Cheney loves what war gets him
MIAMI – Former vice president Dick Cheney loves war. Everywhere he turns he sees the opportunity to send American troops in harms way to defeat our enemies – even where there are none.
If there’s no war he’ll help create it. And where there’s no need for war he’s a master at developing weapons of mass deception – as he so ably did with Iraq after 9/11.
Dick Cheney is also a coward. He sees war as a way to profit. He believes that military adventures must be undertaken by others, though. His job from these deadly encounters is to make money; let others do the dying.
Vietnam is proof of his cowardice. He was young, healthy and had a better working heart then. But he punted (if you will allow me the football metaphor). He finagled a deferment and studied. He never attended the classrooms of blood and gore he promotes. And although he favored that horrible war, he preferred it be fought by those he considers a lower class – brown, black and poor men and women better suited for dying on battlefields.
And like a bug you step on, but that keeps moving forward, Cheney is at it again. Hours before President Obama was to address the nation on his plans of air bombing Iraq and Syria to rid the area of the problems created by ISIS, Cheney was frothing at the mouth and creating a clamor for war. During a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, the SOB was again beating the drums of destruction.
“We are at war,” he said, and “we must do what it takes, for as long as it takes, to win.” This means “we should halt the drawdown of our troops in Afghanistan,” that we should “take military action if necessary” in Iran, and give “full backing and support” of those fighting the Muslim Brotherhood.
As Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank says of Cheney: “In summary: War, war and more war.”
Here’s an example of Cheney’s profit motive. In an article written by Angelo Young last year, he writes that “Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds [money that went for the Iraq War], according to an analysis by the Financial Times …
“The No. 1 recipient?
“Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc., which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co., in 2007.
“The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg.”
Did I mention that Cheney was the chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company from 1995 to 2000 – leaving his post to become vice president during the George W. Bush years. There are still many who believe he never really left his chairmanship. Others who wonder who really was president? But that’s for another time.
Like I said, for Dick Cheney, war is profitable. Especially when someone else’s kid is the one shedding the blood.
