To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young
I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.
I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.
You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.
I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.
Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.
I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.
I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.
I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.
My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.
—Tomas Young
Maureen Dowd / Repent, Dick Cheney
Vice comes clean: He was the real president, and he stands by all of his mistakes
March 7, 2013 12:24 am
By Maureen Dowd
Dick Cheney certainly gives certainty a black eye.
In a documentary soon to appear on Showtime, “The World According to Dick Cheney,” America’s most powerful and destructive vice president woos history by growling yet again that he was right and everyone else was wrong.
R.J. Cutler, who has done documentaries on the Clinton campaign war room and Anna Wintour’s Vogue war paint room, now chronicles Mr. Cheney’s war boom.
“If I had to do it over again,” the 72-year-old says chillingly of his reign of error, “I’d do it over in a minute.”
Mr. Cheney, who came from a family of Wyoming Democrats, says his conservative bent was strengthened watching the anti-Vietnam War protests at the University of Wisconsin, where he was pursuing a doctorate and dodging the draft.
“I can remember the mime troupe meeting there and the guys that ran around in white sheets with the entrails of pigs, dripping blood,” he said. Maybe if he’d paid more attention to the actual war, conducted with a phony casus belli in a country where we did not understand the culture, he wouldn’t have propelled America into two more Vietnams.
The documentary doesn’t get to the dark heart of the matter about the man with the new heart.
Did he change, after the shock to his body of so many heart procedures and the shock to his mind of 9/11? Or was he the same person, patiently playing the courtier, once code-named “Backseat” by the Secret Service, until he found the perfect oblivious frontman who would allow him to unleash his harebrained, dictatorial impulses?
Talking to Mr. Cutler in his deep headmaster’s monotone, Mr. Cheney dispenses with the fig leaf of “we.” He no longer feigns deference to W., whom he now disdains for favoring Condi over him in the second term and for not pardoning “Cheney’s Cheney,” Scooter Libby.
“I had a job to do,” he said.
Continuing: “I got on the telephone with the president, who was in Florida, and told him not to be at one location where we could both be taken out.” Mr. Cheney kept W. flying aimlessly in the air on 9/11 while he and Lynn left on a helicopter for a secure undisclosed location, leaving Washington in a bleak, scared silence, with no one reassuring the nation in those first terrifying hours.
“I gave the instructions that we’d authorize our pilots to take it out,” he says, referring to the jet headed to Washington that crashed in a Pennsylvania field. He adds: “After I’d given the order, it was pretty quiet. Everybody had heard it, and it was obviously a significant moment.”
This guy makes Al Haig look like a shrinking violet.
When they testified together before the 9/11 Commission, W. and Mr. Cheney kept up a pretense that in a previous call, the president had authorized the vice president to give a shoot-down order if needed. But the commission found “no documentary evidence for this call.”
In his memoir, W. described feeling “blindsided” again and again. In this film, the blindsider is the eminence grise who was supposed to shore up the untested president. The documentary reveals the Iago lengths that Mr. Cheney went to in order to manipulate the unprepared Junior Bush. Vice had learned turf fighting from a maniacal master of the art, his mentor Donald Rumsfeld.
When he was supposed to be vetting vice presidential candidates, Mr. Cheney was actually demanding so much material from them that there was always something to pick on. He filled W.’s head with stories about conflicts between presidents and vice presidents sparked by the vice president’s ambition, while protesting that he himself did not want the job.
In an unorthodox move, he ran the transition, hiring all his people, including Bush Senior’s nemesis, Rummy, and sloughing off the Friends of George; then he gave himself an all-access pass.
He was always goosing up W.’s insecurities so he could take advantage of them. To make his crazy and appallingly costly detour from Osama to Saddam by cherry-picking his fake case for invading Iraq, he played on W.’s fear of being lampooned as a wimp, as his father had been.
But after Vice kept W. out of the loop on the Justice Department’s rebellion against Mr. Cheney’s illegal warrantless domestic spying program, the relationship was ruptured. It was too late to rein in the feverish vice president, except to tell him he couldn’t bomb a nuclear plant in the Syrian desert.
“Condi was on the wrong side of all those issues,” Mr. Cheney rumbled to Cutler.
Mr. Cheney still hearts waterboarding. “Are you going to trade the lives of a number of people because you want to preserve your honor?” he asked, his voice dripping with contempt.
“I don’t lie awake at night thinking, gee, what are they going to say about me?” he sums up.
They’re going to say you were a misguided powermonger who, in a paranoid spasm, led this nation into an unthinkable calamity. Sleep on that.
Maureen Dowd is a syndicated columnist for The New York Times.
First Published March 7, 2013 12:00 am
Deep underground in Poland lies something remarkable but little known outside Eastern Europe. For centuries, miners have extracted salt there, but left behind things quite startling and unique. Take a look at the most unusual salt mine in the world.
From the outside, Wieliczka Salt Mine doesn’t look extraordinary. It looks extremely well kept for a place that hasn’t mined any salt for over ten years but, apart from that, it looks ordinary. However, over two hundred metres below ground it holds an astonishing secret. This is the salt mine that became an art gallery, cathedral and underground lake.
Situated in the Krakow area, Wieliczka is a small town of close to twenty thousand inhabitants. It was founded in the twelfth century by a local duke to mine the rich deposits of salt that lie beneath.
Until 1996, it did just that but the generations of miners did more than just extract. They left behind them a breathtaking record of their time underground in the shape of statues of mythic, historical and religious figures. They even created their own chapels in which to pray. Perhaps their most astonishing legacy is the huge underground cathedral they left behind for posterity.
It may feel like you are in the middle of a Jules Verne adventure as you descend into the depths of the world. After a one hundred and fifty metre climb down wooden stairs, the visitor to the salt mine will see some amazing sites. About the most astounding in terms of its sheer size and audacity is the Chapel of Saint Kinga. The Polish people have for many centuries been devout Catholics and this was more than just a long term hobby to relieve the boredom of being underground. This was an act of worship.
Amazingly, even the chandeliers in the cathedral are made of salt. It was not simply hewn from the ground and then thrown together; however, the process is rather more painstaking for the lighting. After extraction the rock salt was first of all dissolved. It was then reconstituted with the impurities taken out so that it achieved a glass-like finish. The chandeliers are what many visitors think the rest of the cavernous mine will be like as they have a picture in their minds of salt as they would sprinkle on their meals! However, the rock salt occurs naturally in different shades of grey (something like you would expect granite to look like).
Still, that doesn’t stop well over one million visitors (mainly from Poland and its eastern European neighbours) from visiting the mine to see, amongst other things, how salt was mined in the past.
For safety reasons, less than one percent of the mine is open to visitors, but even that is still almost four kilometres in length … more than enough to weary the average tourist after an hour or two. The mine was closed for two reasons:
… the low price of salt on the world market made it too expensive to extract here. Also, the mine was slowly flooding … another reason why visitors are restricted to certain areas only.
The religious carvings are, in reality, what draw many to this mine … as much for their amazing verisimilitude as for their Christian aesthetics. The above shows Jesus appearing to the apostles after the crucifixion. He shows the doubter, Saint Thomas, the wounds on his wrists.
Another remarkable carving, this time a take on The Last Supper. The work and patience that must have gone into the creation of these sculptures is extraordinary. One wonders what the miners would have thought of their work going on general display? They came to be quite used to it, in fact, even during the mine’s busiest period in the nineteenth century. The cream of Europe’s thinkers visited the site … you can still see many of their names in the old visitor’s books on display.
These reliefs are perhaps among some of the most iconographic works of Christian folk art in the world and really do deserve to be shown. It comes as little surprise to learn that the mine was placed on the original list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites back in 1978.
Not all of the work is relief-based. There are many life-sized statues that must have taken a considerable amount of time … months, perhaps even years … to create. Within the confines of the mine, there is also much to be learned about the miners from the machinery and tools that they used … many of which are on display and are centuries old. A catastrophic flood in 1992 dealt the last blow to commercial salt mining in the area and now the mine functions purely as a tourist attraction. Brine is, however, still extracted from the mine and then evaporated to produce some salt, but hardly on the ancient scale. If this was not done, then the mines would soon become flooded once again.
Not all of the statues have a religious or symbolic imagery attached to them. The miners had a sense of humour, after all! Here can be seen their own take on the legend of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The intricately carved dwarfs must have seemed to some of the miners a kind of ironic depiction of their own work.
The miners even threw in a dragon for good measure! Certainly, they may have whistled while they did it but the conditions in the salt mine were far from comfortable and the hours were long … the fact that it was subterranean could hardly have added to the excitement of going to work each morning.
To cap it all, there is even an underground lake, lit by subdued electricity and candles. This is perhaps where the old legends of lakes to the underworld and Catholic imagery of the saints work together to best leave a lasting impression of the mine. How different a few minutes reflection here must have been to the noise and sweat of everyday working life in the mine.
The Japanese TV Programme “Sekkai no Hate no Nihon Gin” (“Japanese at the Ends of the World”) heard about Sanae Murray, the wife of LivinginPeace Project Founder Paul Murray and came to Karamea at the top of the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand in November 2012 to discover why she left Tokyo to live in Karamea.
The TV crew were here for five days and filmed the daily life of Sanae and her family and the happenings at their businesses Rongo Backpackers & Gallery, Karamea Farm Baches, Karamea Connections, Global Gypsy Gallery and the beautiful scenery and nature of Karamea.
The programme is in Japanese, but non-Japanese speakers will be able to understand it visually, so please check it out and then come and visit us in Sunny Karamea!
Thank you to Tokyo Broadcasting System for allowing us to put the footage on our Web sites and to the Sekkai no Hate no Nihon Gin film crew…good job guys!
Incorporating Art, Travel, Permaculture and Education Into a Sustainable Business.
Permaculture Design Course in Karamea
(May 14 to May 28, 2013)
The course will cover theory and practice in Permaculture and will be held on a developing permaculture farm in sunny Karamea at the top of the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand.
Course Outline:
The PDC held at The Living Peace Project/Rongo Backpackers & Gallery from May 14 to May 28, 2013 will be slightly different to most other PDC’s. The full theoretical curriculum will be presented, but we will also be expanding the classroom out into the surrounding environment and conducting practical workshops so that students will go home with all the theoretical information, but also with confidence, ability and skills to put their course material into practice.
Practical aspects of the course will include:
A 21-day compost pile will be built and tended throughout the PDC.
Students will partake in practical permaculture demonstrations and activities.
A workshop on aquaculture/aquaponics.
An excursion to True Blue Organics to see the process of extracting essential oils.
Establish gardens and plant trees as well as examining the decomposing process in a natural forest system.
Visit permaculture farms in the Karamea region.
Visit old-growth forest systems in the Karamea region.
On completion of the PDC each graduate will receive a LivinginPeace Project Permaculture Design Course certificate
The students will also receive the diversity of 3 teachers all of whom are very experienced and knowledgeable in specific areas. Specialty subject teachers ensure the students receive the most critical information throughout the 72-hour programme.
On completion of the PDC, students may choose to stay on to experience life on a working permaculture farm.(Accommodation at the discounted rates as listed below)
LivinginPeace Project PDC Certificate
Course Fee Structure:
Course Fee: NZ$1,200 per person
Meals: $20 per person per day
(Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner) (Morning and Afternoon Tea supplied)
*** 25% deposit required on booking the course.
Full payment to be made by commencement of the PDC.
*** Please e-mail us for Bank Account Details or
send a cheque made out to Iltamara Ltd to:
Rongo Backpackers & Gallery
130 Waverley Street
P.O. Box 54
Karamea 7864
NEW ZEALAND
Cancellation Policy:
Up until May 1, 2013: Full refund of deposit and course fee Between May 1 and May 14: 50% refund of deposit and course fee After May 14: No refund of deposit of course fee
Karamea Connections Oparara Basin Tour Karmea Connections: Movement of the People www.KarameaConnections.co.nz
Living in Peace Project Permaculture Farm
Hot Composting 101
PDC Lecturer Dave Tailby with PDC Students Luc Gregoire and Anneliese McNaughton
On Contour: Plotting a Swale
The Economics of Permaculture with LivinginPeace Project Founder Paul Murray
Teachers’ Profiles
Tim Barker
Aussie born, trained as a diesel fitter, began my Permaculture journey after reading Permaculture One by David Holmgren and Bill Mollison in 1981, still reading and learning. Ran an adventure tourism business in far North Queensland for 8 years, also contracted to the EPA as a guide for environmental impact studies on the cape York Peninsular, and in conjunction with Tourism Queensland and Aboriginal communities set up and ran turtle conservation camps as a test case for indigenous eco-tourism based business. Former treasurer of the Albatross bay catchment management group and served as environmental contracts administrator for a large contractor based in Far North Queensland. Received my PDC through Permaculture visions, and completed an internship at The Permaculture Research Institute under Geoff Lawton. Was invited back to the PRI as a MR Fix It and teacher. Favourite pastime; thinking, appropriate low tech and aquaponics.
Age: 48
Dave Tailby
Living In Peace Project Farm Manager, Dave was formerly a qualified builder and did his PDC with Geoff Lawton at the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia Zaytuna Farm in 2010 and joined the Living In Peace Project as the Farm Manager in March 2012. He has taken charge of the farm development and is creating a permaculture exhibition farm to help others learn about the principles of permaculture. Dave is a great people-person and loves to share his knowledge of permaculture and building.
Age: 50
Paul Murray
Paul is the founder of the Living In Peace Project.
He did his PDC with Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton at Melbourne University in 2009.
Grew up on a grazing property on Kangaroo Island in South Australia.
Degree in Agricultural Science (horticulture) from University of South Australia (Rosweworthy).
Grad Dip Arts (Journalism) University of Southern Queenland (Toowoomba).
Age: 47
Permaculture Farm Development
Farm Tour with Moo and Rusty
Wwoofers 2011
Potluck Dinner at Rongo
View of the Farm
Dinner at Rongo Backpackers
Peace Garden at Rongo
View of Mount Stormy, Karamea
LivinginPeace Project Permaculture Farm Manager Dave Tailby Shares his Knowledge
Aerial View of Karamea
Rongo Backpackers Gallery Aerial View
Big Rimu Tree in Karamea
Aquaculture Lecturer Annalise Runarson
PDC TESTIMONIAL by 2012 Students Anneliese McNaughton and Luc Gregoire
We had been wwoofing for The LivinginPeace Project for four months. It was a really good time and an awesome experience.
We were offered the chance to do the PDC with the LivinginPeace Project for the end of October 2012. We receive a huge amount of theoretical and practical information. The lecturers, LivinginPeace Project Farm Manager Dave Tailby and Founder Paul Murray, covered what is usually done in PDC with Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton, but also added their personal experiences, which was a real bonus.
Dave shared his knowledge about composting, practical design, landscaping-earthwork, working with animals (ducks, sheep, chickens) and Paul concentrated on Collective project around permaculture and the financial and legal possibilities of these projects with ecotowns, trusts, other ways of banking and fundraising.
They also included other guest speakers from around the community and throughout New Zealand.We visited Peter Curreen who has a long established permaculture farm in Karamea. We also recieved a presentation by Annalise Runarsson about aquaculture and the possibilities of growing food in conjunction withraising fish.
The LivinginPeace Project farm fits very well for a PDC. There is a big veggie garden, a food forest, sheep, chickens, ducks, some awesome people around to share their experiences and some very good food for the students in the garden. The LivinginPeace Project is a very good example of a collective project built around permaculture principles. This PDC has changed our way of thinking, of looking at things, we warmly recommend everybody to do their PDC there.
Dave’s Golden Permaculture Rule
Design Time
The PDC Graduates with LivinginPeace Project Permaculture Farm Manager Dave Tailby
Dave discusses Permaculture with thesis student Juliann Bertone
A New Zealand Government Department authorised by a covertly suspicious and deliberately ambiguous Act of Parliament and compounded by a tacitly implied Royal Approval to receive official complaints.
Office Manager: Red Scarlett
Senior Complaints Officer: Antony Visigoth
Office Receptionist: Alessandra Sharkarov
Tea Strumpett: Delicious La Humba Bumba!!!!
Karamea Ministry of Red Tape Front Office, Market Cross:
Monday March 4 th 9:30 a.m.
Alessandra Sharkarov: Welcome to the Karamea Ministry of Red Tape
Nero Ceaser: A burp!
Antony Visigoth: Narzdrovia comrade!
Nero Ceaser: A grazi! I wish to make a complaint regarding the Rongo Friday night a Gourmet Club dinner!!!
Antony Visigoth: The cuisine??
Nero Ceaser: Superba!!!
Antony Visigoth: The wine???
Nero Ceaser: Magnificento!!!
Antony Visigoth: The repartee???
Nero Ceaser: Intellectual profundito!!!
Antony Visigoth: Pray tell what troubles neither the palate nor the mind???
Nero Ceaser: I was served a vegetarian meal and I am a baptised a cannibal!!!
Antony Visigoth: Is cannabalism a religion???
Nero Ceaser: More a philosophy, a primordial necessity and a personal statement! Comprendo???
Alessandra Sharkarov: Wow! Can anyone be inducted into your clique?
Nero Ceaser: Si! You must give up a muesli and jam scones and rededicate your life!
Alessandra Sharkarov: Oooh! Can I join???
Nero Ceaser: Slurp!!! Of a course!!! What is that a photo on the wall???
Antony Visigoth: That is the Karamea Ministry of Red Tape calendar girl of the month!!
Nero Ceaser: Why is she covered in a whipped cream and a strawberry jam??
Antony Visigoth: I did that with some twink and a red felt pen!
Nero Ceaser: Fuck, it’s a my mama!!!
Antony Visigoth: Mmmm! I can see the similarity! She is fat, balding and got sagging man’s breasts!!!
Nero Ceaser: I beg you’re a fucking pardon!!!
Antony Visigoth: What…are you hard of hearing??
Nero Ceaser: Well actually a yes I am!!!
Antony Visigoth: WHY ARE YOU SO DEAF!!!
Nero Ceaser: When your bruncha a rudely and incessantly screams at you for a mercy it’s a ear shattering!!!
Antony Visigoth: I see!
Nero Ceaser: You a prick, you have a drawn a rather large banana in a rather suggestive and a rather provocative fashion in a my mama’s mouth.
Antony Visigoth: Too right your mother’s a slut!!
Nero Ceaser: Santa Maria!!! You have turned a my mama into a gastronomical trollopa!!!
Antony Visigoth: Indeed serious cause for complaint!!!!
Nero Ceaser: Complaina!! I should a kick your butt!!!
Antony Visigoth: Oh, I don’t smoke!!!
Nero Ceaser: A ha fucking ha!!!
Red Scarlett: Pardon me what is all the commotion in the front office!!!
Nero Ceaser: You’re a staff member is totally out of control!!!
Antony Visigoth: Oh really? Is my fly open again???
Nero Ceaser: Can someone transcribe my complaint???
Antony Visigoth: Indeed! Here we go! Karamea Ministry of Red Tape Official Complaint 171/5: “Circumferentially challenged, defollicled cannabalistic sub humanoid dago wishes to make frivolous complaint regarding the complete lack of moral fibre of his portentious mother!!!
Nero Ceaser: How a much lira??
Antony Visigoth: Including Imperial War Tax, $5,000 dollars.
Nero Ceaser: You take a my personal cheque???
Antony Visigoth: Is the Pope gay???
Nero Ceaser: That is an incriminating a question and in the absence of a legal representation I a pleading the 5th!!!
Red Scarlett: Cash only, small unmarked bills. No roubles or pesos!!!!
Nero Ceaser: I a believe this office is a fraud and I am going to ring the PM!!!
Red Scarlett: Ok, you can use the phone in the office mortuary!!!
Nero Ceaser: Mortuary???
Red Scarlett: I meant butchery chamber!!!
Red Scarlett: (Whisper) (Use my Smith and Wesson .38 from the office armoury and make it quick and make it clean!!)
Antony Visigoth: (Whisper) (Gotcha boss!!!)
Karamea Ministry of Red Tape Execution and Torture Chamber
Nero Ceaser: What a day is it today???
Antony Visigoth: For you!!! Judgement Day!!!
Nero Ceaser: Scuzi!!!
Antony Visigoth: Look I am rather busy. I only have time for one more question!!!
Nero Ceaser: Why are there a dissecting table and a toasty pie machine in you’re a office butchery???
Kaboom!!!
Antony Visigoth: Sucker!!! I didn’t say I time for another answer!!!
Red Scarlett: Shize strasse!!! The richochet has set off the sprinklers and the burglar alarm!!!
Antony Visigoth: Panic!!!
Red Scarlett: Stay cool!!! Right!!! Quick!!! Race to the staff cafeteria as fast as you can!!! It’s time for a cup of tea!!!
Karamea Ministry of Red Tape Staff Cafeteria
Delicious La Humba Bumba: Cup of tea??
Antony Visigoth: Too right sheila!! Had a busy morning!!!
In the summer of 2006, a guy claiming to be Auckland artist Dean Buchanan arrived in Karamea and asked to stay with us at the LivinginPeace Project. His line was that he was overwhelmed by media attention and had decided to escape the limelight for a while to concentrate on his artwork out of the public eye. He also had an artwork to deliver to Shania Twain and was on his way to Wanaka to meet her and deliver the painting, which she had apparently agreed to purchase for $NZ17,000.
As the founder of the LivinginPeace Project, which incorporates art, travel, permaculture and education into a sustainable business, I was delighted with the opportunity to host such a successful and well-established artist as one of the principle objectives of the LivinginPeace Project is to assist artists and foster creative pursuit.
I offered “Dean” a quiet, peaceful cabin on our permaculture farm so that he could live and work without interruption. The cabin has no phone, Internet or other distraction and he said it was exactly what he was looking for and thanked me profusely for the opportunity. I gave him a very reasonable rental rate and looked forward to getting to know him and seeing what came out of the arrangement artistically.
I have to establish clearly that “Dean” was a very nice person, extremely amicable, had a great sense of humour, and was always eager to help on the farm and with the business…it was pleasant to host him and he was a very low-maintenance guest…the only problem is that he wasn’t Dean Buchanan.
He was driving an old Toyota truck that was loaded with artworks of all descriptions, including the 3mx2m abstract landscape that was scheduled for the wall of Twain’s Motatapu Station property near Wanaka on the South Island of New Zealand. The painting was superb, a rugged landscape in warm colours on hessian featuring New Zealand forest…”Dean” allowed us to display it on the wall at Rongo Backpackers & Gallery until it was time for him to deliver it to Twain…again, I was delighted to have such a beautiful artwork on loan in our gallery.
Shania Twain’s Motatapu Station Homestead
Real Shania Twain
A similar, slightly newer version of “Dean’s” truck
After about a week, I noticed that “Dean” hadn’t really been doing much in terms of painting and my spidey sense began to tingle a little. I did some research on Dean Buchanan and his artwork and the available photos at that time were insufficient for me to definitively determine that “Dean” was not Dean. Both Deans were around the same age, had similar facial features and the information I was able to track down online was in line with what “Dean” had told me, so I decided to accept his story and allow him to stay on. I accepted that his lack of productivity was in line with his stated need for peace and quiet and rest to recover from an intensively creative phase of his career and the associated media attention.
After two weeks, I asked for payment for his accommodation and my intuition proved to be correct…”Dean” didn’t have any money! He then wanted to work for accommodation, or give me some artworks from his van in lieu of payment…my response was then as it is now…”I can’t pay my bills with paintings mate,” “Pay up, and honour our agreement, or move on.”
Several months later, the real Dean Buchanan called and filled in the details. Apparently, “Dean” was an impostor who had stolen his identity along with many of his artworks and was travelling around selling them to finance his life.
I called the real Dean Buchanan at his studio in Auckland to get an update on proceedings and apparently the identity/art thief is still on the lam.
Buchanan said the impostor’s real name was “Ian something, but he also goes by Gunny Huckleberry.” He added “Last I heard, he was in Napier smoking “P” and whoring it up in my name.”
Identity theft is becoming a popular form of fraud these days and “Gunny Huckleberry” has cost Dean Buchanan thousands of dollars in damaged reputation, character defamation as well as the theft of his physical and intellectual property.
To see the awesome artworks of the real Dean Buchanan visit his Web site:
On a positive note, we now offer the cabin on our permaculture farm to aspiring artist’s as part of the LivinginPeace Project Artist in Residence Programme and it has become known as the Artist’s Bach. We have hosted artists from the United States, Northern Ireland, Canada, France, Japan, Israel, and New Zealand.
As a result of this blog post, the impostor, whose real name is Ian Malcolm Baike, has been apprehended by police in Napier and the real Dean Buchanan has his identity back…a good result for all concerned. I’m sorry Ian, you were a nice guy, but you can’t go about stealing other people’s property and assuming their identity…that’s just not on Mate!
By Ian Steward
(Photo: PETER MEECHAM/Fairfax NZ)
REAL DEAL: Auckland artist Dean Buchanan has had a con-man impersonating him and selling his artwork over the past six years.
For many artists, imitation is the highest form of flattery. But this is taking it a bit far.
For six years, after a truck-load of his paintings disappeared, west Auckland artist Dean Buchanan has been getting reports of his own disreputable behaviour from around the country.
In Karamea, on the West Coast, he stayed at a backpackers for two weeks, apparently on his way to sell a painting to Shania Twain at her ranch in central Otago, and then could not pay his bill.
A friend told him he had “shagged a woman in the back of his truck” while selling paintings at Auckland’s Parnell markets.
He heard he had sold another woman a painting in Aotea Square, Auckland, signed the back of it with a cheesy slogan and then made a pass at her when he helped her hang it.
The thing is, it was all news to Buchanan.
Turns out an impostor had been touring the country claiming to be Buchanan and living off – and spoiling – the artist’s reputation.
The real Buchanan noticed something was wrong when people were getting upset with him for no reason, particularly for ignoring close friends and family.
“Friends of my mother’s were saying to her ‘Dean’s down at the Browns Bay market selling his paintings.’ Mum rang up and said ‘Why didn’t you come up and see me?’ ”
Similarly, in Wanaka, the wife of a mountain-climbing friend heard Buchanan was in town selling paintings at the local square. She went and asked the man if he was her old friend and when he said yes, she said “Well, I don’t think you are”.
One night Buchanan, a super-fit non-drinker, got a phone call from “the VIP bar at Sky City,” where someone claiming to be him was trying to cash a cheque for $5000.
Buchanan said he met the alleged imposter some years ago and entered into a loose agreement for him to sell his paintings. When he dissolved their relationship, it is alleged the man disappeared with a truckload of Buchanan’s paintings.
Buchanan’s paintings sell for thousands of dollars, and he has exhibited in Japan, the United States and Switzerland.
“I’ve met numerous people who have bought paintings off me who [actually] haven’t,” Buchanan said, “It’s really devastatingly annoying.”
Buchanan has had gallery owners as far afield as Arrowtown refuse to stock his work after news of his supposedly “disreputable” behaviour.
“People look at me like I’m really bent. Being ostracised is really horrible, especially when you haven’t done anything.”
Devonport woman Sandra Killen bought a painting from the fake Buchanan at Aotea Square about five years ago. He insisted she pay in cash and then helped her to hang it in her apartment, but not before he signed the back “Love Auckland and it’ll love you, DB.”
(Photo: PHIL DOYLE/Fairfax NZ)
NOT THE REAL DEAN: Sandra Killen with her Dean Buchanan painting which has a fake dedication.
The real Buchanan said he never signs his paintings with his initials, and cheesy slogans are not his cup of tea either.
Killen said her focus was on art, so she was surprised when the fake Buchanan tried to kiss her.
“I said, ‘I’m not going out with you after I’ve just given you all this money.'”
Rongo Backpackers Karamea owner Paul Murray met “Dean Buchanan” as the artist passed through the West Coast, apparently on his way to sell a painting to Shania Twain at her ranch in central Otago.
Murray said the man was an amicable, friendly guest who allowed the backpackers to hang “Shania’s” painting in the premises while he relaxed and “recovered his artistic muse.” He then could not pay his bill.
A man has recently been charged with theft by a person in a special relationship over the disappearance of $20,000 worth of Buchanan’s paintings.
Anyone who thinks they may have bought a Buchanan from the wrong man is asked to contact Detective Constable Stacey Bailey of the Napier police.
Revered Auckland artist Dean Buchanan was repeatedly told about a man peddling his work in towns he had never been to, and that he was reportedly signing the work for lucky punters too.
A couple of years earlier, the artist had entered into a “loose agreement” with 59-year-old Ian Malcolm Baikie that would see Mr Buchanan provide him with paintings to sell.
The arrangement originally went to plan as Baikie sold a few, handing the proceeds back to the artist.
“I said to him once ‘just give me some paperwork, sell my paintings, don’t get greedy and everything will work out fine’,” Mr Buchanan said.
By 2006, the relationship soured when Mr Buchanan started hearing stories about what the seller had been up to.
Baikie refused to either return Mr Buchanan’s paintings – a couple of dozen, according to the artist – or give him the cash from their sale.
Mr Buchanan and Graham Brimble, who had also given the amateur art dealer work to sell, made a complaint to police and in June 2013 he was charged and appeared before the Napier District Court.
After denying the charge, Baikie stood trial in the Auckland District Court this week where Judge Brooke Gibson heard from several witnesses who had seen him selling paintings around the country.
Barbara Stevens, who knew Mr Buchanan well, told the court via audio-visual link from Perth that she was bewildered to see Baikie passing himself off as the artist at a market in Wanaka eight years ago.
She challenged him about his identity but he brazenly stuck to his story.
There were further sightings in Napier, Karamea and Piha.
Because of the lack of documentation the Crown could not prove the extent of Baikie’s theft or how much the artwork may have been worth but Mr Buchanan said it was not about the money.
“I don’t care about that, eh,” he said.
Judge Gibson found 59-year-old Baikie guilty of two charges of theft in a special relationship, and was prepared to sentence him yesterday but his lawyers requested time to prepare an application for a discharge without conviction.
Mr Buchanan considered the likelihood of him getting off without penalty as “unlikely” and described the whole scenario as “just all so pathetically sad”.
In the meantime, Mr Buchanan’s star had been on the rise, selling work around the globe to celebrities such as former member of The Smiths, Johnny Marr.
He had also recently designed the stained glass windows for Kings College’s new chapel.
Outside court, Baikie said the court had been told “bold-arsed lies” and he wished he had given evidence.
He was remanded on bail and will be sentenced next month.
Frances Tordoff came to stay at Rongo Backpackers & Gallery in the summer of 2012 on the recommendation of her daughter Bekki, who had previously worked at Rongo as a Wwoofer (Willing Worker on Organic Farm) several times since the hostel opened in 2004.
Frances Tordoff
Rongo is part of the LivinginPeace Project, a venture founded in 2001 that combines art, travel, permaculture and education into a sustainable business. Environmental responsibility and energy efficiency are paramount in all LivinginPeace Project business decisions and the project has grown to include a backpackers hostel, motel complex, permaculture farm, 31-hectares of forest, a transport service, radio station and a share in the local organic food and clothing recycling shop.
Frances is originally from Manchester, England, but came to New Zealand in January 2012 to work in Dunedin as a rehabilitation instructor for visually impaired people.
“My daughter Bekki came home to the U.K. inspired after having stayed at Rongo, she was much more careful about recycling and introduce the bokashi (composting system) to our home, she was much more aware of the environment and the impact we have on it.” “As soon as she got home, she went into her room and said, “Why do I have all this stuff?” and immediately went about reducing her possessions, took a load of stuff away and gave it to the local charity shop.”
The changes in her daughter’s behaviour, and her persistent badgering to visit the LivinginPeace Project made Frances curious to visit Rongo and see for herself just what all the fuss is about.
At 56, Frances is no longer a young budget traveller off to see the world, but found staying at Rongo to be a pleasant and thoroughly enjoyable experience. “It was great, there were all sorts of nationalities of people staying when I was there and they were all getting on together.” I was not excluded from any activities because of my age and my stay at Rongo was very peaceful and relaxing…it’s a nice bit of space away from the madness.”
The LivinginPeace Project has an programme whereby supporters of the project can donate money and in return, receive a holiday voucher in the form of a promissory note, which is a legally binding agreement between the LivinginPeace Project founder Paul Murray and the holder of the note. The LivinginPeace Project Promissory note/Holiday Voucher entitles the holder a holiday in Karamea at the LivinginPeace Project facilities and can be redeemed in accommodation, transport, meals, courses and art purchases. The vouchers are $1,000 and are valid for five years from the date of purchase. They are transferrable and can be given to another person as a gift.
Frances generously decided to invest $1,000 to the LivinginPeace Project and in return received a holiday voucher, which she can pass on to her younger daughter Alice, who is the only Tordoff family member not to have visited the project, or she may decide not to redeem the voucher, which would effectively make the $1,000 a donation to the venture.
“This place did so much for my daughter (Bekki), so this is a bit of pay-back…If I had more money I’d give it to you,” she said.
The money received from the LivinginPeace Project Holiday Voucher initiative will be used to further develop and improve the facilities and services so that they will be available to the people who choose to redeem their vouchers in the future. It is a means of raising money to invest in the project without the burden of debt-servicing and in the process, the sale of the vouchers serves to promote and market the venture.
Forget Bill Gates, the richest man in history lived in Mali… 700 years ago
He was a despot who ruled swathes of West Africa and made a fortune from salt and gold. Now, Mansa Musa I has been named the wealthiest (inflation adjusted) man of all time.
The richest person ever to walk the planet was not, as it turns out, an Astor, a Carnegie or even a Windsor. Rather it was a fellow named Mansa Musa I, who, if you haven’t heard of him, ruled what used to the vast Malian Empire from 1280 to 1337, a terrain now encompassing Mali and Ghana that was blessed with oodles of salt and gold.
Mansa Musa I of Mali (1280-1337) $400bn
That you have to travel to Timbuktu and back seven centuries to find the man with the most wealth – ever – is only one of the surprises of a list of the top 25 richest people in the history of mankind compiled and just released by the website celebritynetworth.com.
The authors drew it up by establishing the peak worth of each entrant during their lifetime (some guesswork here perhaps) and adjusting for inflation to find the equivalent in 2012 US dollars.
Today’s super rich are mere tiddlers. Carlos Slim Helu, currently pegged by Forbes as the world’s richest person, comes in only at No 22 on this list with $68bn to his name. He is beaten by Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, who comes in at No 12 because at his richest his fortune allegedly touched the equivalent of $136bn in today’s dollars.
There are no contemporary celebrities in the usual sense of the word on the list and no women. Not surprising, perhaps, is the dominance of Americans, 14 in all. They include the old barons of steel, railways, cars and fur. In third and fourth place respectively are Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller, whose names still adorn upstanding civic institutions across the US. Cornelius Vanderbilt is at No 10 and John Jacob Astor at 14.
John D Rockerfeller (1839-1937) $340bn
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) $310bn
Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) $185bn
Mansa Musa is not the only despot to earn a place in this rarefied club. Look with envy at the gallery of portraits of this moneyed bunch and one face is suddenly more familiar than almost any, partly because he is only so recently dispatched and by violent means too. That would be Muammar Gaddafi of Libya who liked to sleep in tents even though he could afford to buy a whole hotel chain with $200bn stashed in his personal piggy bank.
Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011) $200bn
Lurking at No 5 is the obligatory oligarch, but of the strictly old-fashioned kind. Tsar Nicholas II’s net worth seemingly touched the equivalent of $300bn in 1916. We all know what happened in 1917. And there are some kings of retail in there too, including Americans Sam Walton just making it in at 25 and Marshall Field at 23.
Tsar Nicholas II (1868-1918) $300bn
A rich history yields some rich names and so it is with Britain. Our stinkingly rich qualified not so much because of the cash in their pockets but their vast portfolios of land. John of Gaunt was land-rich and in the 14th century so was Henry, Duke of Lancaster. They take 16th and 20th places respectively. One man who pretty much claimed the entire country for himself was a certain William the Conqueror. The authors of the list calculate with surely a degree of speculative inventiveness that when he died he left his sons $229.5bn in today’s money. But wait, no living Britons? Actually, yes, though there is some fudging here. The No 2 slot below the mysterious Mansa Musa is a whole family, some branches of which extend deep into British society. This, of course, would be the Rothschild clan.
William the Conqueror (1028-1087) $229.5bn
“The Rothschild family are the richest people on earth today with assets that total at least $350bn,” the site claims. “Their net worth is difficult to peg because their holdings are so vast but without question they are the most powerful family in the world. Many people believe they control over $1 trillion in real estate and banking assets.” If they say so.
Our daughter Diva loves the BaBear Game. We hide BaBear around the house and she hunts him down and when she finds him, she says “Ba,” which means “Boo” in Japanese.
Recently, she turned the tables and started to hide BaBear by herself and we haver to find him…as you’ll see from the photos below, she proved quite good at the game and we eventually deemed her the ultimate winner!
For the record, BaBear is OK…he’s been thoroughly cleaned and dried and he’s just fine.
Of course, we could sit her in front of the TV, but where’s the fun in that?
(Photo: PETER MEECHAM/Fairfax NZ)
REAL DEAL: Auckland artist Dean Buchanan has had a con-man impersonating him and selling his artwork over the past six years.
Dying Veteran Lambasts George Bush & Dick Cheney
To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young
I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.
I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.
You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.
I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.
Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.
I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.
I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.
I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.
My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.
—Tomas Young
Maureen Dowd / Repent, Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney certainly gives certainty a black eye.
In a documentary soon to appear on Showtime, “The World According to Dick Cheney,” America’s most powerful and destructive vice president woos history by growling yet again that he was right and everyone else was wrong.
R.J. Cutler, who has done documentaries on the Clinton campaign war room and Anna Wintour’s Vogue war paint room, now chronicles Mr. Cheney’s war boom.
“If I had to do it over again,” the 72-year-old says chillingly of his reign of error, “I’d do it over in a minute.”
Mr. Cheney, who came from a family of Wyoming Democrats, says his conservative bent was strengthened watching the anti-Vietnam War protests at the University of Wisconsin, where he was pursuing a doctorate and dodging the draft.
“I can remember the mime troupe meeting there and the guys that ran around in white sheets with the entrails of pigs, dripping blood,” he said. Maybe if he’d paid more attention to the actual war, conducted with a phony casus belli in a country where we did not understand the culture, he wouldn’t have propelled America into two more Vietnams.
The documentary doesn’t get to the dark heart of the matter about the man with the new heart.
Did he change, after the shock to his body of so many heart procedures and the shock to his mind of 9/11? Or was he the same person, patiently playing the courtier, once code-named “Backseat” by the Secret Service, until he found the perfect oblivious frontman who would allow him to unleash his harebrained, dictatorial impulses?
Talking to Mr. Cutler in his deep headmaster’s monotone, Mr. Cheney dispenses with the fig leaf of “we.” He no longer feigns deference to W., whom he now disdains for favoring Condi over him in the second term and for not pardoning “Cheney’s Cheney,” Scooter Libby.
“I had a job to do,” he said.
Continuing: “I got on the telephone with the president, who was in Florida, and told him not to be at one location where we could both be taken out.” Mr. Cheney kept W. flying aimlessly in the air on 9/11 while he and Lynn left on a helicopter for a secure undisclosed location, leaving Washington in a bleak, scared silence, with no one reassuring the nation in those first terrifying hours.
“I gave the instructions that we’d authorize our pilots to take it out,” he says, referring to the jet headed to Washington that crashed in a Pennsylvania field. He adds: “After I’d given the order, it was pretty quiet. Everybody had heard it, and it was obviously a significant moment.”
This guy makes Al Haig look like a shrinking violet.
When they testified together before the 9/11 Commission, W. and Mr. Cheney kept up a pretense that in a previous call, the president had authorized the vice president to give a shoot-down order if needed. But the commission found “no documentary evidence for this call.”
In his memoir, W. described feeling “blindsided” again and again. In this film, the blindsider is the eminence grise who was supposed to shore up the untested president. The documentary reveals the Iago lengths that Mr. Cheney went to in order to manipulate the unprepared Junior Bush. Vice had learned turf fighting from a maniacal master of the art, his mentor Donald Rumsfeld.
When he was supposed to be vetting vice presidential candidates, Mr. Cheney was actually demanding so much material from them that there was always something to pick on. He filled W.’s head with stories about conflicts between presidents and vice presidents sparked by the vice president’s ambition, while protesting that he himself did not want the job.
In an unorthodox move, he ran the transition, hiring all his people, including Bush Senior’s nemesis, Rummy, and sloughing off the Friends of George; then he gave himself an all-access pass.
He was always goosing up W.’s insecurities so he could take advantage of them. To make his crazy and appallingly costly detour from Osama to Saddam by cherry-picking his fake case for invading Iraq, he played on W.’s fear of being lampooned as a wimp, as his father had been.
But after Vice kept W. out of the loop on the Justice Department’s rebellion against Mr. Cheney’s illegal warrantless domestic spying program, the relationship was ruptured. It was too late to rein in the feverish vice president, except to tell him he couldn’t bomb a nuclear plant in the Syrian desert.
“Condi was on the wrong side of all those issues,” Mr. Cheney rumbled to Cutler.
Mr. Cheney still hearts waterboarding. “Are you going to trade the lives of a number of people because you want to preserve your honor?” he asked, his voice dripping with contempt.
“I don’t lie awake at night thinking, gee, what are they going to say about me?” he sums up.
They’re going to say you were a misguided powermonger who, in a paranoid spasm, led this nation into an unthinkable calamity. Sleep on that.
First Published March 7, 2013 12:00 am
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