Wondering why Vice-President Dick Cheney recently played footsie with Kazakhstan’s autocratic leader–an oil-rich president with an awful human rights record whose recent re-election was fraudulent? (Hey, sounds sort of familiar.) No, it wasn’t because Cheney wanted to mimic his boss, who recently received another oil-rich autocrat–the president of Azerbaijan–in the White House. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Cheney used to occupy a cushy seat on Kazakh’s Oil Advisory Board? (Did anyone see this in coverage of the Vice-President’s trip?) As reported by Mark Ames in the June 2003 issue of The Exile, Cheney was a member of that board in 2001 and advised Bush to “deepen [our] commercial dialogue with Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and other Caspian states.” On this trip, he pronounced himself to be “delighted” to be a guest of the Kazakh president, adding that the United States “is proud to be your strategic partner” and looks forward “to continued friendship between us.”

Speak for yourself and your oily interests, Mr Cheney, not for the millions of Americans who still seek a moral compass in our politics.