Dick Cheney's "Stomach for War"


Nothing like getting lectured about guts from a guy whose idea of hunting is to go to a private club and shoot cage-raised birds. And yet that’s what we got Sunday, when Dick Cheney was brought above ground, re-animated and rolled into Fox News, to tell America we need to have the “stomach to finish the task in Iraq.”

It was especially interesting to compare and contrast Darth Cheney’s gut check with the president’s comments later on 60 Minutes, when he said he didn’t watch the entire Saddam hanging video. Didn’t stay for the icky part—you know, the part when the guy he spent billions of dollars to have killed actually was killed. “They could have handled it a lot better,” Mr. Bush said.

Odds are the warrior in chief won’t be watching the video of Monday’s hangings, either, especially the part where Saddam’s half brother was accidentally decapitated by the ineptitude of the local hangman. (Or at least, the Iraqi officials said it was an accident.)

Let’s see…what exactly are we supposed to have “the stomach” for?
Three thousand dead Americans, 22 thousand injured Americans, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, and as part of an “important milestone” for the new Iraqi nation, three truly horrific, brutal execution that cannot help but bring shame by association to the people of the United States.

The question is not whether America has the stomach to keep fighting, but whether our leaders have the stomach to stop fighting. The Democrats, as usual, cannot agree on an anti-war strategy, perhaps because the Mainstream Media’s conventional wisdom still maintains that it is politically risky to vote to cut off funding for the escalation. But why? How is it that it requires courage to do what two thirds of the people want you to do? If you believe that, you are conceding that it’s impossible to beat Karl Rove, or his stand-ins, in 2008, when they try to paint anti-war candidates as “abandoning the troops.” Why are so many Democrats afraid that the American people, who have led the anti-war movement all along, will suddenly turn on them?

John Edwards had it right at the Riverside Church Sunday.

“Silence is betrayal, and I believe it is a betrayal not to speak out against the escalation of the war in Iraq.” Your move, Democrats.

On the other hand, maybe I’m making too much of this whole Iraq nightmare. After all, Cheney did tell us just this Sunday that “we have, in fact, made enormous progress.”

Which reminds me, when Cheney testifies in the Scooter Libby trial, will they even bother to swear him in? Will anybody on a jury believe that he’s capable of telling the truth?