Dick Cheney and the sanitising of a war criminal

And truthful different subordinate of the aged “war connected terror” squad has near the world. Dick Cheney, who served arsenic the astir almighty vice president successful the past of the United States during the two-term medication of George W Bush (2001-2009), died connected Monday astatine the property of 84.

According to a memorial connection issued by his family, Cheney was “a large and bully antheral who taught his children and grandchildren to emotion our country, and to unrecorded lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and alert fishing”.

And yet galore inhabitants of the Earth volition retrieve the precocious VP for alternatively little lukewarm and fuzzy things than emotion and alert fishing. As the main designer of the “global warfare connected terror” – which was launched successful 2001 and enabled the US to terrorise assorted locations worldwide nether the guise of warring “terrorists” – Cheney died with untold quantities of humor connected his hands, peculiarly successful Iraq.

In the run-up to the US penetration of Iraq successful 2003, Cheney swore that the “Iraqi regime” had been “very engaged enhancing its capabilities successful the tract of chemic and biologic agents” and that the state had continued “to prosecute the atomic programme they began truthful galore years ago”. Per the vice president’s hallucinations, this pursuit of weaponry was “for the intent of inflicting decease connected a monolithic scale”.

As Foreign Policy mag charmingly noted successful its 2012 compilation of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers”, which included Cheney arsenic good arsenic galore different characters with objectively dubious credentials successful presumption of thinking: “If scaring america silly were a religion, Dick Cheney would beryllium its precocious priest.”

But Cheney’s fearmongering – and repeated lies concerning Iraq’s alleged weapons of wide demolition – worked similar a charm successful paving the mode for the infliction of “death connected a monolithic scale” successful the country. It besides paved the mode for the lining of definite pockets, specified arsenic those associated with the US lipid and engineering steadfast Halliburton, wherever Cheney himself served arsenic CEO from 1995 until 2000 and which conscionable happened to triumph $7bn successful no-bid contracts successful post-invasion Iraq.

Anyway, it was concern arsenic accustomed successful the onshore of conflicts of involvement and revolving doors.

Until his dying day, Cheney espoused a no-regrets attack to the amerciable perpetration of wide slaughter and attendant suffering, telling CNN 12 years aft the effectual pulverisation of Iraq: “It was the close happening to bash then. I believed it then, and I judge it now.” Never caput the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, the forcible displacement of millions, and the dousing of the state successful toxic and radioactive munitions that volition proceed to interaction Iraqi wellness fundamentally for eternity.

Escalating crab rates among the colonisation person been attributed successful portion to the US military’s usage of depleted uranium weapons, the traces of which “represent a formidable semipermanent biology hazard arsenic they volition stay radioactive for much than 4.5 cardinal years”, arsenic Al Jazeera has observed.

But, hey, I perceive the alert sportfishing is great successful Baghdad.

And the Iraq warfare is hardly Cheney’s lone nonregret. In effect to the 2014 CIA torture report connected the US usage of “enhanced interrogation techniques” specified arsenic rectal rehydration and waterboarding to extract information, Cheney stuck by his guns: “I would bash it again successful a minute.”

Nor is the “war connected terror” the sole defining sadistic occurrence successful the bequest of a antheral who was a fixture connected the American governmental country for decades. In December 1989, for example, the US subject unleashed hell connected the impoverished neighbourhood of El Chorrillo successful Panama City, Panama, sidesplitting perchance several thousand civilians and earning El Chorrillo the nickname “Little Hiroshima”.

The US defence caput presiding implicit the cognition was nary different than Cheney, this clip nether the enactment of George HW Bush, whose medication was anxious to cure the American nationalist of its post-Vietnam War aversion to subject combat overseas with an excessive show of high-tech firepower and an casual “victory”. After the bout of devastation, during which galore of El Chorrillo’s woody shacks went up successful flames on with their inhabitants, Cheney boasted that the deadly spectacle had “been the astir surgical subject cognition of its size ever conducted”.

The “surgical” stunt successful Panama was a trial tally for Operation Desert Storm against Iraq successful 1991, which was besides overseen by Cheney successful his ain benignant of trial tally for the aboriginal infliction of wide decease successful the country.

Now Cheney is nary more, joining his erstwhile comrades successful warfare crimes Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell successful the large beyond. In the aftermath of his demise, US quality agencies and media outlets person restricted themselves to memorialising him arsenic a “polarising” and “controversial” fig who, arsenic The Associated Press diplomatically put it, “was proved incorrect connected constituent aft constituent successful the Iraq War, without losing the condemnation helium was fundamentally right”.

As usual, the firm media tin ne'er bring themselves to telephone a spade a spade – oregon a warfare transgression a warfare criminal. But against the existent backdrop of Israel’s US-backed genocide successful the Gaza Strip and different planetary calamities, the nonaccomplishment of different wide murderer tin hardly beryllium considered atrocious news.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.