Sullivan on Cheney

It is very rare to get someone with the same stratospheric levels of arrogance and incompetence as you find in Dick Cheney. Let's go to the tape: A war launched on false premises, a trillion dollar debt in a period of growth, a destruction of America's moral standing, the loss of one major city (New Orleans) and the devastation of another (New York City), two horribly bungled military campaigns that have trapped his successors for decades, a political party decimated for a generation, his closest aide in jail for obstruction of justice, his own [lesbian] daughter and grand-child targeted by his own party as second-class citizens in the state they live in. And a war criminal. Did I miss anything?

Why is this man not laughed off every TV set he walks onto?

Sullivan also contrasts two quotes by Peggy Noonan, Republican stalwart and former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan - a very smart, very articulate, very respected writer. Whose arrogant callousness and willful disregard for the fundamental decencies of human life are utterly nauseating:

"The Democrats had long labeled the impeachment debate a distraction from the urgent business of a great nation. But the Republicans argued that the pursuit of justice is the business of a great nation. In winning this point, they caught the falling flag, producing a triumph for the rule of law, a reassertion of the belief that no man is above it, and a rebuke for an arrogance that had grown imperial," - Peggy Noonan, December 21. 1998.

"It’s hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents [the OLC torture memos] and sending them out to the world and thinking, ‘Oh, much good will come of that.’ Sometimes in life you want to keep walking . . . Some of life has to be mysterious." - Peggy Noonan, April 19, 2009.

Remember also that the issue with Clinton was perjury in a civil suit. That required impeachment. But war crimes?

Here's a picture of what Noonan wants to keep "mysterious" - in other words, hidden, buried, ignored, and denied: the aftermath of "enhanced interrogation" performed at Abu Ghraib prison, Baghdad, 2004, by American soldiers by and with the approval of the Bush White House.

That was your American government at work, fellas - not Nazis or Communists in some murky old black-and-white movie, but your government and mine.

Disgusting is not a strong enough word for what has been done in the name of the American people; horrifying and revolting are more like it. And yet Noonan and her ilk, in their fancy Prada high heels and their goody-goody act, want to keep walking right on by, eyes closed, pretending everything is just wonderful.

My own mother, a plainspoken Texan who did not suffer fools gladly, had a short, swift way to sum up a woman like that; and it rhymes with witch.

Sullivan:

Torture is the weapon of cowards and bullies and monsters.