2004.09.09
The Prince
After reading this article about Dick Cheney, I am wondering if he’s so “evil” why does the Republican Party continue to support him? The article itself reads more like an editorial, but some of the points -draft evasion, Halliburton activities, etc- are well known facts. If even a portion of the political conniving are accurate, we have someone who practices the theories of Machiavelli. Worse, he doesn’t seem to really endorse the Republican platform so much as use it for his own ends.
Having turned [President] Ford into their instrument, Rumsfeld and Cheney staged a palace coup. They pushed Ford to fire Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, tell Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to look for another job and remove Henry Kissinger from his post as national security adviser. Rumsfeld was named Secretary of Defense, and Cheney became Chief of Staff to the President. The Yale dropout and draft dodger was, at the age of thirty-four, the second-most-powerful man in the White House.
That alone gives you a taste of how this is editorialized (“turned Ford into their instrument…”) but also outlines what he did, in fact, do once power was attained. Scary.
To answer my own question on why the Republicans continue to support Dick Cheney, I believe (and this is only opinion) that they are 1) afraid of him, and 2) ignorant of who he is and what his goals are. The Republican leaders who consider it a marriage of convenience may not realize just who they are dealing with.
By the end of the first Bush administration, others had come to the conclusion that Cheney and his followers were dangerous. “They were referred to collectively as the crazies,” recalls Ray McGovern, a CIA professional who interpreted intelligence for presidents going back to Kennedy. Around the same time, McGovern remembers, Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft counseled the elder President Bush, “Keep these guys at arm’s length.”
I’m not saying I hate the guy with a blood curdling passion, but I’ve never liked him and that was before I knew a single thing about him, for or against. If anyone can post an article or two that shows something positive about Dick Cheney please post them in the comments so I can write a followup to this article (and no fanatical, raving, unsupported posts; they will be deleted).
Comments Off Categorized: grrr political
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