Interpol issues arrest warrant for war criminal Dick Cheney, who’s coming to the Nixon Library tonight!

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IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER if this warrant, just issued by Interpol (the “International Criminal Police Organization“) for the arrest of former “Vice” President Richard Bruce Cheney, had been related to some of his many real, serious crimes against humanity.  I mean, the ones he committed as shadow President from 2000 to around 2006, as he steered and manipulated George W. Bush to be not just the simple easy-going right-wing mediocrity he was as Texas Governor, but by most accounts the WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER.

I’m speaking of course of Cheney’s masterminding of the illegal Invasion and Occupation of Iraq justified by lies he manufactured;  the attendant Mass Murder that resulted;  the Prisoner Detention Abuses and Torture in Violation of the Geneva Conventions;  the Extraordinary Rendition;  the Military Atrocities in Iraq (e.g. illegal use of white phosphorus to burn the enemy, massacres, and the use of brutal mercenaries like Blackwater);  his personal Death Squads;  and his Treason in the outing of Valerie Plame – all of that is detailed on this handy website.  I’d also add the staggering war profiteering of his company Halliburton, his bringing whole new levels of secrecy to the operation of government, and his unconstitutional conducting of his Vice Presidency as a “Fourth Branch” of the government, subject to the rules of neither the executive or legislative.  Oh, and above all, what seems to have been his lifelong project:  the exponentially expanding power of the executive branch.

No, unfortunately, this arrest warrant, if it’s ever served, is for a $180 million bribery charge in Nigeria predating the disaster that was his Shadow Presidency – obviously a serious business to Nigerians, but small potatoes to those of us who’ve seen all the other damage this snarling, pulseless cyborg has caused to our nation and the world.

But hey, they ended up putting Al Capone away for tax evasion, so who knows?

Well, why – and when – is he coming to the Nixon Library?

That would be this evening – Monday Dec. 6 from 6pm on – and the occasion is a dinner honoring Cheney’s decades-long partner in crime, Bush Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and granting the deranged old coot something called a “Victory of Freedom Award.”

Wait – WHAT? You’ve got to be kidding, an award for this fiasco of a Defense Secretary?  The guy who didn’t want to attack Afghanistan after 9/11 but preferred to go straight to Iraq instead because it had “better targets?”  The guy who presided ineptly over the entire bloodbath of the first few years of the Iraqi debacle, until even the fiercely loyal Bush had to finally admit what a failure he was?  Rumsfeld, who himself is wanted for war crimes at the Hague, and who fled Paris a few years ago to avoid arrest for authorizing torture at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib?

Sure enough, here’s the little blurb from the Nixon Library:

December 6, 6pm Reception * 7pm Dinner Save the date and plan on attending this spectacular evening with the former Secretary of Defense, who began his nearly 50 years of public service in the Nixon Administration.  He was Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Assistant to the President, Counselor to the President, Director of the Economic Stabilization Program and U.S. Ambassador to NATO.  From there, he went on to serve several Presidents as a trusted and accomplished advisor and official. Previous winners have included former Secretary of State George Shultz and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff Richard Myers.

Venue:    Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace

Phone:   (714) 993-5075

Address: 18001 Yorba Linda Blvd., Yorba Linda, CA

Naturally there will be a protest outside

I mean, what else can you do, sit at home and scream at your TV?  You might keep your sanity rubbing shoulders with other folks who are as outraged as you that these two are still wandering the surface of the earth free – this may arguably be worth the risk of looking like an ineffective hippie cliche.  So here’s that announcement:

PROTEST WAR CRIMINALS RUMSFELD & CHENEY

December 6, 2010 – 4:30 to 6:30 PM – Nixon Library

Donald Rumsfeld is wanted for suspected war crimes by the International Criminal Court in the Hague – yet is being honored by the Nixon Library! And to add to this outrage, Cheney is attending. How can men wanted for mass murder be allowed any honor in our own back yard?

Please join OC Peace Coalition and Code Pink LA in standing against this disrespect for the law and humanity! Please join us in a peaceful, non-violent protest! Bring your signs and noise makers, and let’s show them what democracy looks like!

For info, please contact Info@OcPeace.org, or call 949.262.0407.

Oh, and to be balanced…

"Always look forward, never look back."

We cannot in good conscience finish this story attacking Republican thugs without mentioning our profound and continuing disappointment in the current President, who has strenuously resisted bringing his predecessors to justice and continued many of their abuses (in slightly watered-down fashion.)

As my Juice-Brother Duane posted the other day, recent WikiLeaks have sparked outrage in Spain by showing clearly how the Obama White House worked closely with Republicans to sabotage Spanish criminal probes into ex-Bush administration officials, Spain being one of the strongest nations in the cause of enforcing international human rights. (Remember Pinochet.)

Obama’s insistence on “looking forward and not back” is not only at odds with his stirring campaign rhetoric of 2008, but perpetuates the culture of impunity which ensures that the next time our Presidential pendulum swings to the right, the abuses we saw under Cheney and Rumsfeld will be but a prologue to the fascism to come.

Just sayin’…