"VICE: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency"

Caption: 1. My well read first-edition copy of "VICE: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency," by Lou DuBose and Jake Bernstein sitting on the new shawl I'm knitting.

As hard as it is to believe, former President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and corporate oilmen were poring over and divvying oilfields in Iraq within three months of Bush's election in 2000. They did this during the Iraq oil embargo. Dick Cheney had been CEO of Halliburton prior to becoming Bush's right-hand man, perhaps the most powerful vice president in American history. Halliburton is an American multinational corporation and one of the world's largest oil field service companies. It operates in more than 70 countries and owns hundreds of subsidiaries, branches, and divisions worldwide. Halliburton employs approximately 55,000 people.

How did the "VICE" authors learn who attended the meeting divvying up oil fields in Iraq? Through a lawsuit filed by a conservative organization known as Judicial Watch and an environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose Freedom of Information Act lawsuits were consolidated because their aims were so similar.After two years of litigation the Secret Service was forced to reveal the names of the attendees of the infamous energy meeting that Cheney worked so hard to keep secret. A federal judge ordered associated documents, including the attendance list, to be revealed, but most documents were still held secret by the Office of the Vice President. When "VICE" was published in 2006, the president and vice president were immune from Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. This should not be.

Comedian Jon Stewart enjoyed portraying Dick Cheney on "The Daily Show" as evil like the character Darth Vader in "Star Wars" under a dark cloud with the sound of the voice of doom. In fact, Cheney and then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were known in Congress as "masters of the silent kill." No fingerprints.

It didn't take long after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 for Bush 43 to decide that Iraq was really the problem. There's no oil in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda were running amok, destroying priceless artifacts and executing women in a former soccer stadium. Afghanistan, of course, is where Saudi exile Osama bin Laden had taken refuge and allegedly planned the terrorist plane attacks on America.

Cheney bears his share of the blame for allowing bin Laden to escape from the cave complex at Tora Bora. CIA operatives heard bin Laden's voice during the battle at Tora Bora in December 2001. They found his camouflage jacket. Bin Laden, his son, and Ayman al-Zawahiri were all there.

The CIA chief who headed Operation Jawbreaker pleaded with CENTCOM to send him 800 Army Rangers to encircle Tora Bora so bin Laden couldn't escape. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld denied the request in order to honor their agreement with Pakistani president Musharaff to let the Pakistani Army close off its side of the border and grab bin Laden if they found him.

A number of al-Qaeda detainees later confirmed that bin Laden, after separating from Chechens and other al-Qaeda terrorists he didn't trust, escaped with a group of 200 Saudis and Yemenis by a difficult route over snow-covered passes into the Pashtun tribal area of Parachinar, Pakistan. He was guided by members of the Pashtun Ghilzai tribe, who were paid well with money and guns.

The CIA chief who wrote "Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and al-Qaeda, a Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander," by Gary Berntsen [his real name?] and Ralph Pezzullo, was relieved of his command for unexplained reasons after being congratulated for his good work and replaced with another CIA officer.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had earned Cheney's dislike when Cheney noticed that General Powell was far more popular than Cheney when Cheney was thinking about running for president, was set up to feed phony information about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" to the American public to rationalize our invasion.

Halliburton, of course, got no-bid contracts to pay for serving food to the troops in 15-minute intervals, "washing" their clothes at $100 a bag and returning them dirty (soldiers were not allowed to hand-wash their clothes), drive trucks with supplies as well as empty truck across Iraq without security guards (although security had been promised), and provide clean water for drinking (the water was not clean).

VICE president Cheney made money during the Bush administration. Bush 43 actually lost money. But Dubya, despite losing money, left a legacy, a legacy of incompetence and betrayal of the CIA operatives and the troops who served and died in the line of fire in Afghanistan and Iraq. It just wasn't the legacy he'd hoped for.

Finally, a female CIA officer found bin Laden, who she nicknamed "The Pacer," as the extraordinarily tall man who walked on top of a compound located within a mile of Pakistan's version of West Point in a neighborhood full of Pakistani generals. Then Pres. Obama gave the order to have him captured or killed. He was killed. Given where bin Laden was found, it was unlikely that Pakistan would have captured bin Laden. They had to know he was under their noses.