Twilight Of The Fourthbranch

Dick Cheney should be holding a cup for handouts in front of the 14th Street Bridge, not feted in the Politico (some would say fellated). He's been totally discredited and properly villified by every sentient person in the country, and the only people that should be knocking on the door to his new office are cops with handcuffs. Of course, inside the Beltway, there is nothing a Republican can do that would disqualify reporters from taking seriously their thoughts on all matters.

And thus we have Fourthbranch intoning that we'll all be killed within weeks if we listen to that Muslim guy in the White House.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.

In an interview Tuesday with Politico, Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects.

And he asserted that President Obama will either backtrack on his stated intentions to end those policies or put the country at risk in ways more severe than most Americans — and, he charged, many members of Obama’s own team — understand.

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.

Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”

Citing intelligence reports, Cheney said at least 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo during the Bush administration — “that’s about 11 or 12 percent” — have “gone back into the business of being terrorists.”

It just goes on and on like this. And the three bobbleheads - Mike Allen, John Harris, and Jim VanDeHei - who wrote this, might as well have posted the transcript, they add so little.

For instance, when Cheney gravely rumbles that zombie lie about the 61 inmates who were released from Gitmo and became terrorists - including pulling off the devious terrorist activities like writing letters to the editor and appearing in mainstream movies - would it have occurred to any of these three to mention that Cheney and his boss Bush DID THE FUCKING RELEASING?

And that's just a sample. Cheney says that "we're not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek," and isn't asked why his White House turned the other cheek in Afghanistan to focus on Iraq. He worries about the big deficits racked up by the recovery package, and isn't asked about how his White House doubled the national debt and was quoted as saying "deficits don't matter." He snarls “The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected" and isn't asked about how torture, indefinite detention, and a host of other illegal actions has catastrophically lowered our respect in the world.

It's disgusting that any self-respecting news organization would even interview this guy and let his lies go unchallenged. But Matt Cooper finds one revealing moment.

Second, one of the best lines in the piece is where Mike Allen, my old partner covering the White House for Time, along with John Harris and Jim VandeHei ask Cheney about the economy. I'll let it speak for itself:

Whether the Bush administration should have done more about the economy: "We did worry about it, to some extent. ... I don't think anybody actually foresaw something of this size and dimension occurring. It's also global. We only control part of the world economy - a very important part."

We did worry about it, to some extent. Even if you see that as a verbal tick of Cheney's it's still a phenomenal line as in, "We did worry about succession, to some extent," said Andrew Johnson.

The proper way to address Cheney is by turning your back and shunning, not licking his boots.