To Dick Cheney: Sit Down and STFU

Former Vice President Dick Cheney (he seems to constantly forget the "former" part) slithered out of his undisclosed location to slam the Obama administration for the would-be Delta plane terrorist/bomber.

Well, Dick, let's get a few things straight, in case you've forgotten.

1. The Bush administration did not keep this country safe. I seem to recall that the worst terrorist attack in this nation's history happened on 9/11/2001, eight months into your administration. As I recall, almost 3,000 innocent civilians were killed. Four planes were hijacked. The Pentagon ended up with a big hole in it. One plane was ditched into the ground only after courageous civilians aboard (sound familiar?) stopped the terrorists from plunging the plane into another target, probably in Washington, D.C. So all this "Bush kept us safe" nonsense is just total crap.
2. Your administration had more than enough time and evidence to know the attack was coming. The Clinton administration warned you about the danger, which your administration ignored. Richard Clarke, Clinton's chief counter-terrorism advisor, stayed on with the Bush administration and he, among others, warned you that al Qaeda was going to try terrorist attacks against the U.S. He was marginalized and his advice ignored.
3. What was the title of that Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) you guys got in August, 2001 again? Oh, yeah -- "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S."
4. Your administration set up another big bureaucracy, Homeland Security, to deal with terrorism (as if we don't have a boatload of alphabet soup agencies that don't talk to each other already).
5. Your administration had the 9/11 commission come up with recommendations as to how to make this country safer. Your administration then neglected to carry out most of the recommendations.
6. Your administration was responsible for setting up the new rules regarding air travel that were in place when the would-be bomber got on the Delta plane.
7. In 2004 your administration came up with yet another bureaucrat to oversee things (the alphabet soup agencies and Homeland Security apparently not enough) called the Director of National Intelligence. His job was supposedly to get the agencies we had talking to each other. Guess what -- they still weren't talking to each other years later when you left office.

Oh, and need I remind you that the Iraq War would never have happened without you. As Secretary of Defense under the elder Bush's administration, you advised then President George H.W. Bush not to go into Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein from power after he had invaded Kuwait. A huge mistake you later tried to rectify by making up lies to get us into the Iraq war with W's administration. I don't believe for a split second you thought there were any WMD in Iraq at all. I think you advised W to go to war because you regretted the decision you made as SecDef under the first Bush administration.

So you tell me, Dick, what gives you the right to come out of your hidey-hole every week and criticize this administration for anything?

A Word About "Climategate"

It's truly tragic that climate change deniers who stole some e-mails from scientists at the University of East Anglia have used cherry-picked portions of those e-mails to try to turn the public against the urgency of climate change.

The science behind the climate change argument is overwhelming and comes from scientists and agencies all over the world, including NASA and NOAA, not just scientists working at the University of East Anglia. We also know that many scientists working on climate change have experienced break-ins and computer hacking by deniers who want to prove that our planet is not really warming, when of course it is.

The glaciers are melting at a rapid rate. Ice in the Arctic is melting much faster than originally feared. The sea levels are rising and coastal erosion is occurring. We have floods in some places and droughts in others, along with hurricanes that are worsening in severity. The data about the warming of the planet is not in any serious doubt amongst scientists. However, it's easy to convince some people who doesn't really understand the science to begin with that a couple of lines in an e-mail blow all the science gathered over the decades completely out of the water.

Here's a link to an article in Scientific American magazine about the current controversy:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-respond-to-climategate-controversy

Let's put it this way -- if we decide the science about climate change is wrong and we do nothing to address the threat, we will continue to have erosion of our land masses, sea levels will continue to rise, we will continue to have droughts that shrink our water supply (Google this concerning southern California or Las Vegas, for instance), wars will erupt to protect eroding crop lands, the glaciers will completely disappear, population masses will have to be shifted (see the link to the article below from geology.com about how climate change is helping erode the Alaska coastline), and our air quality will continue to suffer, which has caused an increase in lung-related problems, particularly childhood asthma.

http://geology.com/usgs/alaska-coastal-erosion/

Regardless of whether you think the science about climate change is correct, what's the worst that can happen by keeping more toxic gases out of the air, cleaning up the oceans and using fewer pollutants? We get cleaner, healthier air, water and land, that's what happens. We get a healthier population. What's the downside here?

That should be simple enough for everybody to understand. Too bad some people don't.