The Sneer, like our British cousins, thinks otherwise:
Is this the real president of the United States?
He rarely speaks in public and closely guards his privacy. But there's a growing consensus in America that it's Dick Cheney who calls the shots at the White House, on everything from the war in Iraq to climate change policy. Ed Pilkington reports Monday July 23, 2007
The Guardian
EXCERPT...
The 46th vice-president of the US, Dick Cheney, has a fondness for remaining invisible. It doesn't matter whether it's Google Earth or a bank of television cameras, he won't play ball. He rarely presents himself to the media, and when he does so he likes to keep it in the family.
Take the interview he gave last October to Scott Hennen, a rightwing talkshow host with North Dakota's WDAY radio. At the time Iraq was imploding and the Republican party was heading towards meltdown at the mid-term elections. So what does Hennen ask him?
"Mr Vice-President, I know you're fond of pheasant hunting in South Dakota, but there's some great bird hunting in North Dakota. Is this going to be the year you come up and do a little bird hunting in North Dakota?"
Cheney: "Well, I don't know ..."
Incisive stuff. Hennen did, though, almost by accident, extract a seminal soundbite from the vice-president. The discussion turned to terrorism and where to draw the line on the interrogation of suspects.
Hennen: "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?"
Cheney: "It's a no-brainer for me."
That quote, so innocently obtained, dunked Cheney himself in deep water. The man who had for months vehemently rejected the title of "vice-president for torture" found himself agreeing on air that the use of waterboarding - the technique of holding a prisoner underwater to the point of drowning in order to break their will - was a "no-brainer".
It was a moment of rare candidness from the ultimately controlled and secretive politician. For once that infamous steely guard that seems to shield Cheney - with his unreadable face and equally inscrutable half-smile - appeared to have slipped. Obscurity has been Cheney's hallmark since he took office in January 2001, and that's the way he likes it. "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?" he quipped in 2004. "It's a nice way to operate, actually."
But what started as a single, unguarded gaffe last October appears nine months on to be developing into a pattern. Increasingly, the focus is switching from President Bush to the man who stands in the shadows behind him. This month sees the publication of two books analysing the role of Cheney, one by Stephen Hayes of the neocon bible the Weekly Standard, the second a more critical work called Opportunist, by Robert Sam Anson.
CONTINUED...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0%2C%2C2132603%2C00.html Thank you for being so brave as to post the truth about the most awful people who've stolen our country, Stephanie.
Photos like those above of the giggling psychopath and his victims make me sick and furious show exactly why I've been furious for so long -- since November 22, 1963.