I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR...

DICK CHENEY


Did you know that vice presidents, like presidents, have an oath of office? The oath is administered right before the president takes his oath. Here it is:

"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same: that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Now, I've reread the thing about four times, and I keep missing it, so maybe one of my faithful readers can help me out. Where exactly in that oath does it say that the vice president will support and defend the Constitution of the United States except when it comes to freedom of speech guarantees provided in the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. After all, according to Dick, exercising those free speech rights when criticizing this administration is tantamount to treason in his book. Much like his pleas earlier in the same interview (I bitch about that here) that Saddam and al Qaeda really really really were in cahoots despite every shred of evidence to the contrary, he's once again pulling out the card that any criticism of this adminstration and its handling of a disastrous and pointless war is helping the terrorists and is therefore verboten. From Think Progress (who also has the video):

CHENEY: The basic proposition for our adversaries–and we ought to take a minute and focus on it–they, they want to re-create the old caliphate that stretched from Spain all the way around to Southeast Asia. They want to topple the regimes that are there today, they want to kick the U.S. out of that part of the world, destroy Israel, equip themselves with weapons of mass destructions, etc. In the course of doing that, their strategy for doing that is to break our will. They can’t beat us in a stand-up fight, they never have, but they’re absolutely convinced they can break our will. The American people don’t have the stomach for the fight.
So you look at situation today in Afghanistan or even in Iraq, and you’ve got people who have doubts. They want to know whether or not if they stick their heads up, the United States, in fact, is going to be there to complete the mission. And those doubts are encouraged, obviously, when they see the kind of debate that we’ve had in the United States, suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, simply feed into that whole notion, validates the strategy of the terrorists. [Emphasis added.]

This is offensive; horribly offensive. According to Cheney, the exercise of our Constitutional rights encourages the terrorists. In other words, in order to protect America, we can no longer be Americans. That is the bill of goods that Dick Cheney was out selling this past Sunday. One of the leaders of the "Party of Real Americans" says that we cannot actually be Americans because to do so encourages terrorists. In reality the "Party of 9/11" has become the Party of Un-Americans. Spread the word.