What Makes Cheney Spin?

Excellent article in this week’s Time magazine about Bush’s and Cheney’s falling out in the late articles of the Bush administration about how to spin Scooter Libby a pardon for his lies to the grand jury.

Cheney was for it

Bush …, well, there’s some who say Bush felt Scooter just wasn’t sounding properly contrite. Hmm, wonder what made Georgie start looking up that word up at the end of his administration? Wonder why it doesn’t show up in any of his own post presidential talking points?

Let’s remember that Scooter was convicted of lying to a grand jury in an effort to foil an investigation about the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. The Time article maintains that the lie was about Cheney’s direct involvement in the outing. They needed Scooter’s confirmation to bring the case forward, but three times Scooter lied to them saying that, despite his vivid recall of conversations with Tim Russert and others, he had no recall of discussions with Cheney. For Cheney to keep the lid down on the cover-up, he now needed a gripe-less Scooter free and untainted.

But Bush refused to give the pardon, despite all Cheney’s nagging. There they were at the end of a failed presidency with Bush assuming the Herbert Hoover mantel, and he must have been considering why after all of Cheney’s lies and deceptions should he bother helping the schmoe out in his moment of desperation. Let Cheney dangle. Even Bush had to realize that his eight years in office had been the equivalent of the American Dark Ages, and, dagnabit, it was all because that slick talking Dick had wangled little Georgie into one too many bad decisions.

Even after Bush (the decider) had waffled for weeks and then finally decided, Cheney continued to moan. He said Bush’s ultra successful War on Terror would be viewed as a failure if they “left a man on the battlefield.” That’s macho-code for “even though we’ve never been to war ourselves, we can’t leave poor Scooter out there languishing.”

Wonder why Cheney never gave the same thought to the thousands of actual soldiers he left on the battlefield, or to Valerie Plame and the undercover associates who worked with her that he exposed, or to the sacrifice he made of Pvts Lynndie England and Charles Grainer for carrying out his and Rumsfeld’s torture orders.

And why didn’t it ever occur to Cheney that if he really wanted to reward Libby for taking the fall on the Vice President’s behalf, all he need do is stand up and tell the truth himself – Yes, I ordered the outing of a CIA operative for political reasons. And if any son or daughter of America who is serving their country ever tries crossing me, I’ll out them as well.