Maureen Dowd: Dick Cheney replaces Sarah Palin as Rogue Diva

Opinion

When George Bush snr was ramping up to the Gulf War, assembling a coalition to fight Saddam, Jimmy Carter sent a letter to members of the United Nations Security Council urging them not to rush into conflict without further exploring a negotiated solution.

Bush and other Republicans considered this treasonous - a former President trying to thwart a sitting one, lobbying foreign diplomats to oppose his own country on a war resolution.

In 2002, when Bush jnr was ramping up to his war against Saddam, Al Gore made a speech trying to slow down that war resolution, pointing out that pivoting from Osama to Saddam for no reason, initiating "pre-emptive" war and annoying our allies, would undermine the "war on terror".

Charles Krauthammer called Gore's speech a disgrace. Michael Kelly, his fellow Washington Post columnist, called it vile and contemptible. Newt Gingrich said that the former Vice-President asserting that George W. was making America less safe was "well outside the mark of an appropriate debate".

"I think the President should be doing what he thinks is best as commander-in-chief," Gingrich said flatly. Now, however, Gingrich backs Dick Cheney when he asserts that President Barack Obama has made America less safe.

Asked by CBS anchorman Bob Schieffer how America could commit torture when it made a mockery of our ideals, Cheney blithely gave an answer that surely would have been labelled treasonous by Rush Limbaugh, if a Democratic ex-vice-president had said it about a Republican president.

"Well, then you'd have to say that, in effect, we're prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation programme that would provide us the information we need to protect America," Doomsday Dick said.

Cheney has replaced Sarah Palin as Rogue Diva. Just as Jeb Bush and other Republicans are trying to get kinder and gentler, Cheney has popped out of his dungeon, scary organ music blaring, to carry on his nasty campaign of fear and loathing.

The man who never talked is now the man who won't shut up. The man who wouldn't list his office in the federal jobs directory, who had the vice-president's residence blocked on Google Earth, who went to the Supreme Court to keep from revealing which energy executives helped him write the nation's energy policy, is now endlessly yelping about how Obama is holding back documents that should be made public.

"Bush snr cares about decorum and protocol," said an official in his Administration. "I'm sure he doesn't appreciate Cheney acting out. He is giving the whole party a black eye just as Jeb is out there trying to renew the party."

Cheney unleashed is pretty much the same as Cheney underground: he's batty, and he thinks he was the president.

Bush jnr admired Cheney's brass (he used another word), but grew increasingly sceptical of him, the more he learned about foreign policy himself and the more he got pulled into a diplomatic mode by Condi in the second term. There were even reports of George W. doing a funny Cheney imitation, and that it dawned on him that Cheney and Rummy represented a scofflaw, paranoid Nixon cell within his White House.

"Toward the end, Bush jnr was just as confused as anybody about what makes Cheney tick," said a Bush family loyalist.

Cheney's numbskull ideas - he still loves torture, Gitmo and scaring the bejesus out of Americans - are not only fixed, they're jejune.

He has no coherent foreign-policy viewpoint. He still doesn't fathom that his brutish invasion of Iraq unbalanced that part of the world, empowered Iran and was a force multiplier for Muslims who hate America.

He left our ports unsecured, our food supply unsafe, the Taleban rising and Osama bin Laden on the loose. No matter if or when terrorists attack here - and they're on their own timetable, not a partisan red/blue state timetable - Cheney will be deemed the primary one who made America more vulnerable.

George W.'s dark surrogate father is trying to pull the Republicans into a black hole of zealotry, just as the sensible brother who lost his future to the scamp brother is trying to get his career back on track.

* Maureen Dowd is a New York Times columnist.

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