
America, but ordinary in
any event. We were not privy to insider information, but not hampered either
by predilections left over from earlier, failed administrations.
George Bush was said to be haunted by his father’s failure to go all
the way in the first Iraq War—Desert Storm. Joined (some say overpowered)
by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in planning a response to the 9-11 attacks
on America, the very highest positions of our government were given-over
to paranoia and special-interest.
Paranoia in the furtive governance of a president who lacked
the popular vote of his country and was seated, only as the result
of a controversial
and historically
unprecedented decision of the Supreme Court. Paranoid in that president’s
excuse to take a national disaster and, in its name, block all reasoned dissent
in the mantle of national security.
It was the special-interest of Vice-President Dick Cheney to
re-empower the presidency, a task he considered sacred after
the presidential wreckage
of
Dick Nixon’s resignation. Cheney is on record as believing Vietnam could
have been ‘won,’ if only the United States had not left. He has
also publicly stated his dedication to the unilateral power of the office of
the President, unfettered by constraint, either in Congress or the courts.
It was the special-interest of Don Rumsfeld to reorganize the
American military in his vision of a small, high-tech, mobile,
fighting force.
Occupying troops,
the famous boots on the ground, were anathema to the Secretary of
Defense in his drive to downsize and modernize the Pentagon.
It was also his
stated policy
that America would dominate space, that none others challenging the
American space technology would be permitted in this new frontier.
It is my view that these strong-minded men, along with their
highly-effective and politically ruthless assistants, came to
dominate a weak president,
a man who was essentially disinterested, as well as tactically
and philosophically in over his head.
Rushing to judgment, unwilling to listen to opposed points
of view, temporarily empowered by control of both houses of Congress
and
seizing upon what
had been delivered to them by a terrorist plot, a small cadre of
powerful men,
clustered
around the president, essentially hijacked representative government.
The Iraq War is but one element of that hijacking, but perhaps
its most public face.
This was, and continues to be, a war with Dick Cheney’s fingerprints
all over it.
--Jim Freeman
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Jim Freeman is the author of three novels, EVOKE,
The Island and Letters from Ceilia.
He's written nearly 300 poems,
extensive collections of social
and political commentary, travelogues and
plays.
As a political commentator, Jim’s
op-ed pieces have appeared on the pages of The New York Times, Chicago
Tribune, International Herald-Tribune, CNN, The Jon Stewart Daily Show,
The New York Review and a number of magazines.
Jim lives and writes from Europe, where
he has lived since 1993. He and his Czech-born wife, designer Michaela
Freeman, live in the mountains of northern Bohemia, some 18 miles east
of the city
of
Liberec.
His most recent books are a collection
of critical essays on the Iraq war, titled Dick
Cheney’s Fingerprints and a selection of love poems, Thinking
Me. All his books are available in Jim
Freeman's author bookstore.
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