What Dick Cheny Can Start Apologizing For

Dick Cheney has said he is not happy with how the Bush Administration is being portrayed by Obama and some in the Obama Administration. And it's true that Obama never misses an opportunity to remind people that he is not responsible for the current economic crisis, something that is getting a bit overdone.

But when Cheney says he doesn't think the Bush Administration has a lot to apologize for I have some suggestions.

1. He can start with the 911 attacks on New York and Washington that resulted in the deaths of 3,000 people in the worst attack on American soil and the most deaths on American soil at the hands of a foreign enemy in US history. And all because of his and Bush's gross negligence, arrogance and stupidity in deciding that terrorism wasn't a major threat to the US and thinking they knew better and were smarter than President Clinton, Richard Clarke, the CIA and the FBI, which resulted in Bush and Cheney ignoring 8 months of warnings by Richard Clarke and the intelligence agencies that the US about to be hit with a major terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda.

Bush and Cheney should have been forced to resign over their negligence regarding terrorism and the facts that show 911 could have been prevented had they been paying attention, instead of the reckless and negligent way they brushed off terrorism in the 8 months leading up to the attack.the same attitude that would repeat itself in areas other than terrorism.. But Republicans didn't want to pay the political price so they kept their mouths shut, Democrats were afraid they would be portrayed as trying to capitalize politically on a national tragedy so they kept their mouths shut, and the press were and continued to be throughout the subsequent 6 years of the Bush Administration, simply journalistic cowards.

2. Once Cheney finishes apologizing for 911, he can apologize for the invasion of Iraq, a war in which he and Bush clearly lied to the country and to Congress in order to push the country into its first preemptive war in it's history, a war that proved unnecessary and something for which they should still be held accountable.

3. Cheney can also apologize for the post invasion strategy which was the most inept handling of a post invasion occupation imaginable and cost thousands of lives unnecessarily. Tom Ricks the Washington Post correspondent who has written two books on the Iraq invasion, called Iraq the worst foreign policy decision in US history. So chalk up another one for Cheney to apologize for. And when he is through apologizing for the botched fiasco that followed the invasion of Iraq he can apologize for diverting resources from Afghanistan to Iraq which is where the real enemy was hiding, and allowing the Taliban to have a resurgence, and creating the problems we have in Afghanistan today.

4. He can apologize for his role in lowering American standards with his approval of torture as an interrogation technique which according to all available information did NOT yield any valuable information that could not have been gotten with other means, so says David Blair, Director of intelligence.

5. Next he can apologize for outing an undercover CIA officer, Valerie Plame and destroying 20 years of building an undercover intelligence network in the area of WMD.

6. If he can manage to stay awake, he can apologize for the Bush Administration's disastrous inept response to Katrina and that the Bush Administration who, despite having a 3 day advance warning, couldn't get food water and medicine into New Orleans for five days resulting in hundreds and possibly a thousand more deaths.

7. Last but not least he can apologize for the economic polices that resulted in the worst financial crisis since the 1930's.

In short, the Bush/Cheney Administration was directly responsible for the four worst avoidable catastrophes to ever hit the United States with a loss of American life reaching almost 10,000 and a loss of financial treasure in the tens of trillions, including an economic policy that blew a $5 1/2 trillion budget surplus left by the Clinton Administration. Along the way they degraded American values by approving torture, outed an undercover CIA agent, and allowed a resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan where America's real enemies hid to go after Saddam.

The ramifications, especially regarding terrorism, Iraq and the economy, are still being dealt with to this day and will be for years to come.

The fact that Dick Cheney doesn't think the Bush Administration has much to apologize for not only reveals the kind of thinking that resulted in those disasters, but his statement reveals the arrogance and incompetence of the kind of people who were responsible for these disasters, and answers the question of how they could have happened in the first place.