Saturday, February 24, 2007

Dick Cheney: Making the Peter Principle His Own


Every administration has its share of loose cannon, but most of them don't go off. It's only when they rise too high in the power structure that we get someone like Ollie North, and next thing you know we're all watching televised hearings in Congress.

It's been called the Peter Principle, where a person rises to his or her level of incompetence, and God knows our current Vice President has done that. However, the Peter Principle implies the promotions were from others - Cheney was put in charge of the search for a running mate for George W. and somehow managed to land the job himself.

Those were fun days, weren't they? Do you remember hearing that it was okay if the President was dumb because you could surround him with a bunch of smart people? It almost makes me smile just thinking back to the innocence. Of course, the problem was the dumb guy had to choose the "smart people" that would surround him, and if you had someone with Cheney's political skills nearby - surprise! - he weaseled the job for himself. Just like the dumb guy's tutor, Condi Rice, weaseled her job, eventually landing Secretary of State. When the Decider can be manipulated like this, the theory of the Dumb President Being Okay goes right down the toilet.

The other part of the Peter Principle addresses the incompetence, and Cheney and Rumsfeld certainly brought plenty of that. But when you lie a nation into a war for reasons that turn out to be incorrect, mere incompetence doesn't quite cover it. Shooting the lawyer in the face was incompetent, but this has to be bigger. Several hundred thousand people were killed here, and any reasonable court would find it a crime. That calls for a more infamous distinction. In the grand history of our species, the list of people whose misdeeds have led to this much carnage, is still not that long. (Of course, if you were one of the people killed, it was plenty long enough.)

So what's next? We're way past the point where we should be watching televised hearings from Congress on the impeachment of these cretins, followed by their subsequent imprisonment. Maybe the American People need one more trillion-dollar fiasco before we'll act, and that could be coming right up in Iran. In case we do come to our senses and remove Bush and the VP from office, it's not too soon to start talking about Richard Cheney's place in history. Here's one of his undeniable accomplishments:

The Vice President has taken the Peter Principle and made it his own. His current rant that any thought of leaving Iraq will benefit al Qaeda, is a classic example of his work. The Bush administration was the best thing that ever happened to al Qaeda. The network is now breathlessly hoping that Cheney will lead the United States into another disaster - this in Iran - and Cheney seems eager to accommodate them.

The only regret al Qaeda has is that President Bush cannot serve a third term. Everything they have dreamed of is within reach and it's just a matter of whether Dick Cheney has enough time to give it to them. He hasn't made things better for our world. He has made things a lot worse, and he could still lead us into a nuclear conflagration. If you think suicide bombers are thrilled to blow themselves up, imagine the excitement they'd feel if the Bush administration starts a world war.....a nuclear world war.

So what shall we call the hybrid Peter Principle that is Richard Cheney? I think the Dick Principle is a strong candidate. The only question is whether the word "principle" should appear in the title.

6 Comments:

At 9:21 AM, Blogger microdot said...

Absolutely brilliant! I have written thousands of words trying to say what you have said so effortlessly!

 
At 10:02 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

How about the Dick-Headed principle?

 
At 10:22 AM, Blogger Bill McDonald said...

It's graphic, but you lose the similarity between
Peter and Dick. And as a comedy writer, I always tend towards less syllables. For example, "Brevity is the soul of wit" should really be "Brevity is wit's soul."
Whoever wrote it the first way was clearly new to the biz.
Thanks for your comment.

 
At 1:26 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"..Cheney was put in charge of the search for a running mate for George W. and somehow managed to land the job himself.."

it STUNS me how NO ONE remembers this. jeese! What a power grab FROM THE REST OF THEM. They all wished they had thought of that themselves. I mean he looked around the room - ONCE - and said, "well , I can't see anybody, Oh..OK I'LL do it"

I really thought - at that moment - that he shocked even the Illuminati Bushies.

Thanks for remembering. And reminding us.

p.s.
"Brevity is the soul of wit"
William Shakespeare

Another great Bill.

 
At 1:11 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

He said "I'll do it," and nobody thought that was self-disqualifying, right there, prima facie, and then it was noticed the Constitution prohibits the prez & vice-prez ticket of being both from the same state, and everyone said, 'oh yeah, the Constitution, I've heard of that. Not too brevitous, not to witty, so I've heard tell.' (So Cheney said, 'I'm from Wyoming,' and everyone said, 'oh yeah, Wyoming, I've heard of that.')

I mean, what's got my shorts in a snort is: every one going around saying, 'hey, they lied about WMDs,' as if clever detective acumen has revealed truth of where 'it' started, and yet, these same 'every ones' don't see bin Laden is not a CIA op is a lie, the anthrax murders is not a CIA op is a lie, Nine-Eleven Op is not a CIA op is a lie, al Qaida is not a CIA op is a lie, Florida 2000 is not a CIA op is a lie, Khobar Towers is not a CIA op is a lie, USS Cole is not a CIA op is a lie, and on back, on back, all the lies. (Defining 'CIA op' here, as activities of George Herbert Walker Bush -- the name on the CIA headquarters building -- and his directed doings of his associates.)

Bill, you and me butted our info-heads before in a similar set-to, not long ago. I said both 'sides' in Iraq are Pentagon-staged with our public monies, it's a 'war game,' Red Army vs. Black Army and they are both using American taxpayer-paid munitions; and you said, oh, c'mon, surely not both sides is Pentagon-controlled, surely not all munitions is Pentagon-spent, surely not every death and diabolic devastation is our military-industry dollar at work.

So, comes the news: US funds terror groups to sow chaos in Iran, Global Research, February 25, 2007, saying, "CIA officials are understood to be helping opposition militias."

Earlier was: One thing that struck me as odd in the days after 9/11 was Bush saying “We will not tolerate conspiracy theories [regarding 9/11]”. Sure enough there have been some wacky conspiracy theories surrounding the events of that day. The most far-fetched and patently ridiculous one that I’ve ever heard goes like this: Nineteen hijackers ...

Earlier was: Al Qaeda -- the Database, by Pierre-Henri Bunel, Global Research, November 20, 2005, saying, that "Al Qaeda" is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.

Earlier was: The Truth behind 9/11: Who Is Osama Bin Laden? -- At 11am, on the morning of 9/11, the Bush administration had announced that Osama was behind the attacks. by Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, September 10, 2006, saying, The CIA covert support to the "jihad" operated indirectly through the Pakistani ISI ... bin Laden and the "Afghan Arabs" had been imparted "with very sophisticated types of training that was allowed to them by the CIA." And: The CIA only agreed to this plan in October 1984.... `the CIA was more cautious than the Pakistanis.' Both Pakistan and the United States took the line of deception on Afghanistan with a public posture of negotiating a settlement while privately agreeing that military escalation was the best course."

I mean, Bill, for all that you see that they do not see, and you are telling them here; there is sixty years deeper starting back when George Hitler Worker Bush enrolled in the first CIA phalanx, 1946, that you say you do not see, that I am telling you here is documented all over the place. Wake up and smell the military-industrial nazis our taxes support. ABOLISH the CIA. (I know, I know, that means your Dad would have never had any business in Saudi Arabia and that whole wonderful childhood excursion was unAmerican, but hey, that was then, you're here now, the light has dawned, and): You can further spread the disinfecting sunbeams helping every one to see.

I mean, bloggery is the droll of snit.

 
At 2:41 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

U.S. Warns Against EU's CIA Flight Probe, February 28, 2007, By JAN SLIVA BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - A senior U.S. administration official on Wednesday warned ...[to civilized humankind].

John Bellinger, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, called the European Parliament report ``unbalanced, inaccurate and unfair'' and called on the EU governments to challenge the suggestion that Europeans need to be concerned about secret CIA flights.

``I can understand concerns about specific incidents but we should not somehow suggest that ALL intelligence activity is something illegal or suspicious,'' he said.


YES. YES we SHOULD.

 

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