THE SHAMELESS, UNMITIGATED GALL OF DICK CHENEY

In a radio interview earlier this week, Dick Cheney had the nerve to assert that Barack Obama was, in his opinion, the worst president the US has ever had. Dick Cheney, the man who as vice president in the George W Bush administration, orchestrated turning our nation's legitimate response to 9-11 by fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan into an unrelated, unnecessary war against Iraq, which has ended up destabilizing not only that nation but the entire Middle East. Dick Cheney, the man who claims to have no regrets for manipulating the US into a middle East disaster costing untold trillions of dollars, many thousands of our soldiers lives, and hundreds of thousands of middle eastern lives, triggering the development of new, even more violent terrorist groups, with resulting conflicts still mushrooming in size, range, and lethality. Dick Cheney, the man whose Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, was convicted and sentenced to time in prison for exposing a CIA agent in his attempt to punish a US Ambassador who had the forthrightness to expose that the administration's attempts to find reasons to attack Iraq were based on faulty, contrived evidence.  Dick Cheney, the man who as a leading neocon was given tremendous power over determining the course of the nation's foreign policy in the early years of  the W Bush administration, and whose Secretary of State during those years, Colin Powell, later resigned and apologized for the tragic errors that were made under that watch.  Dick Cheney, the man who spent his last years as our nation's vice president in virtual hiding, no longer in the inner loop, once the failure of the policies he had so fervently proposed and initiated became overwhelmingly obvious. The same Dick Cheney is still on the scene, making statements on Fox News, and there are apparently some people who still listen to him, and may even take his judgments seriously. Few people would claim that Obama's presidency has been notably successful. Whatever one feels about Obama's intentions as president, his accomplishments are unfortunately more outnumbered by his disappointments and unresolved issues and problems.  But the worst?  Cheney need look no further back than the administration he was a part of to find a more worthy recipient of that charge. Ignored the warning signs prior to 9-11, turned the nation's reaction to that assault into a region-wide disaster from which the entire Middle East, and we, as the precipitating power which spread the conflict, are still trying to recover and reestablish a degree of order. No, it is not Obama who deserves the accusation, but it is not surprising that failure is paramount of Cheney's mind. Every time he looks at the mirror in the morning, he is looking straight into the sad eyes of one who has every reason to fear no one is more deserving of the charge "worst" than he.