I have no desire to see Dick Cheney in prison nor see a protracted trial taking place. President Obama is correct that we have a lot more important things we need to concentrate on without haing any distractions. We are not out of the woods yet with the recession, and healthcare and energy policies still need to be addressed. Anything that will distract from this will only end up harming the American people.
The important point is that we now have a president who has publicly ended our policy of warrantless wiretaps, torture and imprisonment without due process.
History will be the judge of Dick Cheney, and it will not be good. Richard Nixon opened up China to the world and it was his administration that began the Environmental Protection Agency, revenue sharing to cities, ended the draft and began affirmative action, but history will forever remember him for Watergate and as a president who if impeached would have been convicted for his crimes.
In no way do I excuse the excesses or breaking of laws during the Bush administration, but we have a leader now who has put policies in place so these abuses will never happen again, and with millions of people out of work, millions who have lost their homes, and more millions who have no medical insurance and those who do have it that are worried about being able to keep it because of the increase in premiums, we cannot allow ourselves to get distracted.
Bush and Cheney did substantial damage to our country and our image in the world. We need to correct their mistakes and make sure they never happen again and we are doing that now. It's time to move on to more important things. The American people badly need change now, not retribution.
Mark Jeffery Koch
Cherry Hill, NJ
07/22/2009 @ 11:01am
Why, pray tell, would anyone feel the need to go through all the trouble of putting a stop to a "vague plan"? If you think about it, that makes no sense whatsoever.
I once concocted a vague plan to firebomb the home of my Sophomore science teacher. There were drawbacks to my little scheme, to be sure. At the time, my father was president of the local school board. Had I been caught, the resulting scandal would not have done him a damned bit of good--politically speaking, that is. It's a fairly safe bet that something as weird as that would have put a bit of a kink in his re-election strategy.
But it must be emphasized that this was just a passing daydream on my part. It came. It went. And while I left high school over three decades ago, my plan to become a teenage terrorist was so incredibly vague, I never really felt the need to go to the trouble of "canceling the program," so to speak. Although this particular teacher moved out of the area back in the seventies (He may even be dead for all I know), that plan is technically still on the table. It goes without saying that I never made an effort to carry it out and have no plans, conscious or otherwise, to do so. But just to be on the safe side, if you're still out there, you might want to keep your night light on, Mr. Roukov. Just a suggestion.
There's something else that's been bugging me. According to the Constitution, the Vice President has only two responsibilities:
1. Breaking a tie vote in the Senate.
2. Assuming the duties as chief executive should the president die or become mentally incapacitated.
While there is little doubt that historians will be debating the mental capacities of George W. Bush for generations to come, the question is just begging to be asked:
Who (or what) gave Dick Cheney the authority to order the CIA to do (or not do) anything? What's wrong with this picture?
If these reports are true, Cheney was acting way beyond his constitutional authority. Questions abound: Why didn't the spooks at Langley headquarters tell the Veep to go stuff himself? Why didn't the CIA lodge a complaint with the president? Or did they? Who was really in charge of that administration? Is our children learning? Are these latest revelations merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg?
The answer to that last question is, undoubtedly, yes. When Cheney and Daughter went out on the talk show circuit back in March, there seemed to me to be an air of desperation about them. What is this all about, I wondered aloud. Cheney never gave a hoot in hell about the security of the American people! Why this sudden change? What the hell is going on here? Now I know. Now we all know.
Tom Degan
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Goshen, NY
07/21/2009 @ 2:27pm
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