Thank goodness Vice President Dick Cheney will be leaving office in a little over a month! He will carry with him the reputation of being the most powerful Vice President in American history, but also one who was lawless and a disgrace to the office, and he should face prosecution for his crimes in office, unless we are going to allow him to claim that in office whatever the Vice President does is lawful, similar to what Richard Nixon said about his actions in the Presidency.
Cheney admits that the US government would have decided to go to war against Saddam Hussein even if there was no evidence and no intelligence about Weapons of Mass Destruction. He also admits that water boarding was done against suspects and he fully endorses the use of what John McCain and many others have said is torture, an unacceptable tactic under international law.
Cheney has no shame or sense of guilt, and continues to be arrogant and unrepentant about any of the actions taken during the Bush administration, which has led to the death of more than 4,000 US soldiers, the serious wounding of more than 15,000 young men and women, and the enormous expense of the war, which is nearing one trillion dollars, and will be untold trillions more when one adds in the long term costs of medical care for the severely wounded over the next fifty years or more. Also, the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians is on his hands, as well as the hands of George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other administration figures.
Dick Cheney has contributed mightily to the economic mess that faces us and the horrible international image that Barack Obama must now work to rehabilitate. He will always stand out as a Vice President who was allowed to run amuck, and Joe Biden is conscious of the need to return the Vice Presidency to the important but lawful role it had been known for in the past half century since the office started to grow in significance.
Dick Cheney needs to be prosecuted for his crimes, and the foreign policy of preemption adopted by the Bush administration after the 9-11 attacks needs to be repudiated by the Obama administration!