CHENEY'S CHAPPAQUIDDICK

There were more important factors than sex behind my Chappaquiddick analogy. That analogy seems to drive conservatives insane, by the way.

The hate mail and even threats I've received are beyond anything I've ever seen. I guess the word's been such a treasured icon of hate for them that the possible loss of it drives them into a frenzy.

Here are some of the "C" (for Chappaquiddick) factors in the Cheney shooting:

1. Someone with a documented history of drinking problems causes a serious accident, and then avoids the authorities for a period of time - one that happens to be long enough to get the alcohol out of his system.

2. The first stories of the accident are confusing and self-contradictory. (In this case, since Cheney didn't speak himself, the most glaring inconsistencies are Armstrong's.

Specifically, she - and now Cheney - describe her as an eyewitness, although she told the Associated Press she thought at first Cheney had suffered a heart attack. That would mean she never saw the shooting.)

3. A powerful figure holds himself out as being above the law, and - at least for a time - appears to get away with it.

4. When the powerful person finally speaks, allegedly to 'come clean,' there are still inconsistencies and glaring contradictions in his story.

It's about power, drinking, irresponsibility, and dishonesty. If there was no romance going on, the issues are still the same. As the song says: What's love got to do with it? [RJ Eskow]


CHENEY UNCHAINED: FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT & IMPEACHMENT

For the sake of argument, let's say that, out of sheer carelessness and perhaps because I had mixed alcohol with the massive doses of medication I take for a heart condition, I discharged a shotgun into the face and chest of a 78-year-old man.

And then, let's say, after I'd done this, I did not call the police; and when an officer of the law did show up at my door many hours later, I bade my armed retinue chase him away before he could take an official statement from me, even though I was now a suspect in a potentially fatal shooting.

Then, let's say, I sat down, made myself a cocktail (not forgetting that I'm heavily medicated) and ate dinner, even as the person I shot was lying on a gurney in the emergency room many miles away.

Let's say I did not inform my boss about what happened, or tell my wife who I was with because two of my companions were rich and foxy unmarried women whose company I prefer to hers.

Given all of the above, would I be accorded any deference whatsoever by law enforcement officials? Would the scene of the shooting remain unsurveyed by investigators?

Would I be allowed to roam free as a bee and only five days later talk to reporters—that is, talk to one friendly, hand-picked TV commentator—and even then, suggest that my behavior was “the right call” and not admit to any wrongdoing? Would my family be pleased with me?

No, of course not. Even my most abject apologists, sycophants and enablers would not insist otherwise. I was in the wrong, all the way.

For the sake of further argument, then, let's say that I was ultimately responsible for the killing of a family of foreigners at a wedding party or at the local open-air market, just wasted them all because they disrespected my red, white and blue shoelaces or something.

Or, let's say, I held a group of neighbors hostage in my basement, bound and gagged and tortured them for days, applied electrodes to their gonads, forced them to have sex with, and defecate on, one another, then I let my pit bull and German shepherd have at them.

Would I not be charged with any crime?

Again, no. I would, in all likelihood, have the proverbial book thrown at me.

OK. Let's say that I am arguably the most powerful political figure in the nation and when the most devastating hurricane and flood in American history took place, and millions of people were displaced, thousands went missing and ultimately were found dead, I remained on vacation in Wyoming.

That is, I continued to sip cocktails and shoot at trapped birds that had been released for my shooting pleasure by the owners of the exclusive ranches I prefer to the political office I'm mandated to oversee.

Would I be held unaccountable? Would I be applauded by fellow citizens?

Ridiculous questions, right? Of course I wouldn't!

Al right then. Let's say that, under my orders, the company for which I am CEO did business with foreign regimes that flagrantly violated human rights and I did this even against an order from the president of the United States.

And let's say I pushed the envelope on this matter and, in the name of “constructive engagement,” I willingly brokered a pipeline deal with a military dictatorship like, say, that of Myanmar.

Knowing full well that many of the workers on this pipeline were, literally, slaves and that the duly elected president of this country (by a landslide 80% margin) had been placed under house arrest and that her supporters were jailed, tortured and murdered on a regular basis.

Would I be hailed as a hero of big business, a giant among giants?

No, no, a thousand times no. I'd be lucky not to be deported, attacked by an angry mob, strung up on a lamppost and urinated upon.

If such deference was denied to me—or to any of the other 300 million-plus tax-paying private citizens in America—then when did Richard Cheney step out of the realm of the law and enter some new, inviolable state of existence? Who bestowed upon Richard Cheney a special dispensation from having to obey the most basic tenets of civilized society?

Furthermore, how is it that, if I refused to kill someone whom Mr. Cheney has ordered me, as a conscript in his illegal war machine, to kill—such as foreign families at a wedding party or an open-air market.

Or if I refuse to torture people who've been jailed under Mr. Cheney's orders without having been charged with crimes and without having been allowed access to legal counsel or even to their own families, I would face prosecution under the legal sanctions, such as they are, in my country?

Don't roll your eyes. Please. Don't dismiss these questions. These are basic things that I am asking here, not esoteric, hair-splitting pontifications over semen stains on a blue dress. These cut through all of the partisan spin, on both sides, to what's real and what's happening in and to America in the year of Our Lord 2006.

If you are comfortable with the answers you've been provided, then you are in far deeper trouble than I ever suspected.

Alan Bisbort @ American Politics Journal