Dick Cheney bulldozes the facts

Former vice-president Dick Cheney

It is impossible to research every corner of the neo-conservative's exceptionalist views of world events and the wrong-headed roles others are playing in those events. It's just too fucking exhausting ... which, I imagine, is part of what the neo-conservative constituency counts on: They can say what they like, they can make it sound sonorous and important, and no one has got the time or energy to call them to account.

And among the top-drawer neo-conservatives in this country, former vice-president Dick Cheney's is one of the visages chiseled on the Mountain of Exceptionalism. Neat, clean, tough, allegedly in the know ... someone is bound to listen and absorb and feel good to have an ally who will kick some White House black ass. Congressmen and other talking heads flock to banners like Dick Cheney's or Karl Rove's.

But then ... but then ... someone actually takes the time and expends the energy to dissect and lay out the particulars. The nuclear deal with Iran was a bad deal? Oh really?

In the Sept. 9 issue of The Atlantic, (passed along in email), author Peter Beinart pins down some of the particular lies and misconstructions that neo-conservative Dick Cheney can spew with such self-indulgent aplomb. I am grateful to Mr. Beinart even if I am fatigued to think that a public servant such as Mr. Cheney could be so transparently self-serving.

Dick Cheney wants to go to war and is willing to sacrifice the lives of others to prove his vision is true. This is not a man swayed by reason. He has a vision and his willingness to call that vision "patriotic" is beyond all reasonable comprehension. He's a man who sees no irony in labeling someone else as a "terrorist."

Oh well. Dick Cheney's safe. No one reads The Atlantic.