Wyoming's Cheney heads "black branch"

When Dick Cheney was growing up in Casper, did he ever envision how universally reviled he would be in 2007?

"Mom," said Dick over a bowl of granite chips and petroleum by-products, "I want to grow up to be the most hated man in America."

"That’s nice, Dick, now eat your breakfast. It will darken your bile and curdle your spleen."

The latest "Doonesbury" series lampoons Cheney and his insistence that the vice presidency is a separate branch of government. In "Doonesbury," it's called the "black branch." The ultra-secretive Cheney gets a question from a reporter: "How lucky are we to be living in a country with two executive branches?" Cheney’s reply: "I’m not at liberty to say."

Conservatives write off "Doonesbury" as liberal propaganda. Our local newspaper puts it on the op-ed page next to the lame "Prickly City." "Mallard Fillmore" used to have that honor. "Doonesbury" has its own spot on-line in Slate, which also files it under "news and politics."

Ironically, "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau has spent much of his creative juices during the past few years on strips about wounded vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. On his Slate on-line site, there’s a milblog called "The Sandbox" that features "dispatches from troops in Iraq and Afghanistan." Trudeau actually talks to G.I.s and has spent time in veteran’s hospitals so he can get the details right.

Trudeau and his comic strip sprang out of the Ivy league antiwar movement. One of the continuing characters is B.D., a Vietnam vet who returns from Southeast Asia slightly tarnished but later, as a National Guard soldier, gets his leg blown off in Iraq.

Odd that Trudeau, a Yalie who got a suspicious Vietnam draft deferment due to ulcers, knows more G.I.s than five-time draft dodger Dick Cheney, one of the architects of the Iraq mess. The Vietnam veterans of America gave Trudeau its excellence in the arts award in 2006.

Colorado-based columnist Joe Galloway calls the Veep "Darth" Cheney. Pretty heavy words for a guy who admits voting for Bush the first time and who may be the most knowledgeable U.S. newspaper columnist about the military. The Texas native co-wrote the very fine book, "We Were Soldiers Once...And Young," with Lt. Gen. Hal Moore who, after leaving the military, managed Colorado’s Crested Butte ski area. Galloway was in Vietnam as a correspondent and has some understanding of combat.

In his column today, he blasts the creepy dealings of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Gonzales, and their fellow travelers, all (strangely) from the allegedly straight-shooting West. He sums it up this way: "What we have here, at the very heart of our government, is a morass of criminal behavior unlike anything seen in recent American history."

Meanwhile, Mr. Cheney sits at some undisclosed location, hatching more plans to destabilize our democracy. Despite his claim as Casper, Wyoming's "favorite son," I doubt if his Natrona County High School civics teachers would approve of his behavior.