The Greatest 110 Words About Dick Cheney, Ever

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If you must read a summary of Dick Cheney’s new memoir, make it this one, from Charlie Savage of the New York Times. Here, in two paragraphs, Savage manages to summarize Cheney’s obstinacy and cluelessness:

Former Vice President says in a new memoir that he urged President to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site in June 2007. But, he wrote, Mr. Bush opted for a diplomatic approach after other advisers—still stinging over “the bad intelligence we had received about Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction”—expressed misgivings.

“I again made the case for U.S. military action against the reactor,” Mr. Cheney wrote about a meeting on the issue. “But I was a lone voice. After I finished, the president asked, ‘Does anyone here agree with the vice president?’ Not a single hand went up around the room.”

Now, Bashar al-Assad is not a nice guy, and inshallah, he’s a soon-to-be-ex-dictator. But unilaterally bombing out a “suspected” nuclear reactor? In Syria? At the height of the civil war in Iraq? Bare months after Israel went into Lebanon and World War III nearly broke out?

When even the Bush cabinet, to a man and woman, can’t stand Dr. Strangelove’s bully ramblings anymore, you know the good doctor has turned one hell of a corner into Crazytown. Read on, and find out why Cheney was so ready for 9/11 and Condi was such a girly-girl.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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