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 things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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