Cheney Unchained: For the sake of argument and impeachment...

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Thursday, February 16, 2006 15:56

American Politics Journal | Feb. 16, 2006 -- Cheney

Unchained: For the sake of argument and impeachment...

 

American Politics Journal

E-mail Edition

Feb. 16, 2006

 

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Cheney Unchained

For the sake of argument and impeachment

By Alan Bisbort

 

Feb. 16, 2006 /HARTFORD (apj.us)/ For the sake of argument, let's say

that, out of sheer carelessness and perhaps because I had mixed

alcohol with the massive doses of medication I take for a heart

condition, I discharged a shotgun into the face and chest of a

78-year-old man.

 

And then, let's say, after I'd done this, I did not call the police;

and

when an officer of the law did show up at my door many hours later, I

bade my armed retinue chase him away before he could take an official

statement from me, even though I was now a suspect in a potentially

fatal shooting.

 

Then, let's say, I sat down, made myself a cocktail (not forgetting

that I'm heavily medicated) and ate dinner, even as the person I shot

was lying on a gurney in the emergency room many miles away. Let's say

I did not inform my boss about what happened, or tell my wife who I

was with because two of my companions were rich and foxy unmarried

women whose company I prefer to hers.

 

Given all of the above, would I be accorded any deference whatsoever

by law enforcement officials? Would the scene of the shooting remain

unsurveyed by investigators? Would I be allowed to roam free as a bee

and only five days later talk to reporters—that is, talk to one

friendly, hand-picked TV commentator—and even then, suggest that my

behavior was " the right call " and not admit to any wrongdoing? Would my family

be pleased with me?

 

No, of course not. Even my most abject apologists, sycophants and

enablers would not insist otherwise. I was in the wrong, all the way.

 

For the sake of further argument, then, let's say that I was ultimately

responsible for the killing of a family of foreigners at a wedding party

or at the local open-air market, just wasted them all because they

disrespected my red, white and blue shoelaces or something. Or, let's

say, I held a group of neighbors hostage in my basement, bound and

gagged and tortured them for days, applied electrodes to their gonads,

forced them to have sex with, and defecate on, one another, then I let

my pit bull and German shepherd have at them.

 

Would I not be charged with any crime?

 

Again, no. I would, in all likelihood, have the proverbial book thrown

at me.

 

OK. Let's say that I am arguably the most powerful political figure in

the nation and when the most devastating hurricane and flood in

American

history took place, and millions of people were displaced, thousands

went missing and ultimately were found dead, I remained on vacation in

Wyoming. That is, I continued to sip cocktails and shoot at trapped

birds that had been released for my shooting pleasure by the owners of

the exclusive ranches I prefer to the political office I'm mandated to

oversee.

 

Would I be held unaccountable? Would I be applauded by fellow citizens?

 

Ridiculous questions, right? Of course I wouldn't!

 

Al right then. Let's say that, under my orders, the company for which

I am CEO did business with foreign regimes that flagrantly violated

human rights and I did this even against an order from the president

of theUnited States. And let's say I pushed the envelope on this

matter and,

in the name of " constructive engagement, " I willingly brokered a

pipeline deal with a military dictatorship like, say, that of Myanmar,

knowing full well that many of the workers on this pipeline were,

literally, slaves and that the duly elected president of this country

(by a landslide 80% margin) had been placed under house arrest and

that her supporters were jailed, tortured and murdered on a regular basis.

 

Would I be hailed as a hero of big business, a giant among giants?

 

No, no, a thousand times no. I'd be lucky not to be deported, attacked

by an angry mob, strung up on a lamppost and urinated upon.

 

If such deference was denied to me—or to any of the other 300

million-plus tax-paying private citizens in America—then when did

Richard Cheney step out of the realm of the law and enter some new,

inviolable state of existence? Who bestowed upon Richard Cheney a

special dispensation from having to obey the most basic tenets of

civilized society?

 

Furthermore, how is it that, if I refused to kill someone whom Mr.

Cheney has ordered me, as a conscript in his illegal war machine, to

kill—such as foreign families at a wedding party or an open-air

market—or if I refuse to torture people who've been jailed under Mr.

Cheney's orders without having been charged with crimes and without

having been allowed access to legal counsel or even to their own

families, I would face prosecution under the legal sanctions, such as

they are, in my country?

 

Don't roll your eyes. Please. Don't dismiss these questions. These are

basic things that I am asking here, not esoteric, hair-splitting

pontifications over semen stains on a blue dress. These cut through

all of the partisan spin, on both sides, to what's real and what's

happening in and to America in the year of Our Lord 2006.

If you are comfortable with the answers you've been provided, then you

are in far deeper trouble than I ever suspected.

 

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Alan Bisbort is a columnist for the Hartford Advocate. His book, `When

You Read This They Will Have Killed Me: The Life and Redemption of

Caryl Chessman, Whose Execution Shook America and Shocked the World,

will be published this fall by Carroll & Graf.

 

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Mark Hull-Richter, U.S. Citizen & Patriot

U.S.A. - From democracy to kakistocracy in one fell coup.

" Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent

revolution inevitable. " - JFK

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0416-01.htm

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