The exchange on
ABC television Sunday morning between Liz Cheney, lawyer and daughter of one of the most corrupt politicians in American history, and Arianna Huffington, who nowadays is a liberal reformist after first coming to our attention as the in 1992 as the stylish, conservative Christian wife of a wealthy and not-very-bright politician transplanted from Texas to California for whom there was no problem couldn’t be solved by cutting taxes, told us a lot about the continued efforts by the unlamented past Bush administration and it allies to rehabilitate the worst administration in history. Ms. Cheney is a grade-A liar who constructs arguments devoid of facts while telling us that “we need to look at the facts.”
In the past, Ms. Cheney has told us, “Waterboarding is not torture.” She says it as a matter of fact, as if no one can dispute it. She simply ignores the very facts that she says we should look at: that waterboarding has been around for centuries and was used by the Spanish Inquisition to elicit confessions from accused witches and heretics, a fact that in itself tells us a lot about the kind of reliable and accurate information one gets using this or other “enhanced interrogation techniques”; that it puts the subject in a situation where he believes his death is imminent; that it can, in fact, kill the victim if it is done incorrectly. Moreover, it provides the interrogators no reliable information, in spite of their claims to the contrary, claims that are never supported by evidence beyond dispute.
Ms. Cheney has no credibility.
Now Ms. Cheney tells us that neither the Bush/Cheney administration nor its industry allies bears any responsibility for the Gulf spill after dismantling the regulatory system that was designed to keep offshore drilling safe, or at least safer than it actually is today as a result of that dismantling. She ignores that during the Bush/Cheney years, regulators signed off on safety inspections that weren't, yet this is what is on the record for the present administration to check. She ignores how MMS was literary in bed with the oil companies and their lobbyists. Yes, she is right that the Obama administration bears at least some responsibility for the spill -- but no one will catch her saying that the first thing the Obama administration did wrong was to rely on Bush/Cheney era safety inspections reports.
Ms. Cheney's charge that Ms. Huffington "lives on another planet" for calling Halliburton "the poster child of Bush/Cheney crony capitalism" is nothing more than the absurd rhetoric of a shyster. Ms. Cheney's father was the criminal mastermind of the Bush/Cheney years and the past CEO of Halliburton. While Vice President, Mr. Cheney cleared the way for an unnecessary war in Iraq and for no-bid contracts to Halliburton in the wake of the war, the execution of which by Halliburton was frequently criticized by impartial observers. I can no more blame Ms. Cheney for defending what remains, if anything, of her father's reputation any more than I can blame Julie Nixon Eisenhower's defense of her father in the wake of the Watergate scandal. However, I can blame her for lies and smears she tells in her defense. With Mrs. Eisenhower, it was as simple as she believed her father because he was her father. She never crossed any line that Ms. Cheney crosses every time she opens her mouth.
The record of the Bush/Cheney years was one long story of government fraud and waste (never mind murder and torture). One might suppose that there are more falsehoods in the reports filed in the years 2001-2008 and January 2009 than there are accurate facts, especially in the records of the MMS. It can be understood that the Obama administration doesn't want to look under every rock and termite-infested board for corruption or prosecute every case of willful fraud -- the justice department doesn't have that kind of manpower. Nevertheless, it would help if the administration starts with the assumption that records from the past administration are inaccurate before proceeding to take action or make policy. I know that's a lot of work.
Of course, it is not a good precedent for an incoming administration, especially one from the opposition party, to withhold from the previous administration the benefit of the doubt as to its integrity. But the Bush/Cheney administration had no integrity. Even its very claim to power was suspect to say the least. Intelligence reports were cherry picked to build a false case for war against Iraq. Torture was mandated and only unsubstantiated and very doubtful claims of its utility have been advanced to justify it. US Attorneys were fired for not filing fraudulent cases and replaced with political hacks; a former state chief executive remains in prison, convicted on dubious charges after a dubious trail, while the US Attorneys who engineered the case remain in office and the nominations their replacements are held up in the Senate. Secret meetings were held with Mr. Cheney and energy company executives, of which no record of who attended or who proposed what or even what was discussed, but the result was the Bush/Cheney energy policy, a policy that would sell more fossil fuel and postpone development of clean, renewable sources while dismissing conservation as anything more than "a personal virtue."
We may add that government regulators in the MMS were sleeping with and snorting cocaine with representatives of the industry they were supposed to regulate. This is a very serious charge. It is well substantiated. Still, it is nowhere near as shocking as the litany of crimes and malfeasance rattled off in the last paragraph. We may also add that oil industry representatives penciled in the safety reports for offshore platforms that government regulators wrote over in ink. Proper safety inspections were not performed. Yet the record shows they were performed.
The industry representatives who knowingly paid for this corruption, including those in corporate suites, need to go to jail. The government employees who aided and abetted this fraud, to include cabinet officers and elected officials, need to go to jail. However, sending them to jail or giving their written reports scrutiny won't save one brown pelican, it won't save the shrimp industry in Louisiana, it won't save the wetlands on the Gulf coast. It won't stop the disaster from spreading to the Florida Keys and the Atlantic Ocean.
It will, we can only hope, shut the barn door to keep those cows that are still there inside.
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