Paul Giorgio: Dick Cheney Should Keep Quiet

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Paul Giorgio, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Dick Cheney

Former Vice President Dick Cheney reminds me of a story I once heard. It went something like this: ”A mother had two sons, one became a sea captain and the other Vice President-neither were heard from again”. Obviously the bellicose former Vice President never heard that story.

In a blistering attack on President Barack Obama, published in The Wall Street Journal on June 17, Cheney and his daughter Liz co-authored an attack on the President, saying that” Rarely has a U.S. President been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.” He kept up the attack this weekend on the Sunday morning talk show circuit, where he stopped short of calling the President a traitor.

Cheney should just shut up. You see, to most Americans, that quote of Cheney’s applies to the Bush-Cheney Administration, which got us into a war in Iraq for no apparent reason. They used the canard that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but after almost 15 years we haven’t found any.

Remember George Bush standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier with a large banner in the background proclaiming “Mission Accomplished?”

Mission accomplished?

Dick, what mission was accomplished in your war?

I will tell you what was accomplished: according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, we have had almost 5,000 Americans killed in that war, and we have an additional 1 million injured. Injured for what?

The Cost of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies estimates that the war has cost us $1.7 trillion. This does not include almost an additional $5 million in Veterans benefits.

This whole discussion about Iraq has sprung up because ISIS, a group of militants has started to take control of the country starting at the Syrian border. What is going on now in Iraq is both a Civil War and a Religious war between competing Muslim factions. It is the two branches of Islam-Sunni and Shiite- attacking each other. Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki never built a coalition government after we “liberated” the country from Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Halliburton makes $40 billion

It also appears that Cheney has never found a war he did not love. Why does he love war so much? To quote Deep Throat from Watergate, “Follow the money.” If you follow the money, you realize who won in Iraq-Haliburton-the company the Dick Cheney headed before he chaired the Vice Presidential selection committee for George W. Bush and picked himself.

By most estimates Halliburton made almost $40 billion from the war in Iraq.

Criticism of Cheney on this issue is not just limited to Democrats. In a 2009 speech at Western Kentucky University, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul accused Cheney of going to war to benefit Halliburton.

We have to question Cheney’s motives on this. I don’t think he is pure evil (as some on the left have declared) or that he actually went to war to see Halliburton prosper. But his friends made a killing on their stock while American troops were being killed.

I think Dick Cheney is merely trying to reshape history to benefit him and if he has to take Barack Obama down to do it he will.

Bush-Cheney wrong

“Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.” This quote of Cheney’s clearly refers to George W. Bush, and it started with his selection of Dick Cheney as Vice President.

Dick, please just shut up. At Least George W. Bush has the good sense to keep quiet about foreign policy. He realizes like every other President and Vice President has, that America has only one President and Vice President at a time. Dick, you’re not it.

Paul Giorgio is a longtime Democratic Party Activist who has worked on numerous campaigns. He was a Lead Advance Person for President Clinton & Vice President Gore. He was Deputy Director of Special Events for President Clinton’s first Inauguration. He has been elected a delegate to numerous Democratic National Conventions and recently served as one of President Obama’s representatives on the Platform Committee. In 2013 he was chosen as a Presidential Elector. He is the President of Pagio, Inc., publishers of Pulse Magazine, Vitality Magazine and Worcester Medicine.