There's no other Cheney quite like this Dick

I found it! Score!



After which came the Cheney apologist (from the WSJ no less, I'm sure Murdoch is salivating):



Where is the answer to Stewart's simple question? Why does it take a Comedy Central to air these types of serious questions? History will mark Haye's silence, due to the utter lack of rational justification for the administration's actions, and treat the Bush administration with the contempt it deserves.

The only thing that "changed" after 9/11 was that the administration knew it could get away with lying because people were single-mindedly fixated on swift revenge. Since they (the political elite) often see the general population as uneducated baboons, they knew people would take dubious pronouncements at face value (and that those who did not would be out-shouted by the war-mongers).

For my Republican friends, you can not say I always disagree with your party, but what I agreed was sound policy in 1994 was not so severely altered by faulty intelligence in 2003 that it justified what the administration did (and continues to do). For those of you that knew me then, you've known I've been a critic of Bush since he first lost the 2000 election. I've disagreed with nearly every policy decision by this White House, save attacking Afghanistan and the marine refuge created around Hawaii. Attacking Iraq opened up a second front in a war (essentially on Iran if you look at a map), which is already an extremely poor military strategy to begin with, Generalissimo NeoCon. Idiots.

What the war-mongers do not understand is how to fight an ideology, ironically despite the fact they themselves subscribe to a very similar, reactionist ideology that they subsequently demonize when referring to their enemies. As a result of 9/11, the terrorists are already winning. Your liberties have been restricted. You wring your hands about traveling abroad. You take out extra life insurance and fret about "what if", and Fox News and the like are right there, in your face, reminding you that we can never lapse in our vigilance (while our nation's ports and nuclear facilities go under-protected, and our airports remain insecure). Many of you think such measures are necessary, but a terrorist does not care about the reason people are frightened or have their freedoms restricted, they care only that it occurs. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

You are all less free. For what? For a few extra dollars? For a few extra corpses? For the business interests of the elite who control the U.S.'s military-congressional-industrial complex? (original term by another Republican, 2-term President Dwight D. Eisenhower) Where is the 'outrageous' conspiracy theory when you've got a Vice President, a public servant, who has closed-door sessions with industry on energy policy and who refuses to stop receiving payments from his former employer, who happens to be gouging the US military in Iraq? Here's a hunt that would make Waldo jealous - find the weak link in those logical implications! Basic capitalist theory supports aligning people's personal interests with their actions. The simplest way to profit off a war? Use your influence to start a war! Why deny that people are acting in accordance with the very theories used to justify cutthroat business practices on a daily basis? If it's good enough for our corporate elite, why not for the soldiers fighting for their profits?

If you want to provide the appropriate counter-incentive to the current sytsem of collusion, it's very simple: require every Congressperson to send their son(s) or daughter(s) to fight in whatever war or other military action they allow the President to undertake. It's like a draft-lite, just 535 possible families, not quite Vietnam-era enough. But it's a great step toward a system of true checks and balances.

If you wish to debate the point above don't talk to me - just call your representative (and hopefully ask to get the U.S. the fuck out of Iraq). Or, for a more personal response from the government, just call someone you know who's currently abroad so that your government can (il)legally listen in to the overseas call. If you don't know who to call, just dial me - lord knows I'm enough of a pinko commie liberal to pique the NSA's interests. I mean, Hungary's still Communist, isn't it?