Dick “Boom Boom” Cheney Escapes Again
Cheney takes refuge in bomb shelter after Afghan blast
Tue Feb 27, 2007 10:14AM ESTMUSCAT (Reuters) – Vice President Dick Cheney was whisked into a bomb shelter immediately after a Taliban suicide bomber struck the main American military base he was visiting in Afghanistan on Tuesday.
Up to 14 people were killed, including one U.S. and one South Korean soldier, in the Bagram Airbase attack which rebels said was aimed at Cheney.
He had been in his room at the base where he had unexpectedly had to stay the night after bad weather forced postponement of his trip to the capital, Kabul, about 60 km (40 miles) away.
“At 10 a.m. I heard a loud boom,” Cheney said.
It’s time someone accounted for the fact that our Vice President’s life is punctuated with loud booms, invariably followed by tragedy unto others and a speedy whisking. Boom! — and a plane hits the Pentagon as Cheney is ‘whisked away.’ Boom! — and someone’s face gets in the way of his shotgun blast, whereupon Cheney is ‘whisked away.’ Boom! Suicide bomber, Afghanistan. Whisked. F-bombed in Mississippi; whisked.
Boom-whisk, boom-whisk.
“Rrrrr!”
For the love of God, Dick: Either stop with the booming, or stop with the whisking. Or whisk first, if you would; boom in private. Boom and whisk simultaneously if you like. Whoom! Bisque! That would be splendid. But no more of this, please, because we’re getting quite tired of the aftermath:
“They moved me for a relatively brief period of time to one of the bomb shelters nearby,” [Cheney] said. “As the situation settled down and they got a better sense in terms of what was going on, then I went back to my room until it was time to leave.”
NATO’s death toll in the attack was four, officials said. A Reuters photographer at the scene saw an additional 10 bodies, putting the total at 14.
A U.S. government contractor, whose nationality was unknown, was among those killed and 27 people were wounded, NATO said.
“We wanted to target … Cheney,” Taliban spokesman Mullah Hayat Khan told Reuters by phone from an undisclosed location.
Wo-ho-ho, look who’s in the ‘undisclosed location’ now, Mr. Cheney. It’s Bomby McExplodowitz calling about the boom! Seems like Mr. Khan was pre-whisked. Although truly, how much whisking is necessary in Afghanistan if insurgents can target an American vice-president in a place he occupied ‘unexpectedly,’ and then have someone talk to Reuters about it, being all like, “Hey, this is Mullah Ayat Khan. Yeah, you can quote me. So, about that suicide bomber we just sent to kill the Vice President…”
And sometimes you can just tell when a quote has been shortened. A clue is those three dots.
“We wanted to target … Cheney,” Taliban spokesman Mullah Hayat Khan told Reuters by phone from an undisclosed location.
“We wanted to target [that rack-a-frack, sag-frassing flap-jabber of a ding-blat shick-a-frass jack-flagger, Dickie ‘The Boomer’] Cheney,” Taliban spokesman Mullah Hayat Khan told Reuters by phone from an undisclosed location.”
The United States has 27,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, where it says defeating the Taliban is vital for its own security.
Last year was the bloodiest since the U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban’s Islamist government in 2001 for refusing to surrender Osama bin Laden in the wake of September 11.
Um, actually they sort of did offer to. But whatever. Anyone who supports Al Qaeda deserves whatever they get.
Bolstered by money from record opium crops and safe havens in Pakistan, the Taliban have vowed a spring offensive — including an increase in suicide attacks — as the snows melt in coming weeks.
Suicide attacks, virtually unheard of until 2005 when there were 21, jumped to 139 last year.
Welp, one thing’s for certain: They’ve now come closer to getting Dick Cheney than we ever came to getting Bin Laden.
Daniel Drezner also reprints this charming vignette from the current issue of Newsweek:
But shortly before his plane was to lift off, it began snowing. Reporters and aides who had been waiting on the tarmac for Cheney’ arrival were escorted back to the base’ firehouse, where they sat and waited. Within an hour came the word: the weather in Kabul made the trip too dangerous to carry on. Already considered the most risky portion of the trip— the road connecting the airport and Karzai’s palace was covered in several inches of snow and would need to be cleared. The VP and his entourage would stay overnight at Bagram, in hopes of holding the meeting on Tuesday.
But where would people sleep? Cheney and his top aides quickly found accommodations on the base, but finding a place for the press and the dozens of Secret Service agents and lower level aides on the trip would prove far trickier. Just after 8:30 PM, a Cheney aide tried to escort the seven reporters on the trip to the mess hall for food. (It was taco night, the base reported.) But just a few minutes before arrival came word that the base didn’t have enough food for its visitors.
Reporters were then taken to one of the few open barracks on the base and assigned bunk beds—girls in one room, guys in the other. The soldiers escorting the media were extremely apologetic and embarrassed: They had not been prepared for guests. There were no sheets, only a few blankets and even fewer pillows. They handed out Ziploc bags of socks, sweatshirts and other supplies. Eyeing the packages, reporters immediately felt guilty: these were intended care packages for the troops. One Ziploc full of socks had a label describing it as a donation from a Boy Scout troop in Michigan. (‘Operation Quiet Comfort,’ it said.) Another care package, full of toothpaste and other toiletries, was from the USO. “Can we really use these?” one reporter asked. In the end, the media agreed to use the care packages, but only sparingly.
Just after dawn on Tuesday morning, reporters were taken to the mess hall, where Cheney was dining with the troops. “How was breakfast?” a reporter yelled to the VP. “Breakfast was excellent,” Cheney replied, in what were his first three words to the press pool traveling with him on the trip, now in its eighth day.
So much for Operation Quiet Comfort.
Clearly, there is no god.
Evil, on the other hand, goes on and on [whisk]
mikey
So, when the booms go boom, Cheney cuts and runs.
Not like that’s anything new from Mr. Five Deferments.
Soldiers giving up their care packages, while Dick “Undisclosed Location” Cheney ate tacos and grabbed a comfortable bed?
That vignette sort of describes the whole damn war, doesn’t it?
Ring around the collar. As if.
Looks like Operation Major League Asshole was a success.
Cheney’s got a gun
Cheney’s got a gun
Harry’s worlds come undone
From lookin straight down Dick’s gun
What did that reporter do?
What did he put you through?
They say when Cheney was arrested
They found him standing over Harry’s frame
But man, he had it comin
Now that Cheney’s got a gun
Lawyer’s never gonna be the same
Cheney’s got a gun
Cheney’s got a gun
The hunt had just begun
Now everybody is on the run
Tell me now its untrue
What did Dick Cheney do?
He jacked the little old lawyer
The man has got to be insane
What with the beers and all the killin
His friends seemed more than willin
Knew that they weren’t gonna stop Dick’s game
Run away, run away from the pain
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Run away, run away from the pain
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Run away, run away, run, run away
Cheney’s got a gun
Cheney’s got a gun
His dog days just begun
Now Taliban is in on the fun
What did that jihadi do?
He brought Cheney his last i.o.u.
They had to whisk him out quickly
And hide him in a sheltered room
Cause he don’t like it near the killin
When it’s peoples blood that’s spillin
He thinks it’s brown people that should go BOOM
Run away, run away from the pain
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Run away, run away, run, run away
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Run away, run away, run, run away
Cheney’s got a gun
Cheney’s got a gun
Cheney’s got a gun
Everybody is on the run
mikey
Boom-whisk, boom-whisk.
Like this?
We like the cars, the cars that go “Boom!”
Between the Tigris and the Euphrates and we like the “Boom!”
At least he won’t be suffering from “dental problems”:
The film notes that the Department of Defense puts the number of men and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan at about 23,000, while the Department of Veterans Affairs has recorded treating more than 200,000 veterans of those two wars. Paul Sullivan, the director of programs at the advocacy group Veterans for America, says, “What you have are two sets of books.�
Mr. Woodruff politely asks the secretary of veterans affairs, R. James Nicholson, to explain the discrepancy. Citing department reports that list 73,000 mental disorders, 61,000 diseases of the nervous system and others, Mr. Woodruff says, “These are huge numbers beyond the 23,000.�
Mr. Nicholson, a Vietnam veteran and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, replies, “A lot of them come in for, for dental problems.�
What a little shit!
Welp, so much for all that stuff about “don’t be absurd, of course there aren’t any liberals rooting for the terrorists.”
Yes, mikey, Cheney is awful, but you can’t wish him dead by the Taliban’s hand, even if only in hyperbole, without giving aid and comfort to the glorious chairborne wingnut crusade.
Pammy is so taken with Cheney’s fortitude under fire that she thinks he should be drafted. I assume she means as the Republican candidate for the next presidential election rather than as a rifleman in the 10th Mountain Division.
The Taliban can claim it was a deliberate attempt all they want. They could never outfox Cheney and the US military. But clearly it increases Cheney’s stock. And I say we gotta draft Cheney. He is the right man at the right time at this grave historical crossroads.
However, his considerable incompetence, the 10th Mountain Division seems like the better answer to me, and he can’t claim he is too old (Hitler drafted those as old as 60 into the Volksturm and that was 60 years ago) and he knows how to use (sort of) a gun.
No link – I went there so you don’t have to.
We like the cars, the cars that go “Boom!�
Between the Tigris and the Euphrates and we like the “Boom!�
Made my day.
grampaw, fuck you.
We like the cars, the cars that go “Boom!�
Between the Tigris and the Euphrates and we like the “Boom!�
L’Trimm in the vice-presidential entourage!
And maybe Little Cat Z too.
Ugh, let me try that again.
L’Trimm in the vice-presidential entourage!
And maybe Little Cat Z too.
Hee hee.
Hey, gramps, just look at it like this. If it’s ok for me to bag bush for being incompetent, why can’t I take a whack at the taliban for fucking up a fairly simple project?
mikey
Cheney was due back by now but he insists on waiting for the bombing victims to apologize to him. It’s his due.
Ah, but is isn’t. We call that the “incompetence dodge” for a reason, you know.
And your glib argument there works similarly— you’re evading any discussion of the merits of the Taliban’s policy of trying to blow Cheney to bits. You know, very real, smelly, messy bits? The sort of bits you’re always reminding us you’ve got true and horrifying experience with?
Yes, I realize you (and many others making the same sorts of cracks) are just being snarky, but the right wing maniacs aren’t going to give you, or anyone else, the benefit of the doubt.
Then you get to the point where you realize that the wingnuts will scream hysterically no matter *what* a liberal commenter on a liberal blog says, and you just stop giving a damn what they think. The folks responsible for Lucienne.com and LGF have no room to whine about snark, even if they think they do.
And, uh, Pam, didn’t someone try that already? He had other priorities, I believe.
D. Sidhe:
The fact that the RWMs will always find something to scream about doesn’t mean it’s OK to give them something to scream about.
And what mikey would be giving away, if he were actually serious, is the ground on which he stands when he makes “killing people is bad” type arguments (and yes, his arguments are always better and more nuanced than that, but again, the RWMs aren’t going to go back and check).
I wish the people in front of me at a stop sign would die. Saying “ooh, so close” regarding Cheney’s recent adventure is not far removed from that. How serious am I about either wish? The answer for me is not at all serious.
(Now that I think of it, if the people in front of me at a stop sign were dead they’d be blocking my car, and then I’d REALLY want to kill someone.)
Well, this is (yet another) point where we differ, grampaw.
Me, I want to push them over the edge until they drop whole Curled Pinky of Respectable Savagery™ bit and lay their craven, cowardly, paranoid, hate-filled, genocidal hearts right out in the open for all to see.
Call it the Queeq Maneuver.
And you don’t think they’d manage to do that without your help?
From what I’ve seen, watching their own bloodthirsty ideas fail, or even just publicly contemplating those plans to begin with, is enough to do the trick. And frankly, it looks to me like they’ve got you pretty well convinced of their depravity, too, kingubu.
I do share a fervent desire to see the RWMs properly and permanently marginalized, but I’m also levelheaded enough to realize that wishing them dead, and wishing the success of a Taliban operation to boot, even if offered only in jest, does more to hurt our cause than help it.
but I’m also levelheaded enough to realize that wishing them dead, and wishing the success of a Taliban operation to boot, even if offered only in jest, does more to hurt our cause than help it.
That’s fine if you’re an all-policy guy at an all-policy blog, but jokes range from banana-peel to atrocity. It’s a fine line, but I think most people here are on the proper side of the line that divides us from, say, the wit and wisdom of Ann Coulter. Can’t say I know how to define the line, but like pornography I think we know what we’re talking about.
Hokay, I was cracking wise, but grampaw’s being serious, so the least I can do is consider his position. And y’know, it’s one of those things that sounds pretty good. Yeah, I’m saying, I could support that. But then. Waitaminute. Let’s think this through for a bit. It sounds to me, when you boil it down, that ole grampaw’s really saying I should let the wingnuts have some level of control over my speech. That my fear of their calling me names, or getting some ammo out of my words should cause me to carefully parse, edit and phrase my political beliefs. And you know, I’ve never held back on my position in support of Palestinian sovereignty and my opposition to palestinian oppression because some wingnuts are going to call me anti semitic. It is their nature, it is what they do.
And yeah, I know that joking about the blowing up of the vp and supporting the palestinian cause are not the same. But your position, that I should curb my speech, even on a lefty snark site, because of what THEY might say, sorry, I’m prett sure that ain’t gonna happen…
mikey
I’d just like to second the “This is not a policy blog” statement, observe that Grandpaw has a point about the moral high ground even if on this occasion I don’t entirely agree (mostly ’cause of the aforementioned snark exception and also because I just love mikey and can tell when he’s just smartin’ off), and note that Bill O’Reilly really only started to go cartoon-sproingy-steam-comin’-out-his-ears-batshit in public once Al Franken and Keith Olbermann started taunting him regularly.
Nonetheless, Dick Cheney is at least a partial cause of those people, among hundreds of thousands of others both in war zones and in unheated homes in winter in the US, being dead and Al Qaeda being a success, so I kind of think the very least we should be allowed is a little leeway to mock him from time to time. I know it won’t make him feel so ashamed he will go away and take up a life of quiet repentance where he helps the poor in expiation of his sins, but damn, I can hope.
Oh, damn. It’s “grampaw”, isn’t it. I really didn’t mean to get your name wrong, and I apologize.
I wonder if the guy he shot in the face tipped them off.
Cheney should just stay home. He’d save more of the lives he’s already putting at risk. Really, who wants to die for that SOB?
It seems just a little too convenient that Cheney was a target considering, (from what I heard on CBC this morning) that he was a mile away from where the blast took place. And who, but an insider, could have tipped off the tewwowists? It doesn’t seem likely. Even though the event took place in Afghanistan, a country the US all but abandoned when it decided to invade Iraq (which didn’t have terrorists in 2003), I would put it past Cheney to exploit a suicide bombing to bolster opinion on keeping the war in Iraq going (and to a lesser extent providing an entirely unsympathetic VP with a smidgen of support).
“wishing the success of a Taliban operation to boot, even if offered only in jest, does more to hurt our cause than help it.”
No, that only applies to the upcoming intramural softball game, where the wingnutz’ll get slaughtered in a whole ‘nuther way.
meant to say I wouldn’t put it past Cheney…
If the troops can’t even find extra socks and blankets for a few reporters stuck on one of the largest military bases in the world, what does this say about how well supplied the troops are with simple things like — oh, socks and blankets?
Oh, and I was listening to BBC News this morning when the Beeb reported on the suicide bombing at Baghram. An army major was in high public relations mode and told the BBC that this bombing was actually a “success” for the security forces at the base — because the bomber didn’t make it to the actual entrance gate but blew himself up at a security checkpoint outside the base.
As some ancient guy once said at the battle of Pyrrhus: “Another victory like this and we are undone.”
Cheney’s bottom teeth seem to be growing faster than Pinocchio’s nose.
Let me add, Fuckawf grampaw.^
Anyone besides me notice that a soldier died, almost 2 dozen other people blown to bits, just as many wounded, and Cheney has not one word to say about any of the carnage that resulted from his visit—no sympathy, no condolences, no nothing. All he talkes about is himself and his steely resolve.
What a callous asshole.
(sniffs)
Poo?