GENEVA - Washington has for the first time acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said on Friday.

The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“They are no longer trying to duck this, and have respected their obligation to inform the UN,” the Committee member told AFP.

“They they will have to explain themselves (to the Committee). Nothing should be kept in the dark.”

UN sources said it was the first time the world body has received such a frank statement on torture from US authorities.

The Committee, which monitors respect for the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, is gathering information from the US ahead of hearings in May 2006.

Signatories of the convention are expected to submit to scrutiny of their implementation of the 1984 convention and to provide information to the Committee.

The document from Washington will not be formally made public until the hearings.

“They haven’t avoided anything in their answers, whether concerning prisoners in Iraq, in Afghanistan or Guantanamo, and other accusations of mistreatment and of torture,” the Committee member said.

“They said it was a question of isolated cases, that there was nothing systematic and that the guilty were in the process of being punished.”

The US report said that those involved were low-ranking members of the military and that their acts were not approved by their superiors, the member added.

The US has faced criticism from UN human rights experts and international groups for mistreatment of detainees -- some of whom died in custody -- in Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly during last year’s prisoner abuse scandal surrounding the Abu Ghraib facility there.

Scores of US military personnel have been investigated, and several tried and convicted, for abuse of people detained during the US-led campaign against terrorist groups.

At the Guantanamo Bay naval base, a US toehold in Cuba where around 520 suspects of some 40 nationalities are held, allegations of torture have combined with other claims of human rights breaches.

The US has faced widespread criticism for keeping the Guantanamo detainees in a “legal black hole,” notably for its refusal to grant them prisoner of war status and allegedly sluggish moves to charge or try them.

Washington’s report to the Committee reaffirms the US position that the Guantanamo detainees are classed as “enemy combatants,” and therefore do not benefit from the POW status set out in the Geneva Conventions, the Committee member said.

Four UN human rights experts on Thursday slammed the United States for stalling on a request to allow visits to terrorism suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, and said they planned to carry out an indirect probe of conditions there.

WASHINGTON - Defending the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. jail in Guantanamo Bay, Vice President Dick Cheney said they are well treated, well fed and "living in the tropics."

The Bush administration has faced allegations of inmate abuse at the jail and of unjustly detaining suspects. Amnesty International recently compared it to Soviet-era gulags, and Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress have questioned whether it should remain open.

President Bush called Amnesty's report "absurd" and last week and publicly challenged reporters to go to Guantanamo and see for themselves that detainees were being treated humanely there.

Comment: The UN has been trying to get the OK to go and inspect Gitmo for over a year. We had this story yesterday:

If the UN can't get in to inspect, do we think that any reporters would be able to go for a visit? Well, other than reporters who are neocons and vetted by the administration to say exactly what the administration wants them to say...

Cheney on Thursday described prison conditions in more glowing terms, saying the United States spent heavily to build a new facility there.

"They're very well treated down there. They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want," Cheney said in a CNN interview. "There isn't any other nation in the world that would treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we're treating these people."

Asked if the detention center should be shut down and the prisoners transferred, Cheney said "it's a vital facility" and must continue operating.

The approximately 520 remaining detainees are "terrorists. They're bomb-makers. They're facilitators of terror. They're members of al-Qaida and the Taliban," Cheney said. "If you let them out, they'll go back to trying to kill Americans."

Vice President Dick Cheney was asked on CNN about the 'Downing Street memo' which said the Bush Administration had decided to go to war with Iraq and the intelligence would be fixed around that policy.

Asked if he disputes the memo's claim, Cheney said, "Of course. The memo was written sometime prior to when we actually got involved in Iraq.

"And remember what happened after the supposed memo was written. We went to the United Nations. We got a unanimous vote out of the Security Council for a resolution calling on Saddam Hussein to come clean and comply with the UN Security Council resolution. We did everything we could to resolve this without having to use military force. We gave him one last chance even, and asked him to step down before we launched military operations.

"The memo is just wrong. In fact, the president of the United States took advantage of every possibility to try to resolve this without having to use military force. It wasn't possible in this case. I am convinced we did absolutely the right thing. I am convinced that history will bear that out."

It is now nine months since I obtained the first of the "Downing Street memos," thrust into my hand by someone who asked me to meet him in a quiet watering hole in London for what I imagined would just be a friendly drink.

At the time, I was defense correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, and a staunch supporter of the decision to oust Saddam Hussein. The source was a friend. He'd given me a few stories before but nothing nearly as interesting as this.

The six leaked documents I took away with me that night were to change completely my opinion of the decision to go to war and the honesty of Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush.

They focused on the period leading up to the Crawford, Texas, summit between Blair and Bush in early April 2002, and were most striking for the way in which British officials warned the prime minister, with remarkable prescience, what a mess post-war Iraq would become. Even by the cynical standards of realpolitik, the decision to overrule this expert advice seemed to be criminal.

The second batch of leaks arrived in the middle of this year's British general election, by which time I was writing for a different newspaper, the Sunday Times. These documents, which came from a different source, related to a crucial meeting of Blair's war Cabinet on July 23, 2002. The timing of the leak was significant, with Blair clearly in electoral difficulties because of an unpopular war.

I did not then regard the now-infamous memo — the one that includes the minutes of the July 23 meeting — as the most important. My main article focused on the separate briefing paper for those taking part, prepared beforehand by Cabinet Office experts.

It said that Blair agreed at Crawford that "the UK would support military action to bring about regime change." Because this was illegal, the officials noted, it was "necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally support military action."

But Downing Street had a "clever" plan that it hoped would trap Hussein into giving the allies the excuse they needed to go to war. It would persuade the U.N. Security Council to give the Iraqi leader an ultimatum to let in the weapons inspectors.

Although Blair and Bush still insist the decision to go to the U.N. was about averting war, one memo states that it was, in fact, about "wrong- footing" Hussein into giving them a legal justification for war.

British officials hoped the ultimatum could be framed in words that would be so unacceptable to Hussein that he would reject it outright. But they were far from certain this would work, so there was also a Plan B.

American media coverage of the Downing Street memo has largely focused on the assertion by Sir Richard Dearlove, head of British foreign intelligence, that war was seen as inevitable in Washington, where "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

But another part of the memo is arguably more important. It quotes British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that "the U.S. had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime." This we now realize was Plan B.

Put simply, U.S. aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone were dropping a lot more bombs in the hope of provoking a reaction that would give the allies an excuse to carry out a full-scale bombing campaign, an air war, the first stage of the conflict.

British government figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that although virtually none were used in March and April, an average of 10 tons a month were dropped between May and August.

But these initial "spikes of activity" didn't have the desired effect. The Iraqis didn't retaliate. They didn't provide the excuse Bush and Blair needed. So at the end of August, the allies dramatically intensified the bombing into what was effectively the initial air war.

The number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq by allied aircraft shot up to 54.6 tons in September alone, with the increased rates continuing into 2003.

In other words, Bush and Blair began their war not in March 2003, as everyone believed, but at the end of August 2002, six weeks before Congress approved military action against Iraq.

The way in which the intelligence was "fixed" to justify war is old news.

The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war, the cynical use of the U.N. to provide an excuse, and the secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress.

According to Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger, writers for the Guardian, neocon guru Richard Perle has now admitted that the invasion of Iraq was illegal according to the tenets of international law, acknowledging that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone." But Perle insists that "international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

Obviously, Perle contradicts the convoluted arguments of the Bush administration and its supporters that the war was legal in terms of international law — that it was a war of defense (against the non-existent WMD threat), in line with UN Security Council resolution 1441 (though the UN has never allowed countries to enforce such resolutions on their own without UN sanction).

One antiwar commentator credits Perle for his "honesty." I don't believe honesty is a prominent characteristic of Perle's when he is dealing with crucial matters of international policy. What Perle wants to do is pre- emptively justify American actions violating international law that might be necessary (from the neocon standpoint) in the future.

This is not to say that neocon apologists will abandon the effort to place any action they advocate within the confines of international law. They will continue their obfuscation and mystification in that regard. However, they will always be able to rely on the ultimate fall-back position that international law must take the back seat to what is "right" — that what is good for America (as interpreted by the neocons) justifies any military action.

The argument that "American," that is, U.S., interests trump international law will probably go over with the American people. Americans vaguely believe that the United States can do whatever it wants because it acts for the good of the world. However, the rest of the world sees the prohibition on aggressive war as the keystone of the international order of sovereign states.

As a consequence of the famous Nuremberg trial in 1946, a number of German military leaders were hanged for engaging in aggressive war. In his opening address for the United States at the Nuremberg Tribunal, Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson declared "that to plan, prepare, initiate or wage a war of aggression ... is a crime." Jackson identified several actions as aggression, and therefore crimes against peace, including invasion of the territory of another state and attack by armed forces on the territory of another state. It is noteworthy that Jackson added:

It is the plot and the act of aggression which we charge to be crimes. Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions.

Jackson was, of course, an American. And Americans traditionally have looked upon Nuremberg as being sacrosanct. The International Law Commission of the United Nations adopted the Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal as constituting basic principles of international law. Foremost among the crimes defined as punishable under international law are crimes against peace, which include "planning, preparation, initiation or waging a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances."

But most Americans today know little about the Nuremberg Trial. They think that it dealt only with the Holocaust, which is about the sum and total of what most Americans know about World War II. (It's quite understandable, considering the intensive public promotion of "Holocaust awareness.") Therefore, Americans can't understand why anyone would be upset over the United States attacking an evil country. They don't consider what would happen if all countries acted in a similar manner — that it would create a world of continual and ubiquitous war. Foreigners understand that; Americans are left in a fog.

However, Washington still preaches probity and restraint to other countries regarding the use of force; for example, the United States works to prevent war between India and Pakistan. International peace and stability have long been seen to be a fundamental American interest — and the United States has historically been a strong backer of international law. Hence, the United States's launching of a pre-emptive attack on a country in violation of international law has undoubtedly weakened its ability to restrain other countries from acting likewise. Those countries, too, may now recognize the need, and the right, to attack a neighbor to protect their national security, as they see it.

That the United States launched its attack on Iraq on the false rationale of the WMD danger sets an even worse precedent. The world becomes a global Hobbesian war of all against all, where only force prevails. The illegal war on Iraq involved the United States in a Middle East quagmire, created an immense financial burden, and exacerbated terrorism directed at the United States and its allies. But an even more fundamental reason the war was harmful to American interests is that it undercut established international standards for maintaining a peaceful world.

Mr. Perle's confession is incomplete.

Beginning two months after the first " Sunday Times " article, the " New York Times " published several articles (other than opinion pieces) on the Downing Street Memo and on its cousin, a briefing paper prepared for the cabinet meeting.

A thought experiment helps explain the delay (seven weeks since the publication of the full memo). Imagine a symmetrical situation: An Iraq government memo, detailing plans to hide chemical weapons from UN inspectors, is leaked to and reported in the " Sunday Times". How long before the " NYT " reports the story? We can answer with data from a real experiment. On 22 April 2003 the London " Daily Telegraph " reported 'Galloway Was in Saddam's Pay, Say Secret Iraqi Documents'. The (forged) documents were found by the " Telegraph " reporter David Blair -- what an unfortunate name -- in a 'burned-out building' in Baghdad. The " NYT " headline 'A Briton Who Hailed Hussein Is Said to Have Been in His Pay' showed up on 23 April, as quick as a daily newspaper could be. The memo and briefing paper, however, being critical of the war, were unfit for American consumption for many weeks. [...]

The " NYT " headlines either ignore the memo [2,6]; deny its main point [4], quote others denying it [3], quote war critics or describe the memo's effect on them [1,7], or report the memo as being of mere clinical interest [5]. No headline states what was said in the meeting, a feat the " Sunday Times " managed back on March 20: 'MI6 chief told PM: Americans 'fixed' case for war'. One " Sunday Times " headline (22 May), like the " NYT " , mentions the effect of the memo, but it also reveals important information from the memo, the 'secret Iraq invasion plan'. [...]

The " NYT " articles -- masterpieces of delay, indirection, distraction, fake rebuttals, and elegant omission -- keep readers ignorant of the lies and the lying liars who tell them. No wonder so many Americans still support this gangster war.

No " NYT " article comments on perhaps the most revolting revelation of the memo. The UK Defence Secretary thought that the US military 'timeline [would begin] 30 days before the US Congressional elections.' Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi die so that Americans elect a crowd of pirates perched on the rotting platform of the war of terror.

The burning questions in Washington and in world capitals today are: Why hasn't Vice President Dick Cheney, the leading chicken-hawk behind the suicidal perpetual-war push of the Bush Administration, been forced to resign yet—even after he has been implicated in the use of known forged documents to manipulate Presidential and Congressional support for the Iraq War? And why are the neo-conservatives still able to wield influence over the policies of the Bush Administration—as events on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq veer toward chaos and a growing body-count of American GIs, as the direct result of their fantasy forecasts about invading Americans soldiers being greeted as "liberators?"

The answer was given recently by Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche: "The only reason Dick Cheney has not been forced to resign," LaRouche said in a statement issued June 25 by his LaRouche in 2004 Presidential campaign organization, "is because those Democrats who are under control of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) gang, are more enthusiastic supporters of the neo-conservatives than the Republicans.[...]

WASHINGTON, June 21 — The United States handed out nearly $20 billion of Iraq's funds, with a rush to spend billions in the final days before transferring power to the Iraqis nearly a year ago, a report said on Tuesday.

A report by Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, said in the week before the hand-over on June 28, 2004, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority ordered the urgent delivery of more than $4 billion in Iraqi funds from the U.S. Federal Reserve in New York. One single shipment amounted to $2.4 billion -- the largest movement of cash in the bank's history, said Waxman. Most of these funds came from frozen and seized assets and from the Development Fund for Iraq, which succeeded the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. After the U.S. invasion, the U.N. directed this money should be used by the CPA for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

Cash was loaded onto giant pallets for shipment by plane to Iraq, and paid out to contractors who carried it away in duffel bags. The report, released at a House of Representatives committee hearing, said despite the huge amount of money, there was little U.S. scrutiny in how these assets were managed. "The disbursement of these funds was characterized by significant waste, fraud and abuse," said Waxman.

An audit by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said U.S. auditors could not account for nearly $8.8 billion in Iraqi funds and the United States had not provided adequate controls for this money. "The CPA's management of Iraqi money was an important responsibility that, in my view, required more diligent accountability, pursuant to its assigned mandate, than we found," said chief inspector Stuart Bowen in testimony.

CASES OF ABUSE

Auditors found problems safeguarding funds including one instance where a CPA comptroller did not have access to a field safe as the key was located in an unsecured backpack. Bowen's office has referred three criminal cases to the U.S. Attorney's Office in the past two weeks for misuse of funds. Bowen declined to provide details at the hearing.

In one e-mail released in Waxman's report with the subject line "Pocket Change," a CPA official stressed the need to get money flowing fast before the handover. Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, a Democrat, questioned why so much money had to be transferred so fast. Senior defense official Joseph Benkert said an infusion of funds was needed to address a wide variety of needs before the new Iraqi government took over. Part of the challenge in tracking how money was spent was the cash environment and lack of electronic transfers.

Contractors were told to turn up with big duffel bags to pick up their payments and some were paid from the back of pick-up trucks. One picture shows grinning CPA officials standing in front of a pile of cash said to be worth $2 million to be paid to a security contractor. Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, a Republican, said the photograph disturbed him. "It looks a little loose to me," he said, of the smiling officials. "I share your concern," said Bowen. Citing documents from the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank in New York, Waxman said the United States flew in nearly $12 billion overall in U.S. currency to Iraq from the United States between May 2003 and June 2004. This money was used to pay for Iraqi salaries, fund Iraqi ministries and also to pay some U.S. contractors. In total, more than 281 million individual bills, including more than 107 million $100 bills, were shipped to Iraq on giant pallets loaded onto C-130 planes, the report said.

I have mixed feelings about attempts to impeach Dubya Bush. Sure, I want to see this liar/thief/hypocrite exposed as the traitor he is and driven from office as Nixon was, never again to utter a simplistic "dead or alive" comment in public again.

But then we'd be officially stuck with Dick Cheney as the main man in the White House, although many believe he already is. And that would be worse than having Bush in that position. My dream scenario would be a re-enactment of Watergate, where the vice president is forced to resign before the president follows suit. Add to that the resignation of Scalia, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld, and I'd start believing that God does have more than a superficial effect on our political process. Thank you, Jesus, thank you, Lord.

Cheney's list of sins is as long as any Republican's transgressions. As CEO of Dallas-based Halliburton Co. from 1995 until 2000, Cheney did little about cleaning up asbestos in his buildings, leading to multimillion-dollar legal judgments against Halliburton. He presided over several rounds of job cuts, including of about 11,000 workers in 1999, a year that Halliburton showed a $438 million profit. Since those layoffs, Halliburton's profits rose, to $501 million in 2000 and $809 million in 2001.

Halliburton also raked in big bucks from dubious deals with Iraq under Cheney's tenure, according to the Washington Post and other sources. From 1997 through 2000, Cheney's Halliburton sold $73 million worth of oil equipment and services to Iraq through subsidiaries Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. to help rebuild Iraq's Gulf War-damaged infrastructure. That was more business than any other U.S. company, and Cheney later lied about his Iraqi connection to media types like Sam Donaldson. Talk about corporate hypocrisy - companies like Halliburton could make big profits on such oil deals, but human rights groups could not ship life-saving medicine to Iraqi children because of UN sanctions. And now, Cheney the Major League Hypocrite is standing in line to nuke Hussein after he profited - big time - from Iraq. Halliburton also did business with dictatorships that have committed human rights abuses, such as in Burma, Libya, and Iran. In fact, Houston-based Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, was fined $3.8 million for exporting U.S. goods to Libya in violation of U.S. sanctions. Cheney did nothing to stop such fraud.

Brown & Root also had to pay a hefty fine after being accused of defrauding the U.S. military by submitting false claims for delivery orders between 1994 and 1998. Again, Cheney did nothing to stop such fraud. Halliburton was a corporate welfare hog under Cheney, obtaining at least $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans, according to the Center for Public Integrity. All the while, Cheney blasted welfare mothers.

Then there is Halliburton's Enron-like accounting scheme under Cheney's watch. The dishonest accounting policies, adopted in 1998, were obviously designed to make it appear like Halliburton had more revenues than the firm did. Specifically, Halliburton labeled unresolved claims against some clients as revenue, even though the money was still disputed, including $234 million in 2001 and $89 million in 1998. And who was Halliburton's accountant? Andersen, of course, the same firm embroiled with Enron. Cheney was even featured in an Andersen video, saying "I get good advice, if you will, from their people based upon how we're doing business and how we're operating - over and above just the sort of normal by-the-books auditing arrangement." Sounds like a confession to me. Even with such phony accounting, Halliburton's stock nosedived below $10 in early 2002 after being as high as $49 last year. The stock has since gone up slightly. The SEC is investigating, but do you really expect anything to come of that?

There is a wide trail of lies told by Cheney. There is the Iraqi connection, the Enron ties, the India deal, the so on and so on. Cheney also lied about not living in Texas as late as November 2000 in apparent violation of the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He didn't sell his Dallas-area mansion to a major Republican donor until Nov. 30, 2000, according to deed records. I have been by that $2.7 million home several times since Cheney sold it and have never seen any evidence anyone occupies it. The owner, Dianne T. Cash, owns another million-dollar home in Highland Park, one of the wealthiest suburbs in the country. So, she needs two mansions in the same tiny suburb, huh? From Sept. 2000 until June 2001, Cash - an appropriate name for a Republican, right? - gave a whopping $229,433 to national Republican organizations, in addition to buying Cheney's house, according to federal records. Interestingly, she also gave $1,000 to Democrat Bill Bradley in 1999 - her only contribution to a Democrat since then. Was that a ploy to foil Gore? Surely, this staunch Republican did not embrace Bradley's proposals, which were more liberal than Gore's.

Another lie concerns another basic piece of public information with a paper trail: Cheney's Texas driver's license. Dick's license is still active but lists his address as 500 N. Akard Street in Dallas, which is where he worked at Halliburton, not his home on Euclid Avenue in Highland Park. Lynne Cheney's driver's license lists the same Akard address. Texas law requires residency addresses to be placed on licenses. Even someone as paranoid as billionaire H. Ross Perot - remember his weird reason for getting out of the 1992 presidential election because the Bush campaign supposedly planned to disrupt his daughter's wedding? - has his home address, not work address, on his Texas driver's license. Even Bush listed the Texas governor's mansion - which was where he lived and worked (er, goofed off) - on his license. Other high profile politicians - such as former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who is running as a Democrat for U.S. Senate, and his Republican challenger, Attorney General John Cornyn - list their home addresses, not work. Why were both Cheneys allowed to be above the law, once again?

That is another pattern in Cheney's - and Bush's - life, getting perks most others do not. As a tyrant, Cheney expects preferential treatment. He thinks nothing of holding closed-door White House meetings with Enron executives to discuss public energy policies. He is surprised when some question why such public meetings are allowed to be private. He thinks nothing of using public tax money to fly to India to demand that they pay a private company, Enron, a loan. He is surprised when some accuse him of abusing his office.

Let me say it because most will not: Dick Cheney is evil. There is a bit of evil in most human beings, but in Cheney it is easy to spot, although most people don't have the guts to say it. I especially hate it when I see Cheney on some Sunday morning media show talking like he's an authority figure and no one has the guts to question him. Can't they see through his BS? Granted, it's not as easy to see through as Bush's, who gives new meaning to the word, "shallow."

That's not to say Bush and Cheney are stupid; on the contrary, they know how to use people and cleverly turn things to their advantage. Bush's father's CIA background is apparent; in the CIA, you are trained to lie, to twist, to show different faces. That's what spies do. That's why I cannot understand someone like The Nation's John Nichols, who wrote an excellent book called Jews for Buchanan: Did You Hear the One About the Theft of the American Presidency?, actually saying he thinks Bush is a decent, nice guy. Nichols, who said that during an interview earlier this year with Internet radio host Meria Heller, should know better. Bush is trained to be nice to the media, to project a nice-guy public image. It gets him votes. That's what he cares about. Same with Mr. Big Time, Cheney.

Bush's and Cheney's real personas are closer to the ones where they did the major-league-asshole-big-time routine on New York Times journalist Adam Clymer during the 2000 campaign. Remember, these are people who thought nothing of trashing their own - war vet John McCain - with a below-the-belt smear campaign in South Carolina. These are people who thought nothing of trashing the Constitution and people's voting rights in 2000. These are people who thought nothing of using the legal system to not count legal votes as they trashed anyone who used that same legal system to attempt to gain some justice. These are people who thought nothing of getting a federal court to intervene in a state matter as they called for the federal government to stay out of state matters. I could list more hypocrises here, but that's enough, for now.

Anyways, Cheney is smarter, more experienced, and more dangerous than Bush. He's known as the enforcer on Capitol Hill, with his office known as the torture chamber. There is a reason for those nicknames, and it's not something I would be proud of, but Cheney probably is. It's obvious Cheney really thinks Bush is a lightweight and deals more with Bush Sr., who is running more of this show than many think. Cheney's CIA connections are long, including with his private firms and Defense Department position. He knows how to put on his spy costume and routine as well as Bush, probably better. Cheney is evil, I tell you. There's no other way to put it, in my book.

The media, most of whose members are as intimidated by Cheney as the major Democratic politicians, just continues to protect Cheney. A mid-June Associated Press article on Lynne Cheney's return to Dallas to promote a children's book - well, isn't that special? - said only that she and Dick "lived in the Dallas suburb of Highland Park in the 1990s when he was the head of Halliburton Co., an oil field services company." No way, AP. The Cheneys lived there in 2000, too.

But it's good to see some in the mainstream media aren't quite as intimidated. In June, Business Week pointed out how the White House was "compromised at this juncture in history by its once-incestuous relationship with Enron. The recent revelations of aggressive accounting techniques at Halliburton, one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the energy industry, during Vice President Dick Cheney's tenure as CEO doesn't help either." That relatively mild criticism is about as strong as the mainstream media gets against Cheney.

I'm at a loss at what to do about confronting Cheney's evil. I'm not sure essays like this one accomplish much, beyond getting something off my chest and on the record. Congress does not have the guts to impeach Bush, much less Cheney. The mainstream media is too corporate-controlled these days to pull another 1970s Watergate, when the media was a real force, a force that compelled me to jump aboard the profession. How disillusioned can I be?

Landover Baptist Church applauds our next President's decision to name Dick Cheney as his running mate. Earlier in the campaign, many church members were understandably concerned that George W. Bush was turning soft, given all that "compassionate conservative" rhetoric. Bush has now proven that those words were nothing more than a slogan designed to appease moderate voters. His selection of Cheney proves Bush is more right-minded than any of us had imagined. Described as a "Jesse Helms Republican," Cheney has voted further to the right on contemporary social issues than even former House speaker, Newt Gingrich. Cheney has consistently voted against uppity minorities, feminazis, tree-huggers, lazy poor people and those who would restrict our right to own any weapon we choose. Cheney promises us eight years after Bush's eight years of good old-fashioned Old Testament values. A brief review of Cheney's voting record in the U.S. House of Representatives reveals why he has earned Landover's accolades.

1. Dick will thwart the liberals' goal of equality worldwide.

Cheney has revealed time and again that he recognizes everyone has his place in society. He knows that minorities have no business trying to obtain the jobs and income of true Americans and that women belong in the home. And he recognizes that homos belong nowhere. Cheney voted against every civil rights bill to pass his desk, including any attempt to desegregate schools. He voted against all hate crime initiatives, which we all know are just part of the homosexual conspiracy to turn the entire world into them. Not one to tolerate homos, Cheney even voted against efforts to define hate crimes.

Cheney has done his part to put colored people in their place worldwide as well. Cheney consistently voted against sanctions on South Africa for its policy of apartheid (which, translated in English, means "God's chosen few"). Cheney even had the courage to vote against every House resolution calling for the release from prison of Nelson Mandela. Cheney's Christian conviction that apartheid was right for South Africa (and Mandela belongs behind bars) has proven correct. While liberal Democrats were falling all over themselves to pander to the votes of penniless coloreds, whom our Godly forefathers brought to this blessed country just so those lazy creatures would have work, Cheney had the moral backbone to stand up and say, "Nelson Mandela is no different than most black men – he is a criminal." Spurred on by Satan, the liberals ultimately won. And look where South Africa is today. The coloreds can go anywhere they want and the country is in a state of ruin. The Lord said that servants and slaves should obey their masters with "fear and trembling" (Ephesians 6:5). And look what happened when the Lord and Cheney were ignored. Those South Africans can't even leave a Christmas tree air freshener in their parked cars without it being stolen.

2. Dick will let us have any weapon we want.

Most Republicans say they oppose gun control. And most vote against some regulations. But the vast majority cave in to political correctness when certain initiatives are proposed, like a ban on guns in nightclubs and schools. But not Cheney. He has voted against every gun control initiative he's ever examined. Recognizing that our worst enemy is the Godless government which has taken Jesus away from our children, Cheney voted against the ban on the sale of armor-piercing bullets so that we will have a means of fighting against law enforcement agents who try to close our churches and compounds. Recognizing that women as frail as Mrs. Judy O'Christian cannot carry heavy revolvers and shouldn't have to turn over their guns every time they board a plane, Cheney voted against the ban on 3.7 ounce metal guns – the so-called terrorist weapons. And to ensure that pesky metal detectors won't stop true Christians from fighting against the liberal forces of evil, Cheney even voted against any restriction on the sale of plastic guns that cannot be detected. With Cheney in power, every church will be able to arm its members and fight back against the Satanic forces that infiltrate Washington.

3. Dick will put an end to misguided concern for the environment.

Cheney recognizes that God gave everything on the planet to us to consume. And Cheney knows, as we do, that the End Times are right around the corner, so there's no reason to worry about the environment 20 or 30 years from now. So Cheney has voted against every piece of environmental legislation to visit his office. He supports abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency. He supports the elimination of existing environmental regulations. And he favors giving money to large U.S. oil corporations so they can prosper rather than those devils in the desert. Under Cheney, we will heat our homes with coal and nuclear energy, dump our waste in unused rivers rather than expensive burial sites, use high-quality Redwood to build our wine cellars and consume whatever meat we wish, without worrying about how many more of that particular animal happen to be alive.

4. Dick will stop the misplaced commitment to the poor and elderly.

Cheney recognizes that people are poor for one of two reasons: they're lazy or they come from bad stock. Either way, this should not be the concern of hard-working upper income Americans who are God's true children. We should not have to do without that extra car just so some poor child is properly fed so he makes it to his teen years where he can then rape and steal. And if an elderly couple raised their children right, the children will care for their parents in their old age. If the children don't, they weren't raised properly, and their parents should not benefit from their poor nurturing. Cheney voted against all benefits for the poor and elderly. He voted against tax cuts for working families. Cheney voted against welfare dependency even when it was politically difficult to do so. He voted against Head Start for the poorest of poor children, knowing that if you feed them once, they always come back looking for more.

In short, Dick Cheney is a dream come true for Landover and America. Some of us never thought we'd see the day when a politician would embody all the values we hold so dear and which have been expressed on this website time and again. Some of us have been at a loss to provide a single word to describe what we believe and who we really are. We now have that word: Dick.

[...] When Bush Sr. was drubbed by Bill Clinton in 1992, Cheney decided it was high time he became a titan of industry. With nothing but insider Washington credentials on his resume, he became chairman and CEO of Halliburton Corp. in 1995. Cheney made millions leading the massive oil industry construction company, while carefully "tweaking" its accounting practices. A 1998 accounting change improved the company's revenues by $234 million over the course of four years.

Prior to the change, Halliburton had booked sales when a client agreed to pay for cost overruns and contract disputes. After the change, the company took a guess at what they'd collect and booked the sales as a done deal. Despite the fact that the practice looks and sounds a bit sleazy, it's fairly commonplace in the industry. Of course, before Enron, off-balance sheet financing was pretty commonplace too.

The practice was further complicated by the fact that Halliburton was severely on the ropes at the time the change was made. In addition to suddenly boosting the company's bottom line just when Halliburton was going to get slaughtered on the stock market, Cheney and crew "neglected" to inform the SEC about the change until more than a year later. When Cheney quit Halliburton to take the vice presidential nomination in 2000, the company offered him a $20 million going-away gift, characterized as a "retirement package" for his many (five) years of service in the private sector. In a concession to public outrage and concerns that Halliburton was buying access to the White House, Cheney selflessly accepted only $13.6 million, indisputably preserving the ethical integrity of the Executive Branch.

During the 2000 elections, Cheney's history of heart troubles raised serious concerns among the electorate. Voters worried that if Cheney died while in office, his running mate George W Bush might be left in charge of the country. In a concession to these worries, Cheney had a super high-tech pacemaker installed in June of 2001.

Nevertheless, the heart issue would continue to haunt him. When al Qaeda attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on September 11, the official version had the vice president shuttled to an emergency bunker in the basement of the White House. According to his own account, he was grabbed by a couple Secret Service agents and carried to the basement, despite being fully conscious and not at all having a heart attack. While the President of the United States jumped in a plane and began a daylong hiding spree, Cheney was running the country from the White House basement, or so the story goes. In the aftermath of the attacks, however, Cheney took a while to resurface.

The party line was very reasonable, pointing out that the vice president was being kept in a secret location so that he could take over the country in the event of another terrorist attack. But it was awfully tempting to speculate that he had in fact suffered yet another heart attack while watching the planes hit the Trade Centers. Regardless of what actually happened, Cheney gradually resurfaced, starting with short, limited appearances and expanding back into a somewhat normal role, as American life returned to somewhat normal.

However, Cheney was pissed. His old hawkish ways rapidly reasserted themselves as the hunt for Osama bin Laden began. Almost immediately after the attacks, Cheney and his old crony Donald Rumsfeld (now Secretary of Defense) began beating the war drums for a new invasion of Iraq, despite a complete absence of any evidence that Saddam Hussein had anything at all to do with September 11 or al Qaeda in general.

Cheney got his way, eventually. After a staged confrontation at the United Nations, where Secretary of State Colin Powell was roped into making the improbable case for an invasion, the Bush administration discarded all hopes of attracting allies (other than faithful lapdog Britain), despite Cheney's last-minute "can't we be friends" tour of Europe. The U.S. went ahead with the invasion in spring 2003.

Cheney's enthusiasm for the war wasn't solely driven by philosophy. His old buddies at Halliburton were finally seeing a return on that $13.6 million (and the $1 million a year in "deferred compensation" still being paid to supplement Cheney's measly six-figure government salary). Halliburton's first quarterly earnings report at the end of the short second Gulf War saw profits double from the previous period (more than $20 million), a gain which news reports comically characterized as coming "despite" the war.

Halliburton's construction and engineering subsidiary has been paid nearly $1 billion through government contracts containing profit-guarantees, and various other contracts initiated since the company's former CEO arrived in the White House. Halliburton has built military bases in the former Soviet Union and Turkey, and it made $33 million building jail cells for terrorists at Camp X-Ray. (In all fairness, even these contracts don't make up for Cheney's major accomplishment as CEO, an acquisition which is expected to cost Halliburton upwards of $4 billion in asbestos liabilities.)

Just before the Iraq war started, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton an "emergency" contract for oil fields reconstruction, which was awarded without the usual government bidding process because of said "emergency" (and despite the fact that the invasion wasn't on any particular timetable and the fact it had been in the works for a year and a half).

The deal was authorized for up to $7 billion, but the Army didn't trash the country with sufficient enthusiasm to make the whole amount, and the actual size of the deal is now estimated at $600 million (assuming Halliburton survives the lawsuits from competitors who inexplicably feel that something fishy is going on here).

A disappointment to be sure, but Cheney has four more years to make it up to them. And then there's always Syria... And Iran... And...

Should George W. Bush win this election, it will give him the distinction of being the first occupant of the White House to have survived naming Dick Cheney to a post in his administration. The Cheney jinx first manifested itself at the presidential level back in 1969, when Richard Nixon appointed him to his first job in the executive branch. It surfaced again in 1975, when Gerald Ford made Cheney his chief of staff and then -- with Cheney's help -- lost the 1976 election. George H.W. Bush, having named Cheney secretary of defense, was defeated for re-election in 1992. The ever-canny Ronald Reagan was the only Republican president since Eisenhower who managed to serve two full terms. He is also the only one not to have appointed Dick Cheney to office.

This pattern of misplaced confidence in Cheney, followed by disastrous results, runs throughout his life -- from his days as a dropout at Yale to the geopolitical chaos he has helped create in Baghdad. Once you get to know his history, the cycle becomes clear: First, Cheney impresses someone rich or powerful, who causes unearned wealth and power to be conferred on him. Then, when things go wrong, he blames others and moves on to a new situation even more advantageous to himself.

"Cheney's manner and authority of voice far outstrip his true abilities," says Chas Freeman, who served under Bush's father as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "It was clear from the start that Bush required adult supervision -- but it turns out Cheney has even worse instincts. He does not understand that when you act recklessly, your mistakes will come back and bite you on the ass."

Cheney's record of mistakes begins in 1959, when Tom Stroock, a Republican politician-businessman in Casper, Wyoming, got Cheney, then a senior at Natrona County High School, a scholarship to Yale. "Dick was the all-American boy, in the top ten percent of his class," Stroock says. "He seemed a natural." But instead of triumphing, Cheney failed. "He spent his time partying with guys who loved football but weren't varsity quality," recalls Stephen Billings, an Episcopalian minister who roomed with him during Cheney's freshman (and only full) year at Yale. "His idea was, you didn't need to master the material," says his other roommate, Jacob Plotkin. "He passed one psych course without attending class or studying, and he was proud of that. But there are some things you can't bluff, and Dick reached a point where you couldn't recover."

Cheney might have been flunking in the classroom, but he excelled at making connections. "Dick always had this very calm way of talking," recalls Plotkin, now a retired math professor at Michigan State University. "His thoughtful manner impressed people." Forty years before the son of a U.S. president picked Cheney to be his running mate, the son of a Massachusetts governor picked him to be his sophomore-year roommate. Mark Furcolo, whose father, Foster, had been elected governor as a Democrat, invited Cheney to Cape Cod for a visit. "Dick came back enraptured," Plotkin says. "He was fascinated by the official state cars and planes. The trappings of it got him."

It could have been the start of a brilliant career -- in the Massachusetts of the 1960s, it would not have been too great a leap from the Furcolos to the Kennedys. Instead, after only one term as a Yale sophomore, Cheney dropped out. "Dick never had the experience of learning from his mistakes," says Tom Fake, a Natrona classmate who also won a Yale scholarship. But he learned something perhaps more important to this future success. "He found a path that got him into powerful positions" is how Plotkin puts it.

After leaving Yale, Cheney had one of his few experiences working in the private sector, on a telephone-company repair crew. He showed no interest, one way or another, in the Vietnam War -- until a Texas president, nearly forty years before George W. Bush, turned a remote foreign struggle into a catastrophic, unwinnable war. Thanks to Lyndon Johnson's escalation of Vietnam, lounging around was suddenly no longer an option. Cheney snapped into action. First he enrolled in Casper Community College; then he went to the University of Wyoming. That kept him out of the draft until August 7th, 1964, when Congress initiated massive conscription in the armed forces. Three weeks later, Cheney married Lynne Vincent, his high school girlfriend, earning him another deferment. Then, on October 26th, 1965, the Selective Service announced that childless married men no longer would be exempted from having to fight for their country. Nine months and two days later, the first of Cheney's two daughters, Elizabeth, was born. All told, between 1963 and 1966, Cheney received five deferments.

In January 1967, when he was enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, Cheney passed his twenty-sixth birthday, making him safe from the draft -- and making it safe for him to abandon work on a doctoral degree. He had taken to hanging out with local politicians and acted as an unpaid assistant to Wisconsin's moderate Republican governor, Warren Knowles. In 1968, he used Knowles to get a progressive Wisconsin Republican congressman named William Steiger to let him work as an intern in his office in Washington.

For the first time, Cheney went to live in a city with a population of more than 200,000 people. What happened next occurred with amazing ease and speed. Having used Knowles as a steppingstone to Steiger, Cheney used Steiger as a steppingstone to a Nixon appointee named Donald Rumsfeld, then head of the Office of Economic Opportunity. "What I saw was a young fellow, intelligent, purposeful, laid-back," Rumsfeld later remembered, when asked why he'd hired Cheney. His greatest utility, then and later, was that he lapped up work that higher-ranking officials were happy to see disappear from their plates.