The Death Throes of Dick Cheney

Freshly recharged with a new battery pack, our bionic vice president had another encounter with CNN’s Larry King a day back and I finally caught up with it last night. I haven’t seen anything in a long time that summed up the term “arrogance of power” quite so chillingly. I started out wondering, back in the days of Cheney’s “death throes” remarks and his continuous assaults on the patriotism of critics—can Cheney actually be so stupid? Does he actually believe this? I believed then and still believe that the answer is “no.” Cheney has gotten Defense Department briefings and briefings from the intelligence service; he knows that these claims are lies. He pushes them sheerly for political effect, because there are roughly 24% of the American public who are gullible enough to actually believe him. And in this interview, you see some clear signs. When he dishes out the real whoppers, he invariably refuses to look the questioner in the eye, and stares at the floor. What one of my FBI friends calls “classic signs of evasion.” It’s not worth watching the whole thing, but here’s a four-minute clip that Josh Marshall has pulled together that offers the highlights. It’s a must view.