Dick Cheney: An American Anti-Hero, Pt. I

Andrew Sullivan examines the Vice President's impeccable record-

Adding them up. In recent days, leading Republicans have called for the Bush administration wire-tapping surveillance program to have some kind of legal framework, outside what David Addington thinks is appropriate on any given day; a key CIA intelligence expert confirms the notion that vice president Dick Cheney was not seriously interested in finding the whole truth about Iraq's WMD program, and railroaded the intelligence to produce the result he wanted; we have learned from the head of FEMA that the president knew fully about the dangers poised by Hurricane Katrina in plenty of time to coordinate a much better response; and we know that assurances by the administration about who's in Guantanamo Bay and why have been lies. We have also learned that the vice-president routinely authorized the release of classified information to advance his political goals, told Scooter Libby of Valerie Plame's identity, discussed how to handle the press, and shortly after one of the Libby-Cheney discussions, Plame's identity was leaked. The one thread between all these instances of incompetence, malice and poor judgment is that the sources are either impeccable or Republicans. And the person responsible all of them ... is Dick Cheney.

Hey, don't leave out King George, under whose command all this was done.