Joan Walsh is right that America needed to see Dick Cheney again in all his evil depravity because he is one of the greatest proofs of the disaster that our government and society have become in the past half century of conservative dominance of our politics and our media. That a man who has the blood of so many scores of thousands on him, who was a major architect of terror campaigns, illegal war and torture programs and who is not only free to be at liberty among us but to have been imposed on us as a de facto president by the Supreme Court is absolute proof that our Constitution doesn't even function at its minimally acceptable level. And that's not to mention that he still gets face time to lie about his crimes against humanity on the major networks.
That two days after he appeared on NBC's Face The Nation to endorse the legality and morality of "rectal feeding" and torturing, as well as incarcerating innocent people, people in the millions aren't damning him merely tops off the eight years when they tolerated him as the self-chosen office daddy of George W. Bush and the actual chief executive for a good part of that time. Four decades ago 42 years ago his predecessor, Spiro Agnew, achieved fame as the first Vice President who had to resign the office for financial crimes that, today, would barely be noticed. He took less than $130,000 dollars in bribes and extortion. He was replaced by Gerald Ford who would pardon Richard Nixon for anything he'd done while president - as I have mentioned the House Committee declined to approve an article of impeachment against him related to the illegal invasion of Cambodia, the first article of impeachment filed by Congressman Fr. Robert Drinan. To refresh memories:
On July 31, 1973, while the Vietnam war was still being fought, Representative Robert Drinan, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced the first impeachment resolution against President Richard Nixon. One of the grounds for indictment Drinan proposed was the secret bombing of Cambodia, ordered by the President. To Drinan, this was a crime at least as great as the domestic scandals which had already come to be known as "Watergate." The fourteen months of massive B-52 "carpet bombings," which killed tens of thousands of Cambodian villagers and an unknown number of Vietnamese communist soldiers in border sanctuaries, were run outside the military's chain of command. They were also kept completely secret from Congress and the public (until exposed by New York Times reporter William Beecher). In recently released transcripts of telephone conversations between Nixon and his closest aides, the President ordered "a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia [using] anything that flies on anything that moves." (The transcript then records an unintelligible comment that "sounded like [General Alexander] Haig laughing.")
The secret bombing of Cambodia involved the same abuse of power and political manipulation of government agencies as Watergate, but only a few Congressional representatives like John Conyers, Elizabeth Holtzman, and Edward Mezvinsky supported Drinan's Cambodia article, which was soundly defeated by the House impeachment committee 26-12.
There are many myths about Watergate -- among them that Woodward and Bernstein rode into Dodge and rescued the republic all by themselves, that the impeachment of Richard Nixon saved American constitutional democracy from destruction, and that the grounds on which Nixon was impeached were a fair reflection of what he and "all the President's men" had actually done. In American mythology, "the system worked."
The "system working" was something of a mantra back the. The "system worked" when it let Nixon off for some of the most serious crimes against humanity in the years after the defeat of the Nazis and Imperial Japan. The "system worked" when it declined to even indict Nixon for actions that would directly lead to the deaths of millions of people in the wreck that he left Cambodia. It "worked" when Gerald Ford put the final proof in place that an American president, as long as he is a Republican, will never have to pay for even the reduced charges brought by a bi-partisan vote of the House Committee assigned to investigate his crimes.
Four decades later, we and the victims of our imperial government are paying for what happened with the approval of the free press which has so notably not protected us or democracy from this. Of course, it was the same free press which had clearly favored Nixon's election in 1968. I've mentioned before that the morning after that election I had the TV on the local NBC affiliate. When they called the race for Nixon, the newsroom burst out in applause, which, back then, was excused by grey, dour, old Ed Newman as relief at a long night being over. Which, considering how they'd behaved all year, I thought had the credibility of a bridge salesman. The hypocrisy of that is punctuated by the claim that "our long national nightmare is over" at the other end of the Nixon administration made by the man who would ensure it was only starting. For those who forget, Dick Cheney was a member of that let-off administration, as well.
That year was the beginning of my total disillusionment with the free press, I'd have thought it would be complete by now but they never cease to find a lower level to sink to. But, then, neither does the government they cover. Now we have "rectal feeding" threatening to torture children (John Yoo is still at large and given his say by our free press) total and illegal war (see the link from this morning) and other such flowers of democracy as allowed by our real constitution, not that Potemkin one we're always talking about.
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