Outing the traitor Cheney

Cheney has finally revealed his sick, treasonous mentality to the world, Big Time. He has been poisoning this country for years. Congress needs to kick this bastard out before he inflicts any further damage. And for the rest of us? Personally I think Jews have the right idea on handling these people, so I am taking it as my own: When others ask of them, they respond "This person is dead."

"He killed himself last week after claiming the special right to betray his country."

CONFESSIONS OF A VICE PRESIDENT

As a lesson in how to run damage control on an empty tank, Cheney's interview with Brit Hume post hunting accident was surprising enough. But the real bombshell came when the topic turned to intelligence and Cheney turned the gun on himself.

The setting was message enough. It said that Cheney cannot be held to account; HE determines what and how much he will say; Cheney does not wait on authorities after a mishap; they wait on him; Cheney does not answer questions at the convenience of others; he schedules and produces his own "accounting."

Call it oppositional defiance disorder.

The dynamic duo had some ground work to lay at the end. Hume raises the national security issue in new revelations that Scooter Libby was authorized by superiors to leak classified information. This led to the sabotage of a CIA operation tracking WMD and the crude "outing" of a covert operative.

Hume asks about Libby's claims, but Cheney declines candor, citing the court case as his excuse. Hume fails to argue that a public official is first answerable to the public trust. Cheney ignores the burning question, just as he ignored police inquiries the night he shot someone.

Instead, he glibly runs around it, conspicuously trying to convey a defense without too much admission. He warms to an odd question posed by Hume on who can declassify protected material. He can, says Cheney, by executive order (though that is anything but clear). What IS clear is that the illegal act of outing the identity of a covert agent has been conjoined with the legal process of "declassification."

Did we really hear what we just heard? ...That the injury of outing a covert operative can be challenged or trumped by a vice presidential right to game the declassification process? ...That outing an agent has a natural place in that process?

Are these people kidding?

By highlighting his privileges, he was staking his authority to commit a felony without consequence. ...This is just seconds from responding to criticism on his mishandling of an accident in which he negligently shot a man in the face. He wins the gold medal for the shortest time between felonies. This man has NO remorse.

These are no ordinary traitors. These people have gone clean insane.

At the very least, demands for his resignation should be pouring into the oval office, along with demands that the president himself come clean on this matter along with his terrible decision to let Karl Rove remain on the payroll.

This is the "spin" they think will save them. Look at bush, look at Cheney and note the confident arrogance: A president confessing to a stunning crime as he stands defiantly against the public. A major national security breach from a vice president who coolly reminds people of his privileged authority. A total absence of conscience. They always make the best liars.

So accustomed are they to writing their own Orwellian plots, they have forgotten that Orwell was a writer of fiction; he could not spin straw into gold. And neither can they with their glib, allegedly "legal" arguments.

Anyone can spin Orwellian scripts at any time. An entire nation can seethe beneath an Orwellian world created by others. One can even, if so inclined, exploit a law by manipulating related regulations and other devices to achieve an Orwellian result. But you cannot take legislation written to preserve a nation's security and the people who work for it and make it reach around 180 degrees to protect the willful sabotage of national security through an act of pure political revenge.

You cannot twist a law into an instrument of its own destruction. Not even the Supreme Court as presently constituted can hand them this one. It is a level of treason our own founders would not have believed possible.

There is NO defense of these saboteurs and their terrorizing. CIA veteran Pillar is only the latest to expose the rotten core of this White House's agenda to sabotage diplomacy, sabotage intelligence, sabotage the military, the list is endless, an unrelenting sabotage of America and its best interests. These are dizzying heights of treason and national betrayal.

This is also side-taking time, and the choices are stark: Tyranny or Freedom. Evil, or re-swearing of the oath that preserves a nation.

Watch for Stasi-like arguments of an "exception," as if it could do anything but destroy the rule. Don't be thrown by titles, gravitas or talk of deals. These are enemies of the American experiment, and this is their sinister endgame.

A proud elitist, Cheney spent most of his political life making it clear that only he decides what "satisfies" public accountability. Bush noted his evasions and quickly concurred.

It is fitting that the all-controlling Cheney should be his own assassin. It is also fitting that he take the other with him, along with his self-wiretapping fop. However mixed a bag the American reputation has been, anything good now lies ruined by the maniacal delusions of an unworthy few. They would rather see the Constitution destroyed than concede their right to cheat. They are not with us; they are against us.

So stick a fork in them. They're done. And the rest of us have had it. Those who would defend their actions can stand on the podium of treason with them. Real Americans choose freedom and the responsibility for it. Appeasement is not an option. Turning away is not an option.

B Gilmore