Behold the parting denials and deceptions of War Criminal Dick Cheney, spoken to the ex-Marine Jim Lehrer in an extended interview on the not-so Public Broadcacasting System earlier tonight: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june09/cheney_01-14.html

My favorite part of the exchange comes when Darth Cheney responds to Lehrer’s question of whether it troubles him to be leaving as the least popular vice president except for Dan Quayle.  The super-wealthy messianic-miltiarist and arch-authoritarian Cheney pretends to refute evidence of his epic unpopularity by recounting a recent afternoon with some Navy SEALS who pretended not to hate his Chickenhawk guts:

MR. LEHRER: So it doesn’t trouble you at all to be leaving office next week with the overwhelming disapproval of the majority of the people, as measured by the polls? It doesn’t bother you, personally?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t buy that. No, first of all – I don’t buy that. And I find, when I get out and talk with people, that that’s not the unanimous view, as you would have it. Things that count for me, in terms of the people I want to make certain are with us are, for example, the American military – young men and women who serve, the folks who go out and put their lives on the line to carry out the policies we’ve decided upon. President and I had the opportunity, for example, last Saturday. We went down to Norfolk; we commissioned a brand-new aircraft carrier named after his father. Then we went over and spent the afternoon with about 650 Navy SEALS.

These are guys that have been in the battle in Iraq, in Afghanistan, deployed many, many times – have done all the heavy lifting in connection with our policies that we pursued in that part of the world. And they are a magnificent group of people. They also are very, very supportive of what we did. And they’re the ones who went out and, as I say, put their lives on the line for the rest of us. It’s not just cocktail party talk for them; this is the real world they live in. And having their respect and their approval counts for an enormous amount.

"The guys that have been in the battle."  Referring to to Cheney’s criticism of John F. Kerry’s commitment to "national defense" during the 2004 presidential election, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), a Navy veteran, once said that "When I hear this coming from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War, it makes my blood boil.  Those of us who served and those of us who went in the military don’t like it when someone like a Dick Cheney comes out and he wants to be tough.  Yeah, he’ll be tough.  He’ll be tough with somebody else’s blood, somebody else’s kids.  But not when it was his turn to go." 

I personally never use the word "service" to describe enlistment in the American Empire’s Armed Forces or participation in the United States’ criminal "crucifixion of Southeast Asia" (Noam Chomsky’s phrase) during the U.S. War on Vietnam (and Cambodia and Laos), but I was struck by Harkin’s use of the words "somebody else’s blood, somebody else’s kids."

Bob Dylan summed up Cheney’s essence and suggested a good parting question for the Vice President in 1962:

You’ve never done nothing/but build to destory/You play with my world/Like its your little toy/You put a gun in my hand/and you turn from my eyes/And you turn and run farther/While the fast bullets fly

You fasten the triggers/for the others to fire/you sit back and watch/white the death count gets higher/You hide in your mansions/While young people’s blood/Flows out of their bodies/And gets buried in the mud

Let me ask you one question/Is your money that good?/Will it bring you forgiveness?/Do you think that it could?/I think you will find/When your death takes its toll/All the money you made/Will never bring back your soul.

Bob Dylan, "Masters of War," 1962

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