"Dick Cheney is yelling 'fire' and wonders why no one is listening"

Former VEEP Dick Cheney has been all over television and op-eds in the New York Times and the Weekly Standard, trying to rewrite history and to alert us to the incompetence of President Obama.  David Paul has an essay on Huffington Post that is worth quoting at some length about that:

" . . .  In his broadside against President Obama, Dick Cheney fails to grasp the central irony of his situation. Cheney wants us to respond to his cries of "fire," but does not understand that all we see when he speaks is the arsonist. Speaking to Charlie Rose, Cheney admonished those fixated on how we got into Iraq and, despite repeated prodding, he refuses to amend or apologize for a single word of an historical record on his watch that has been so deeply contradicted.  Even as he scorns the president in a manner never seen before by one administration toward a successor, Cheney is a man with no sense of accountability for his own actions and his impact on the world around him.

"The debate that led up to the Senate war resolution, like the campaign to build public support for war, was built on a deliberate campaign of misinformation. That debate laid the groundwork for a deepening mistrust across the political spectrum of the use of intelligence. . . .  The residue of the lies and dissembling in the run-up to the Iraq war is the hallmark legacy of Cheney's Vice Presidency. . . .  [and] has contributed to declining faith in the ability of our government to honestly deal with problems that we face at home and undermined the credibility of our efforts to promote democracy abroad.

"Cheney demands that we heed his warnings, but evinces no awareness of why his credibility is suspect, or why Americans might feel burned for having trusted his words and followed his lead before. He is the poster child for the lies and duplicity of an era, the effects of which continue to ripple forward. . . .  He has become a parody of himself, and if America is at risk, the last way to get Americans to hear that is for Dick Cheney to tell them. . . .  Dick Cheney may have nothing but contempt for Barack Obama, but the irony is that Cheney is one of the reasons Obama was elected. . . ."

I agree.  During George W. Bush's first term in office, Dick Cheney seemed to be manipulating the president's decisions (we learned later that he had every internal email routed through his office and kept Bush's National Security Adviser Condi Rice in the dark on some things).   Later in his second term, Bush seemed to be less influenced by Cheney and refused Cheney's plea to give Scooter Libby a pardon.   Relations between them became strained -- and remain so, according to reports.

Unlike Cheney, George Bush has been exemplary in not criticizing his successor in the White House.  At least that is to his credit.

Ralph