Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson excoriated Dick Cheney
Chris Hayes included a Fox News clip where Chris Wallace reminded a willful history revising Dick Cheney that during the Bush/Cheney administration Iran went from 0 to 5,000 centrifuges. Wallace suggested that Cheney left a mess for the Obama administration.
Republican Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State General Colin Powell, was introduced. (Colin Powell endorsed the Iran Nuclear agreement this weekend.) Chris Hayes asked Wilkerson about Cheney’s apocalyptic warning about the Iran deal. Lawrence Wilkerson did not mince words.
“I have been searching for a single word that would describe Dick Cheney,” Wilkerson said. “And I am afraid the only one that I can think of is ‘insanity’. It’s a deliberate, it’s a methodical, it’s a lucid, often lucid insanity. But it is insanity nonetheless. He can’t recognize reality. He can’t recognize the truth. The good thing Chris, for this country is that Independents, Republicans, and Democrats wish he would just go away now. He has almost no influence. You saw the influence he has virtually by numbers. Those at the AEI today that listened to his speech, that’s about it.”
Dick Cheney’s speech at AEI was interrupted by a Code Pink protester.
Lawrence Wilkerson pointed out that Dick Cheney was once a brilliant strategist. He said Cheney changed after nine eleven. “All of a sudden he’s turned into this person who cannot recognize reality,” Wilkerson said. “I can’t explain it. Maybe its physiological. Maybe it’s biological. Maybe 9/11 did something to him. … He is simply devoid of reason and he doesn’t recognize reality anymore.”
Wilkerson went on to make the point that Dick Cheney was using the same fear-mongering technique used by Joseph McCarty. At the end Wilkerson makes the Defense Industrial Complex / Dick Cheney association.
“Cheney is a millionaire now,” Wilkerson said. “So maybe I am assuming his insanity and maybe I am wrong. Maybe he sees this as a way, as a route to success and it turned out to be profitable. His personal finances now are quite well established. He is a multi-millionaire. This is a man who in 1998, Chris, said most forcefully as CEO of Halliburton, that sanctions were not working, that they wouldn’t work unless they were comprehensive and international. And he wanted to do deals with Iran. And so he was bashing sanctions up one wall and down the other. This is a man who’s lost his mind.”
Any more question about Dick Cheney or his motives?