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When Dwight Eisenhower warned the world of the United States’ “military industrial complex” and their permanent armaments industry in his farewell address on Jan 17th 1961, he spoke of “the potential of the disastrous rise of misplaced power.”

This morning I watched with disgust as CNN’s John King lobbed typical softball questions at former US Vice President Dick Cheney. I listened to Cheney defend the use of torture and  assert the ridiculous claim that Obama’s foreign policy shift is making the US “less safe.” At one point in the interview, CNN cut to a commercial similar to this one, and part of the same “How” ad campaign:

As I watch this ad promoting Cold War era weapons and the virtue of “America’s Air Dominance” in the age of asymmetric, low-intensity warfare that characterize the Iraq and Afghanistan imperial misadventures, what becomes crystal clear is that Cheney, his band of neoconservative ideologues, and even CNN, are the very threats President Eisenhower warned about.

Absurd Comic-Book-Style Villainy

Aside from being a dungeon master, secretive oil baron, elusive media manipulator and avid gun enthusiast, this week Seymore Hersh revealed that Cheney was also the leader of a secret CIA assassination squad.  This, of course, comes as no surprise for those familiar with Cheney’s quest to centralize power in the executive branch where this sad comedy reached its pinnacle as he invoked executive privilege while simultaneously claiming not to be a member of the executive branch.

Here is the hilarious lead from the Boston Globe article related to his fight with the National Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office’s attempts to get him to disclose information:

Dick Cheney, who has wielded extraordinary executive power as he transformed the image of the vice presidency, is asserting that his office is not actually part of the executive branch.

The Iraqi journalist who threw a shoe at George W. Bush was sentenced to 3 years in prison this week. When will we see the key players in the Bush administration pay for their crimes? Or am I a fool for still believing the illusion that the rule of law exists in the United States?

Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

I’m about half-way through reading Barton Gellman‘s “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,” a book based on his series of Pulitzer Prize winning series of articles in The Washington Post.  It is a gripping portrayal of one man’s ability to navigate the bureaucratic structure of the American government with skill and precision mimicking that of a veteran sniper’s ability to select a target and pull the trigger. No one said that running a secret assassination squad was easy.

Late Update: The supervillain highlight reel from TPMTV

And this great screen capture image from Crooks and Liars, tells the whole story better than my 1000 words: