American Blog

Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

When US Vice President Dick Cheney was asked what he thought about the vast majority of opposition in the United States to the continuance of the Iraq War, he answered “So?” When he was asked if cared what the American people think, Cheney answered, “No.”

The ABC News journalist gave him the opportunity to correct his ‘Fuck You America’ attitude, but Cheney refused to do so, as this transcript released by the White House shows :

Q : …two-thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting, and they’re looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.
CHENEY : So?

Q So — you don’t care what the American people think?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

Of course, Cheney was smirking when during his answers.

The White House decided Cheney’s words needed a comma between “No” and “I think you cannot be….”, so it looks as though it is all one sentence, one thought. It wasn’t, as the video here proves.

Cheney was asked if cared what the American people think and he answered “No.”

Hopefully the Iraqis end up with a better democracy than the Bush-Cheney version they’ve inflicted on the American people.

Cheney’s casual dismissal of the views of most Americans is too much for this decades long political ally of the VP :

Policy, Cheney went on to say, should not be tailored to fit fluctuations in the public attitudes. If there is one thing public attitudes have not been doing, however, it is fluctuating: Resistance to the Bush administration’s Iraq policy has been widespread, entrenched and consistent. Whether public opinion is right or wrong, it is not to be cavalierly dismissed.

Cheney (said) that American war policy should not be affected by the views of the people. But that is precisely whose views should matter: It is the people who should decide whether the nation shall go to war. That is not a radical, or liberal, or unpatriotic idea. It is the very heart of America’s constitutional system.

In Europe, before America’s founding, there were rulers and their subjects. The Founders decided that in the United States there would be not subjects but citizens. Rulers tell their subjects what to do, but citizens tell their government what to do.

If Dick Cheney believes, as he obviously does, that the war in Iraq is vital to American interests, it is his job, and that of President Bush, to make the case with sufficient proof to win the necessary public support.

That is the difference between a strong president (one who leads) and a strong presidency (one in which ultimate power resides in the hands of a single person). Bush is officially America’s “head of state,” but he is not the head of government; he is the head of one branch of our government, and it’s not the branch that decides on war and peace.

When the vice president dismisses public opposition to war with a simple “So?” he violates the single most important element in the American system of government: Here, the people rule.

For Cheney, the Iraq War is nothing but business, and a vast wealth-creating business at that. For Cheney anyway. Not so for the American people.

American’s poor will still be paying for the War On Iraq, when Cheney’s great grandchildren are having their university educations covered by the Haliburton-derived profits of Cheney’s vast war mongering.

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