Dick Cheney's Grim Fairy Tales and LiesIf everything is up to date in Kansas City, why was Dick Cheney there repeating the same old line about the war in Iraq? Good war. Good reasons. Good outcome. Good grief! Has the man been reading the newspapers? Has he watched anything but FOX News? Has he read military and intelligence assessments? Spoken to members of Congress who have been there and providedm contradictory accounts? Has he read Alan Greenspan? Everywhere else but Downtown Kansas City, it was 2007. But the moment Cheney opened his mouth at a fundraiser (on Monday, Sept. 17) for Missouri's Republican Rep. Sam Graves, the clock struck 2001. U.S. involvement in Iraq has nothing to do with the strike on the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. In Kansas City, Cheney said it did. Nothing to do with the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Cheney said it did. It has nothing to do with what happened to the USS Cole in 2000. Cheney said otherwise. While the architects of this war keep lying, our people overseas keep dying. So do other people in the Gulf. What this war does have a lot to do with is a premeditated scheme to use military force to alter the politics of a sovereign state. Iraq's ruthless dictator presented a timely excuse for using our post-9/11 fears to back the intervention. With Saddam out of the way, Cheney's pals in the oil industry could help themselves. And they have. They have not only helped themselves to Iraqi resources but U.S. funds, too. Cheney's former employer, Halliburton, is among the energy companies to receive no-bid contracts. That's your tax dollars, people, that aren't being properly accounted for. Congress fell for the ruse hook, line and sinker. Initially, so did most Americans. Now that has changed, if you believe the polls. Cheney doesn't read polls. At least some lawmakers who backed this war at the outset, presumably for the right reasons, have changed their minds. Sam Graves is among those in Congress who refuse to accept the obvious facts and instead are happy to repeat the fantasy as told by Cheney. His Democratic opponent, former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes, will use this to her advantage, of course. OK, so nobody misses Saddam Hussein. But there are many who live in Iraq and in the United States who lost people in an unnecessary war that produced avoidable civil strife and sectarian violence. Think of the countless Iraqis and Americans who were sacrificed. Think of the strained international alliances. Think of the pro-America sentiment expressed after 9/11 that now has turned into hostility. All the rules were broken in this war. The Bill of Rights was trampled. Government is spying on citizens without warrants for wiretaps. People are being detained, some kidnapped and sent to other countries, without formal criminal charges. The Justice Department, then under Alberto Gonzales, became an arm of the Executive Branch. It gave permission, hardly based on solid legal opinion, to disregard the Geneva Conventions. And someone in the White House felt it was OK to expose a secret agent for revenge. So has this been worth it? Nope. In Kansas City, Cheney said it has. The reason most Americans backed this war was to see their government prosecute or kill the man responsible for what happened to us in 2001. Six years later, that has not happened. In 2001, we faced Osama bin Laden. In 2007, it's Osama Been Forgotten who keeps taunting us with threatening videotapes. And it's Dick Cheney who keeps regaling us with grim fairy tales and lies. He has willfully and skillfully used scare tactics and intimidation to get us into a foreign war over oil.
Rhonda Chriss Lokeman (lokeman@kcstar.com) is a columnist for The Kansas City Star. To find out more about Rhonda Chriss Lokeman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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