So?

So?

So!

It’s just too perfect. When asked about polls that show that 80% of Americans don’t support the neo-fascist, colonial war in Iraq Dick Cheney answered “So?” This is the man who was at great pains to con the American people into believing that the will of the majority required an end to the recounting of votes in Florida in 2000, the man who tries to sell the idea that our invasion and occupation of Iraq was justified at every turn, the man who spouts his support of “democracy” everywhere in the world but in America who now, conveniently, thinks that the opinion of his constituents matters not at all.

And when asked about the toll this war is taking on our servicemen and women, Cheney’s similarly unfeeling answer was, “They enlisted.”

When Marie Antoinette asked a courtier why the Parisians were rioting in the streets she was told the people had no bread. Her reply, “Let them eat cake,” has become a proverbial statement of the insensitive stupidity of the ruling class. Yet in Marie Antoinette’s defense we must say that the word traditionally translated as “cake” probably more accurately meant “rolls” and in her removal from the plight of her subjects she was so uninformed that she could not conceive of a world in which rolls or cake could not instantly substitute for a temporary dearth of bread.

Cheney, however, unlike the Queen of France, knows the situation and doesn’t give a damn. He doesn’t care that young Americans are dying daily to increase the value of his holdings in Halliburton. And he certainly hasn’t the least use for democracy except as a convenient cover for the imperialism that he favors.

They enlisted.

That remark is of a piece with Donald Rumsfeld’s rationalization that, “As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time,” to explain why the military in Iraq was inadequately equipped. Like the neo-cons’ contempt for actual democracy even as they bandy the word about at every opportunity, Cheney believes in tossing out the phrase “support our troops” while doing nothing to actually support them.

Cheney’s interview with Martha Raddatz confirms that he is probably the highest ranking sociopath in this Administration if not in any American Administration since Aaron Burr.

Any number of my friends and fellow Democrats insist that both Cheney and Dubya must be impeached. It’s far too late for that now but they and their partners in crimes, Con-yo' Sleeza, Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Wolfowitz, should be remanded to the International Court of Justice in The Hague for their war crimes if only to establish that no American, regardless of how thoroughly convinced of his unassailability, is above the law. Cheney would probably plead that his alleged heart condition precludes his imprisonment, that dragging him off to the cell of Slobodan Milosovic as justice demands, would be tantamount to a death sentence.

So?