Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran

The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates.

Last year Mr Bush came down in favour of Ms Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. “The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern,” the source said this week.

In case you have forgotten, Cheney was one of the people who, to date, has been 100% wrong about Iraq. In every conceivable way. Our soldiers are dying because he was wrong. We are spending billions of dollars a day while stuck in an increasingly hostile foreign country with an Army stretched too thin because he was wrong, and now he wants to add another country to the list.

Here’s what I’m trying to say, folks:

We need to get rid of this guy once and for all. He is a threat to this nation. He has harmed our country by running it into debt (while enriching his corporate buddies), destroying its reputation in the world, and sending soldiers into harm’s way for no reason. He has placed himself above the law, essentially saying that he answers to nobody for his actions. He’s done everything he can to eliminate the checks and balances of the government, ignore the Congress, and turn the Judiciary into simply a rubber-stamp machine for his policies. He has made it clear that Dick Cheney serves only one person: Dick Cheney. He is a cancer and needs to be removed. If you thought Nixon and Clinton showed contempt for the law and the public, I can’t imagine you’re happy with Cheney’s behavior.

There is a strong case for impeachment for both Bush and Cheney, but frankly Bush without Cheney (or Rove, who should be kept as the sole occupant of a reopened Alcatraz, a la Rudolf Hess in Spandau Prison.) would be a toothless lame duck for a few months, unable to cause much problem. Bush is dangerous, sure, but only because he’s stupid and easily led. Without his mentors the Congress would just have to spend time reminding him that he doesn’t need to go to war with Latveria because it’s not a real place.

In this interview Bill Moyers talks with Bruce Fein and John Nichols about the case for impeachment. These aren’t moonbats, either; Fein wrote the articles of impeachment for Clinton. These are people who are interested in preserving the Constitution instead of just “winning one for the team” or doing what the polls say.

If we lived in a real country, we would have a real opposition party working on such an impeachment. We would have people in the street demanding it. But we don’t have a real country, we have a lazy country. That’s okay, though. We won’t have it for much longer.

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