Will the Real Prince of Darkness Please Stand Up?

Erik D. Prince
Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and Erik D. Prince, (D for darkness, perhaps) are all supreme candidates for this diabolical title ... I should probably rename this blog searching for the antichrist.

Dick Cheney, the mastermind behind the privatization of the military bureaucracy, and possibly the puppet master in the Bush Administration, surely makes him a contender for this epithetical title. His efforts resulted in radically transforming the US military and national security infrastructure from the public sector to the private. How is that a bad thing? In a nutshell, he runs the risk of making profit motive the primary impetus behind national security which is potentially very dangerous to any nation's security, particularly intelligence.

However, as far as devils go, look at that face above...those eyes...something about this picture reminds me of The Final Conflict. I don't know, maybe it's his resemblance to Sam Neill, the actor who portrayed Damien Thorn, 20 years ago. Then, combine the names Erik D. Prince, son of Edgar D. Prince, with the name of Mr. Prince's company, Blackwater, and the name of the swamp Mr. Prince's company emerged, Great Dismal Swamp, and it sounds more and more like something out of Edgar Allan Poe's imagination. Well, let's see if Mr. Prince qualifies under the standards I've imposed in my last post on the Antichrist - level of insidiousness and and the extent of his power and influence - for the exalted designation of "Antichrist". I guess blogging about the Antichrist only reinforced my insanity...oh well.

As far as the insidious factor, or how far this man will go to avoid the radar, Mr. Prince lives his life in the shadows. All his executives must sign confidentiality agreements, prohibiting them from talking about Mr. Prince once they leave the company. Reclusive and secretive, Mr. Prince does not like his photo taken and often uses his hands to shield himself from photographers. Is there anything in devil doctrine that precludes photographs from being taken?

The book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," by Jeremy Scahill, is convinced Mr. Prince is a "neo-crusader", a "Theocon" with a Christian-supremacist agenda. Mr. Prince's idea of Christianity is severely skewed to the point of no return...the polar opposite of what he says he is so dedicated too.

"I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with -- homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kinds of bills." -- Erik Prince on his internship in the White House under President George H. W. Bush

Blackwater Worldwide, a privately owned company, has made over $1 billion from its security contracts alone and is only part of Mr. Prince's global business empire. The Prince Group LLC formed Total Intelligence Solutions as its intelligence gathering and analyzing part of the business...in other words, it's the CIA for hire. Graystone Limited (promotional video) is an international company Mr. Prince acquired in 2004, and this company has managed to avoid the radar completely. Aside from the tax benefits of incorporating in the Barbados, Mr. Prince chose that spot to "better position the company for international contracts." It's primarily responsible for marketing its services to foreign governments and as Mr. Prince increasingly, recruits more and more of his foot soldiers from third world countries - "discount soldiers"

"They're going to pay these people a lot less, and they're not going to respect the same type of employee and labor rights that U.S. nationals would require," -- Erica Razook, an Amnesty International lawyer whose work focuses on private-security contractors.

- and aggressively pursues business from foreign governments Greystone has become Prince's primary recruiter of "foreign military muscle".

Isn't that comforting, considering Mr. Prince's involvement in the intelligence industry? Remember, this is all for profit and the oversight of these companies is non-existent. There is nothing to prevent the use of "intelligence" to help a client who may be highly profitable to the Prince Group. I'm sure Mr. Prince's alleged patriotism is easily thwarted for profit.

"I think it's extraordinarily dangerous when a nation begins to outsource its monopoly on the use of force ... in support of its foreign policy or national security objectives. The billions of dollars being doled out to these companies, he says, "makes of them a very powerful interest group within the American body politic and an interest group that is, in fact, armed. And the question will arise at some time: to whom do they owe their loyalty?" -- Joe Wilson, who served as the last US ambassador to Iraq before the 1991 Gulf war

The evidence more than supports Mr. Prince's desire to keep everyone in the dark. When testifying about the 17 Iraqi civilians gunned down by Blackwater operatives in the city of Baghdad, even after it was brought up that "we the people" pay 90% of his salary, he refused to disclose his earnings.

However, just this week, President Bush signed into law, as part of the Defense Supplemental Spending Bill, Representative Murphy’s legislation that includes a provision to increase the transparency of government contracts with private defense firms. It requires companies doing more than $25 million of business with the government to disclose who their top executives are and how much they are paid (subtract 10 points from Mr. Bush's Antichrist score).

So, why not hire private contractors, especially when our military is stretched so thin in various places around the world?

Jeremy Scahill eloquently answers this question and I will do my best to paraphrase. He basically says, when it becomes a necessity to hire an army of people to fight a war, it’s not a reflection of the will of “we the people”. If this were truly a war of national defense, people would willingly sign up, and the government would impose a draft. In this situation, however, imposing a draft would almost certainly put an end to this war as it would surely serve as the fuel needed to fire "we the people" up.

180,000 private contractors are in Iraq right now working for "for profit" war corporations. There are only 150,000 US soldiers. There are 630 corporations on the US government payroll in Iraq. 40% of the money being spent on the occupation in Iraq goes directly to these corporations.

This administration has circumvented the democratic process in order to keep a draft off the table. They have replaced a system of negotiation or international diplomacy or coalition of willing nations with a coalition of corporations. This not only violates democratic principles in the United States, it violates the sovereignty of nations around the world because they are hiring people from countries who are against the war.

On of the gravest matters regarding this issue is that the contractors have not been held to the same standards as the military. They are not held accountable under any system of law whatsoever. 70 soldiers have been court marshaled on murder related charges alone since the beginning of the Iraq war. Not one armed contractor has been prosecuted for any crime under any legal system.

Our soldiers are lucky if they're earning $40,000/year. Their families are at home saving their own money to buy body armor, meanwhile these contractors are making six figures and have much better equipment than our soldiers, manufactured by one of the companies that make up the Prince global empire. In addition, our soldiers often pay the price for the misconduct of the contractors, as they are above the law.

The Bush Administration has no interest in prosecuting contractor crimes in Iraq. It would be bad for business as this occupation couldn't function without the private contractors. The US has banned Iraq from prosecuting contractors in Iraqi courts and President Bush does not recognize international law, not to mention, there are serious question as to whether military or civilian law would apply to these contractors in the US. In fact, the Bush Administration offered the Blackwater contractors involved, "Limited-use" immunity, meaning they were promised they would not be prosecuted for anything they said in interviews with the authorities as long as their statements were true.

Consider this. Blackwater operatives just showed up on the streets of New Orleans after Hurricaine Katrina hit, "wielding M4 assault rifles, pistols strapped to their legs, flak jackets, dressed in all khaki" as one observer described them, with no government contractor authorization at all. Granted, one week later they had a government contract to protect FEMA, however, it's kind of scary to think a military unit like that can transcend the government's authority so easily. Blackwater made $70 million dollars from Katrina, that's $240,000 per day, and they billed US taxpayers $950 per person, per day. With that kind of power and apparent ability to transcend the law, it's hard not to wonder about the possibility that Blackwater could turn its massive firepower and army of mercenaries against US citizens.

It works like this: Blackwater, for example, will win a U.S. government contract; it will then subcontract with itself—that is, with Greystone—to do the job. From there, Greystone looks to its network of international affiliates, firms like Pizarro's Grupo Táctico in Chile or ID Systems in Colombia, which maintain informal relationships with what are known in the trade as "briefcase recruiters"—individuals with connections to the local paramilitary scene. These men find the recruits and funnel them back up the chain until, finally, they are deployed alongside U.S. forces in Iraq. The practice also serves as a convenient firewall, shielding U.S.-based companies from direct liability for the actions of their subcontractors. "If a court is looking at these issues, where the contract is signed is a factor. There is a lot there that would take it out of a U.S. court's control." -- Erica Razook

With the exception of congressman Henry Waxman, Democratic Congressman from California, almost no one in the Congress has done anything to effectively take on these individuals or this company. Although Obama has a very good understanding of what's going on and has even authored legislation to combat the problems outsourcing security causes, he will not sign the Sanders-Schakowsky bill, Stop Outsourcing Security Act, which seeks to ban the use of these companies in U.S. war zones and make all of the diplomatic security agents full-time employees of the U.S. government, meaning an accountability structure would be in place.

At any rate, just as President Bush is anti Christ, Mr. Prince is a Prince of darkness and anti Christ to boot. As for the "Antichrist" or "Prince of Darkness", the search continues, however, I'm leaning toward Mr. Prince right now.

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Rough Justice in the Age of Terrorism

The Lackawanna Six should be included as one of the first examples of "rough justice" since 9/11. These hapless young men, from Lackawanna, N.Y., described as homegrown terrorists, may not be so much terrorists, as bumbling 20-something’s looking for a stimulating environment to motivate them. Stupid, yes but terrorists, I very much doubt it, considering they all faked injuries to escape the jihad camp they joined when they found out how anti-American it was.

Yet Bush and Cheney were personally involved in the decision to arrest them. Dick Cheney supposedly asked,

"Can you guarantee me, 100%, that they will not plan anything in the future?"

Of course, the FBI couldn't answer that with 100% certainty so they were ordered to arrest them against the better judgment of the FBI.

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A Profile in Cowardice

As usual Frank Rich hits the nail on the head.

"THERE was never any question that President Bush would grant amnesty to Scooter Libby, the man who knows too much about the lies told to sell the war in Iraq. The only questions were when, and how, Mr. Bush would buy Mr. Libby’s silence. Now we have the answers, and they’re at least as incriminating as the act itself. They reveal the continued ferocity of a White House cover-up and expose the true character of a commander in chief whose tough-guy shtick can no longer camouflage his fundamental cowardice.

The timing of the president’s Libby intervention was a surprise. Many assumed he would mimic the sleazy 11th-hour examples of most recent vintage: his father’s pardon of six Iran-contra defendants who might have dragged him into that scandal, and Bill Clinton’s pardon of the tax fugitive Marc Rich, the former husband of a major campaign contributor and the former client of none other than the ubiquitous Mr. Libby. But the ever-impetuous current President Bush acted 18 months before his scheduled eviction from the White House. Even more surprising, he did so when the Titanic that is his presidency had just hit two fresh icebergs, the demise of the immigration bill and the growing revolt of Republican senators against his strategy in Iraq. That Mr. Bush, already suffering historically low approval ratings, would invite another hit has been attributed in Washington to his desire to placate what remains of his base. By this logic, he had nothing left to lose. He didn’t care if he looked like an utter hypocrite, giving his crony a freer ride than Paris Hilton and violating the white-collar sentencing guidelines set by his own administration. He had to throw a bone to the last grumpy old white guys watching Bill O’Reilly in a bunker. But if those die-hards haven’t deserted him by now, why would Mr. Libby’s incarceration be the final straw? They certainly weren’t whipped into a frenzy by coverage on Fox News, which tended to minimize the leak case as a non-event. Mr. Libby, faceless and voiceless to most Americans, is no Ollie North, and he provoked no right-wing firestorm akin to the uproars over Terri Schiavo, Harriet Miers or “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. The only people clamoring for Mr. Libby’s freedom were the pundits who still believe that Saddam secured uranium in Africa and who still hope that any exoneration of Mr. Libby might make them look less like dupes for aiding and abetting the hyped case for war. That select group is not the Republican base so much as a roster of the past, present and future holders of quasi-academic titles at neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute. What this crowd never understood is that Mr. Bush’s highest priority is always to protect himself. So he stiffed them too. Had the president wanted to placate the Weekly Standard crowd, he would have given Mr. Libby a full pardon. That he served up a commutation instead is revealing of just how worried the president is about the beans Mr. Libby could spill about his and Dick Cheney’s use of prewar intelligence. Valerie Wilson still has a civil suit pending. The Democratic inquisitor in the House, Henry Waxman, still has the uranium hoax underlying this case at the top of his agenda as an active investigation. A commutation puts up more roadblocks by keeping Mr. Libby’s appeal of his conviction alive and his Fifth Amendment rights intact. He can’t testify without risking self-incrimination. Meanwhile, we are asked to believe that he has paid his remaining $250,000 debt to society independently of his private $5 million “legal defense fund.”

The president’s presentation of the commutation is more revealing still. Had Mr. Bush really believed he was doing the right and honorable thing, he would not have commuted Mr. Libby’s jail sentence by press release just before the July Fourth holiday without consulting Justice Department lawyers. That’s the behavior of an accountant cooking the books in the dead of night, not the proud act of a patriot standing on principle.

When the furor followed Mr. Bush from Kennebunkport to Washington despite his efforts to duck it, he further underlined his embarrassment by taking his only few questions on the subject during a photo op at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. You know this president is up to no good whenever he hides behind the troops. This instance was particularly shameful, since Mr. Bush also used the occasion to trivialize the scandalous maltreatment of Walter Reed patients on his watch as merely “some bureaucratic red-tape issues.” Asked last week to explain the president’s poll numbers, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center told NBC News that “when we ask people to summon up one word that comes to mind” to describe Mr. Bush, it’s “incompetence.” But cowardice, the character trait so evident in his furtive handling of the Libby commutation, is as important to understanding Mr. Bush’s cratered presidency as incompetence, cronyism and hubris. Even The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, a consistent Bush and Libby defender, had to take notice. Furious that the president had not given Mr. Libby a full pardon (at least not yet), The Journal called the Bush commutation statement a “profile in non-courage.”

What it did not recognize, or chose not to recognize, is that this non-courage, to use The Journal’s euphemism, has been this president’s stock in trade, far exceeding the “wimp factor” that Newsweek once attributed to his father. The younger Mr. Bush’s cowardice is arguably more responsible for the calamities of his leadership than anything else.

People don’t change. Mr. Bush’s failure to have the courage of his own convictions was apparent early in his history, when he professed support for the Vietnam War yet kept himself out of harm’s way when he had the chance to serve in it. In the White House, he has often repeated the feckless pattern that he set back then and reaffirmed last week in his hide-and-seek bestowing of the Libby commutation. The first fight he conspicuously ran away from as president was in August 2001. Aspiring to halt federal underwriting of embryonic stem-cell research, he didn’t stand up and say so but instead unveiled a bogus “compromise” that promised continued federal research on 60 existing stem-cell lines. Only later would we learn that all but 11 of them did not exist. When Mr. Bush wanted to endorse a constitutional amendment to “protect” marriage, he again cowered. A planned 2006 Rose Garden announcement to a crowd of religious-right supporters was abruptly moved from the sunlight into a shadowy auditorium away from the White House.

Nowhere is this president’s non-courage more evident than in the “signing statements” The Boston Globe exposed last year. As Charlie Savage reported, Mr. Bush “quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office.” Rather than veto them in public view, he signed them, waited until after the press and lawmakers left the White House, and then filed statements in the Federal Register asserting that he would ignore laws he (not the courts) judged unconstitutional. This was the extralegal trick Mr. Bush used to bypass the ban on torture. It allowed him to make a coward’s escape from the moral (and legal) responsibility of arguing for so radical a break with American practice.

In the end, it was also this president’s profile in non-courage that greased the skids for the Iraq fiasco. If Mr. Bush had had the guts to put America on a true wartime footing by appealing to his fellow citizens for sacrifice, possibly even a draft if required, then he might have had at least a chance of amassing the resources needed to secure Iraq after we invaded it. But he never backed up the rhetoric of war with the stand-up action needed to prosecute the war. Instead he relied on fomenting fear, as typified by the false uranium claims whose genesis has been covered up by Mr. Libby’s obstructions of justice. Mr. Bush’s cowardly abdication of the tough responsibilities of wartime leadership ratified Donald Rumsfeld’s decision to go into Iraq with the army he had, ensuring our defeat. Never underestimate the power of the unconscious. Not the least of the revelatory aspects of Mr. Bush’s commutation is that he picked the fourth anniversary of “Bring ’em on” to hand it down. It was on July 2, 2003, that the president responded to the continued violence in Iraq, two months after “Mission Accomplished,” by taunting those who want “to harm American troops.” Mr. Bush assured the world that “we’ve got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.” The “surge” notwithstanding, we still don’t have the force necessary four years later, because the president never did summon the courage, even as disaster loomed, to back up his own convictions by going to the mat to secure that force.

No one can stop Mr. Bush from freeing a pathetic little fall guy like Scooter Libby. But only those who paid the ultimate price for the avoidable bungling of Iraq have the moral authority to pardon Mr. Bush."

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"Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign"

“I didn’t vote for him,” an American once said, “But he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”
That — on this eve of the 4th of July — is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
The man who said those 17 words—improbably enough—was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of the hair’s-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.
“I didn’t vote for him but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”
The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier, but there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne’s voice: The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.
We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president’s partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world—but merely that we may function.
But just as essential to the seventeen words of John Wayne, is an implicit trust—a sacred trust: That the president for whom so many did not vote, can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire Republic.
Our generation’s willingness to state “we didn’t vote for him, but he’s our president, and we hope he does a good job,” was tested in the crucible of history, and earlier than most.
And in circumstances more tragic and threatening. And we did that with which history tasked us.
We enveloped our President in 2001.And those who did not believe he should have been elected—indeed those who did not believe he had been elected—willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.
And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.
Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.
Did so even before the appeals process was complete; did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice; did so despite what James Madison—at the Constitutional Convention—said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes “advised by” that president; did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder: To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish—the President will keep you out of prison?
In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental com-pact between yourself and the majority of this nation’s citizens—the ones who did not cast votes for you. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party. And this is too important a time, Sir, to have a commander-in-chief who puts party over nation.
This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this Administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics. The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of “a permanent Republican majority,” as if such a thing—or a permanent Democratic majority—is not antithetical to that upon which rests: our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.
Yet our Democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove. And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government. But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain into a massive oil spill.
The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment. The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.
The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws. The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.
And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.
I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.
I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.
I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.
I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.
I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.
I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.
I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.
And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.
When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.
“Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people.”
President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.
It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party’s headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.
And in one night, Nixon transformed it.
Watergate — instantaneously — became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law of insisting—in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood - that he was the law.
Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the Courts. Just him.
Just - Mr. Bush - as you did, yesterday.
The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the “referee” of Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s analogy. These are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.
But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush—and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal—the average citizen understands that, Sir.
It’s the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one—and it stinks. And they know it.
Nixon’s mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment.
It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to “base,” but to country, echoes loudly into history. Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign
Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush. And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney. You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday. Which one of you chose the route, no longer matters. Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant.
But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only fact that remains relevant.
It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them—or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them—we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.
We of this time—and our leaders in Congress, of both parties—must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach—get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.
For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.
Resign.
And give us someone—anyone—about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

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Dick Cheney Has Privatized the Job of Vice President of the United States.

Americans are accustomed to Vice President Dick Cheney’s waiting out a terrorist threat in a “secure undisclosed location.” Now it seems that Mr. Cheney wears the cloak of invisibility in secure disclosed locations.
The Associated Press reported that Mr. Cheney’s office ordered the Secret Service last September to destroy all records of visitors to the official vice presidential mansion — right after The Washington Post sued for access to the logs. That move was made in secret, naturally. It came out only because of another lawsuit, filed by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking the names of conservative religious figures who visited the vice president’s residence.

This disdain for accountability is distressing, but not surprising. Mr. Cheney has had it on display from his first days in office, when he refused to name the energy-industry executives who met with him behind closed doors to draft an energy policy.

In a similar way, Mr. Cheney seems unconcerned about little things like checks and balances and traditional American notions of judicial process. At one point, he gave himself the power to selectively declassify documents and selectively leak them to reporters. In a recent commencement address, he declaimed against prisoners who had the gall to “demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States.”

Mr. Cheney is the driving force behind the Bush administration’s theory of the “unitary executive,” which holds that no one, including Congress and the courts, has the power to supervise or regulate the actions of the president. Just as he pays little attention to old-fangled notions of the separation of powers, Mr. Cheney does not overly bother himself about the bright line that should exist between his last job as chief of the energy giant Halliburton and his current one on the public payroll.

From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Cheney received “deferred salary payments” from Halliburton that far exceeded what taxpayers gave him. Mr. Cheney still holds hundreds of thousands of stock options that have ballooned by millions of dollars as Halliburton profited handsomely from the war in Iraq.

Reviewing this record — secrecy, impatience with government regulations, backroom dealings, handsome paydays — it dawned on us that Mr. Cheney is in step with the times. He has privatized the job of vice president of the United States.

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Cheney's Wealth Eclipses Bushs'.

President George W. Bush held assets worth $7.5 million to $20 million last year, but was eclipsed by his vice president's wealth, financial records released on Tuesday showed.

Bush's assets included his 1,600-acre ranch in Texas, valued at $1 million to $5 million, where he usually spends his vacations.

He also reported assets of $775,689 from a limited liability company organized in 2003 to produce trees for commercial sales, which were expected in 2007.

Among his holdings were certificates of deposit, Treasury notes, a qualified diversified trust, and $116,000 assets of the GWB Rangers Corp., which is wholly owned by Bush from when he was co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Cheney reported assets valued at $21 million to around $100 million. Cheney gained much of his wealth from his former role heading oil service firm Halliburton Co..

Cheney's largest holdings included investments in an American Century Investments International Bond Fund and a Vanguard short-term tax-exempt fund. He has 100,000 Halliburton stock options that are unexercised and designated for charity.

The financial disclosure statements only give the value of assets in ranges.

Bush reported gifts totaling $12,364 last year, including three separate sets of fishing equipment.

White House staff gave Bush two benches made of wood taken from the president's ranch, valued at $1,600, and a pair of $185 cuff links.

Cheney gave Bush an exercise trainer and cycle computer valued at $400 for his birthday and a $658 wireless weather station for Christmas.

Bush gave Cheney a $667 instrument to measure temperature, barometric pressure and tides for Christmas.

Bush received an assortment of clothing including shirts, ties, socks, cap and jacket. He received toy figures of explorers and accessories valued at $308, golf clubs and covers valued at $915, and three hand-carved wooden puzzles valued at

$2,378.

The vice president reported receiving $21,674 in gifts, including three fishing rods, a pair of $615 leather hunting boots and a $399 cowboy hat. The gifts were from individuals as well as groups such as the Fraser Institute in Canada and a company, Hatco Inc., of Texas which gave him the cowboy hat.

From senior members of the White House staff, Cheney received a $778 gift of an iPod and a collection of compact discs.

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Dick Cheney...An Iranian Mole?

If an 18-year-old American soldier were caught slipping obscure military paperwork to Iranian spies, he would be arrested, pilloried in the news media and tossed into prison for years.

But in fact there’s an American who has provided services of incalculably greater value to Iran in recent years. So you have to wonder: Is Dick Cheney an Iranian mole?

Consider that the Bush administration’s first major military intervention was to overthrow Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, Iran’s bitter foe to the east. Then the administration toppled Iran’s even worse enemy to the west, the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.

You really think that’s just a coincidence? That of all 193 nations in the world, we just happen to topple the two neighboring regimes that Iran despises?

Moreover, consider how our invasion of Iraq went down. The U.S. dismantled Iraq’s army, broke the Baath Party and helped install a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad. If Iran’s ayatollahs had written the script, they couldn’t have done better — so maybe they did write the script ...

We fought Iraq, and Iran won. And that’s just another coincidence?

Or think about broader Bush administration policies in the Middle East. For six years, the White House vigorously backed Israeli hard-liners and refused to engage seriously in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, thus nurturing anti-Americanism and religious fundamentalism. Then last summer, the White House backed Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, which turned Iran’s proxies in Hezbollah into street heroes in much of the Arab world.

Consider also the way the administration has systematically antagonized our former allies in Europe and Asia, undermining chances of a united front to block Iranian development of nuclear weapons. Mr. Cheney may nominally push for sanctions against Iran, but by alienating our allies he makes strong sanctions harder to achieve.

And by condoning torture and extralegal detentions in Guantánamo, the White House antagonized Muslims around the world and made us look like hypocrites when we criticize Arab or Iranian human rights abuses. Take Mr. Cheney’s endorsement of the torture known as waterboarding, which simulates drowning: “It’s a no-brainer for me,” he said. The torturers in Iran’s Evin prison must have cheered. They got a pass as well.

Even at home, Iran’s leaders have been bolstered by President Bush and Mr. Cheney. Iran’s hard-liners are hugely unpopular and the regime is wobbly, but Bush administration policies have inflamed Iranian nationalism and given cover to the hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mr. Cheney isn’t an Iranian mole. Nor is he a North Korean mole, though his we-don’t-negotiate-with-evil policy toward North Korea has resulted in that country’s quadrupling its nuclear arsenal. It’s also unlikely that he is an Al Qaeda mole, even though Al Qaeda now has an important new base of support in Iraq.

Like Kennedy and Johnson wading into Vietnam, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney harmed American interests not out of malice but out of ineptitude. I concede that they honestly wanted the best for America, but we still ended up getting the worst.

Our national interests are as vulnerable to incompetence as to malicious damage. So we must identify and abandon the policies that backfired so catastrophically. The common threads of those damaging policies are clear: a refusal to negotiate with “evil”; an aggressive willingness to use military force to solve problems; contempt for our allies; and the bending of legal and moral principles to allow indefinite detention and even torture, particularly for anyone with olive skin and a Muslim name.

Whenever we’ve suspected a mole in our midst, we’ve gone to extreme lengths to find the traitor. This time, betrayed not by a mole but by failed policies, let’s be just as resolute. It’s time to uproot policies that in the last half-dozen years have damaged American interests incomparably more than any mole or foreign spy ever has in the last 200 years.

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