Frontline exposes "Cheney the Crafty"

When V.P. Dick Cheney isn't hunkering down in his bunker or buzzing the bucolic hamlet of Jackson in his taxpayer-funded 747, he's terrorizing the Free World. But some of us are wise to your game, Mister-I'm-Just-An-Aw-Shucks-Fella-From Wyoming. Syndicated columnist Rick Horowitz blew Cheney's cover in his most recent column, "We watched as Cheney seized power." He takes us back to the year July 2000 when Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush was in a quandary about who to choose for a running mate. Enter his dad's pal, Dick Cheney, head poobah of a tiny Texas-based concern known as Halliburton.

"Enter Dick Cheney. Cheney the Calm. Cheney the Wise. Cheney the Crafty... He searched high and low, not to mention hither and yon. He compared and contrasted. He did everything you'd want a search committee to do. With one exception: He didn't take himself out of the running. And wouldn't you know it? When Mr. Cheney had finished, there was only one candidate left standing. Mr Cheney found: Mr. Cheney. So why didn't the alarm bells go off right then?"

Good question, Rick. But that's just Cheney's modus operandi. Ask progressive Wyomingites about Cheney's dictatorial sensibilities, his tendency toward my-way-or-the-highway. We'll tell you that this is nothing new.

Rick sums up the situation:

"We didn't know then what we know now, but still: shouldn't Cheney-chooses-Cheney have seemed...dangerous? Putting that sort of man that close to that much power? Now we've seen the results. What were we thinking?"

Some of us were thinking, which is why we elected Al Gore with the popular vote in 2000. That's why we voted for John Kerry in 2004. We know the evil that lurks in Mr. Cheney's heart.
This Tuesday at 8 p.m., we'll have the opportunity (unless the Colorado Rockies are still playing) to watch the Frontline documentary, "Cheney's Law," on our local PBS station. Here's a description from PBS:

"For three decades, Vice President Dick Cheney has waged a secretive, and often bitter battle, to expand the power of the presidency. Now, in a direct confrontation with Congress as the administration asserts executive privilege to head off investigations into domestic wiretapping and the firing of U.S. attorneys, FRONTLINE meticulously traces the behind-closed-doors battle within the administration over the power of the presidency and the rule of law. go to
<http://www.wyoptv.org/>."