First the Republicans lost their majority status in Congress. Then the Iraq Study Group sent the White House its report card and gave it a failing grade. It looked like Dick Cheney had finally been put in his rightful place –- the ceremonial office vice presidents have traditionally occupied.
But this is a man who's alternately schmoozed and clawed his way to the executive heights in both government and business. Also, he's suffered four heart attacks and the onset of congestive heart failure. Not to mention undergoing a bypass operation, as well as an angioplasty, the implantation of a defibrillator, and the repair of an aneurysm in an artery.
Any resemblance to one of those horror movie characters that can't be killed is not coincidental.
So formidable a foe is Cheney that appointed dragon slayer Patrick Fitzgerald is either still girding his loins or has abandoned his quest to indict him as quixotic. In other words, counting out Cheney is premature. In fact, Robert Dreyfuss recently described him as "suddenly revived."
Those who persist in believing Bush has been counseled to sideline Cheney would be wise to ask themselves this: Which of Bush's advisors suffers from a death wish?
However unlikely she is to lock horns with Cheney, Secretary of State Rice at least dared advise the president to tolerate the formation of the Iraq Study Group. But when it issued its report, Bush's reaction -- more luke than warm -- suggests that, far from spurning Cheney, he was just indulging Rice. Not that her stateswoman daydreams don't come in handy.
In 2005, Cheney, along with former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, sent Rice skipping off to the United Nations Security Council. Her assignment? To convince its four other permanent members –- the UK, France, Russia, and China, plus Germany –- to impose sanctions on Iran for attempting to develop nuclear weapons.
But, as Gareth Porter suggests in "Rice's Iran strategy Fizzles, Cheney Waits in Wings," all Cheney was doing was just giving Rice enough rope. Her mission was actually programmed to self-destruct. The only way the administration would negotiate with Iran is if it were slapped with punitive sanctions. Russia, Cheney knew, would never agree.
Saddam-izing Mahmoud and the Mullahs
At this point, it behooves us to question Cheney's plausibility as a nuclear watchdog. Recall that in 2005 he asked STRATCOM (the United States Strategic Command) to draw up a plan to respond to a terrorist attack on the US with, among other things, tactical nuclear weapons.
Also, as Scott Ritter points out in "Target Iran" (Nation Books, 2006), the administration's goal, "wrapped in layer after layer of disingenuous commitment to arms control and disarmament. . . [is actually] regime change." As in: Drive Ahmadinejad and the ruling mullahs into a crawl space until they're caught and, if not hanged like Saddam, publicly humiliated.
Meanwhile, the sanctions that the European members of the Security Council agreed on were indeed rigorous. Not only ballistic missiles, but the import and export of materials and technology used to enrich uranium, would be banned.
As expected, Russia objected. The severity of the sanctions, it claimed, would only feed Iran's paranoia, thus hastening it further down the nuclear path. Besides, as Ritter writes, "Iran was where Russia intended to draw the line when it came to what it viewed as the naked abuse of power being wielded by the United States."
Neither was Russia about to sacrifice its arms deals and its contract with Iran to construct the Bushehr nuclear power plant. Nor agree to a proposed ban on international travel for Iranian officials championing uranium enrichment, as well as an asset freeze on the attendant agencies and firms.
China, meanwhile, in approximate proportion to the preferential treatment which the Bush administration had been giving Japan, India, and South Korea, aligned itself with Russia. Besides, by signing long-term, mega-bucks deals, it's become Iran's biggest oil and gas customer and investor in drilling and exploration.
Russ Wellen is the nuclear deproliferation editor for OpEdNews. He's also on the staffs of Freezerbox and Scholars & Rogues.
"It's hard to tell people not to smoke when you have a cigarette dangling from your mouth." -- Mohamed El Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency
I wrote that before.. He reminds me about one Russian general from the 19th Century, a Head of the Tzar's Secret Police Benkendorf. He got sick several times but always recovered. Prince Menshikov joked:
- Benkendorf will never die. That famous medium in Paris told him that he would die after he does his first good deed. Since then he never does any good as such being undead...
Cheney is undead..
by
Mark Sashine (46 articles, 19 quicklinks, 235 diaries, 3358 comments)
on Thursday, January 11, 2007 at 7:49:10 AM
So does anyone not get it that we need to do a nice twofer
Impeachment of Both Psycho in Chief George W Bush and his
Vice Psycho Little Mussolini Draft Dodger Dick Cheney if
we are to ever end this nightmare and the Bush/Cheney
Bloodbath In Iraq Disaster,before Cheney order his stooge
George W Bush to nuke Iran? .. And so,once again I have
to publically ask the looney toons San Francisco Mental
Midget Grandma Nancy Pelosi and Wimpy Hare Brain Harry
Reid as to honestly which is more important to snuff out
smoking in the Speakers Lobby or Prevent A Nuclear War you
Gutless Cowards Pelosi and Reid and Democrats?
by
Ralph (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 74 comments)
on Friday, January 12, 2007 at 12:47:19 PM
