“Fit to govern? No, not fit to live.”

From The Tragedy of Macbeth, Act IV scene iii

In my optimistic imagination, Dick Cheney shall live and die in infamy as a traitor, coward, war criminal and profiteer, liar, and enemy to nature and civilization. So shall the demons in his orbit: Chertoff, Zelikow, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, Rice, Hamilton, Tenet, Mueller, Bush, Kagan, Nuland . . . those who took up the mantle, the acolytes whose appalling silence paved the way, the New York Times et al that echoed and broadcast the lies that led the US into Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

The neocon lies live on and reproduce to give us the conscience-soothing justifications for military aggression (proxy or otherwise) against Yemen, Palestine, Somalia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Russia and whatever suits the neocon agenda. Never fear, neocons:   If peace raises its head, the New York Times has got your back.

It is a rich compost that nourishes the lies. It is truth that starves them. Thanks to the patriots of today it is truth that stands precarious and frail as an impediment to the neocon plans at every turn. (So does Vladimir Putin without whom truth would be brushed aside like a bank examiner at Goldman Sachs.)

The neocon home front agenda was and is equally destructive. It includes the successful neutralizing of the 1^st, 4^th, and 5^th amendments to the constitution. Freedom of speech, probable cause, sanctity of the home, freedom of unreasonable search and seizure, writ of habeas corpus, the right to face one’s accuser, due process, separation of powers, and the bill of rights. These are seriously compromised or buried altogether. In their places, with little resistance, are torture, extrajudicial killings, kidnapping and rendering, and imprisonment without charge.

Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America And The World  tells us what was done and how it was done.

David Ray Griffin wrote this book to try to reduce the influence of the neoconservative movement, headed by Dick Cheney, which has been the major source of the violence, illegal regime change, killing, and dislocation of millions of people since the attacks of September 11, 2001. In spite of the disastrous consequences of the neocon policies, now acknowledged to have been based on lies about Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, these policies continued to dominate Washington insiders and the mainstream press.

These policies included launching a ‘war on terror,’ increasing already enormous military budget, adopting a policy of preemptive war and regime change, attacking Afghanistan and Iraq as first steps in taking control of the Greater Middle East, encouraging Islamophobia, starting an assassination-by-drone program, passing the USA PATRIOT Act, initiating a drive to bring about regime change in Russia, and stopping all progress in slowing global warming.

Dr. Griffin lays out the evidence meticulously, carefully, accurately, and scrupulously. Nor does he let us kid ourselves that the neocon era is over. As deadly, chaotic and destructive as these incendiary policies proved to be since Cheney first ignited them, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton fanned the flames and added fuel to the fire. Bush and Cheney tells us the cast of characters who ruined America. We are left to if wonder if anything or anyone might set things right. One answer is certain: not until we rid ourselves of cowardice, ignorance and superstition.

The Plans

Cheney et al came up with the concept of “Full Spectrum Dominance,” including “space, sea, land, air and information.” It was described in the Pentagon’s “Joint Vision 2000.” “The Plan for a New American Century” (PNAC) including a first strike force is described in “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.”

These plans were accepted by the neocon brain trust and by the Main Stream Media as “the policy of America,” and offered to Afghanistan as “Streets paved with gold” or “with a carpet of bombs.”

Afghanistan was destroyed on every level (except the opium trade). The neocons succeeded in killing 5.6 million Afghanis, enriching the arms manufacturers and the entire military industrial complex and security/surveillance industry, and turning the US into a surveillance state. Equally effective was the psy-op of Islamophobia.

The next success was the “Revolution in Military Affairs” thanks to Podhoretz, Wolfowitz, Wohlstetter and Rumsfeld, instituting “the doctrine of preemptive – preventive war.” (NSS 2002. The National Security Strategy of USA 202) That is the policy of attacking sans evidence of threat, drafted by Condoleeza Rice. She turned the plan over to Philip Zelikow who helped grease the skids for the invasion of Iraq. This was a great neocon success as it accomplished so much in the realms of oil, Israel, and US hegemony in the region. It supported the waves of propaganda against Saddam Hussein including the blatant lies of nuclear, chemical and biological WMD reported to us by the New York Times and the rest of the neocon messengers.

The lies flew as always despite the known facts brought to the attention of all concerned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Add to these lies the lies of Tony Blair, the murder of Dr. David Kelly, fake news of aluminum tubes and yellow cake uranium promoted by forged documents and exposed by Joseph Wilson. The team of Bush/Cheney/Rice/Rumsfeld/Libby/Rove was mopping up the field with false claims about al-Qaeda, Mohamed Atta, fake letters implicating Iraq brought to us by George Tenet’s corrupting of CIA intelligence, a complicit media and a gullible public.

Reminder: Islamophobia was and is a necessary part of the plot. Without it the neocons and Obama and Clinton could not continue to fulfill their agenda. They couldn’t use the smoke screen of the “benign emperium” to snooker the populace. In other words, Islamophobia is yet another justification for imperialism: “This is what Muslims will do if we don’t kill them first.”

Dr. Griffin includes a quote from John O’Day’s “Bombs Speak Louder Than Words: The Liberal Reinvention of George W Bush.”

As the demonization of Muslims once again gains currency in US electoral politics, liberal personalities are joining the call to return to the good old days when Republicans fielded candidates who talked sweetly to the community of over 1.5 billion Muslims around the world while at the same time ordering warplanes to bomb an ever-larger number of them . . . [keeping] the nation at war with Muslim peoples for 15 years.

Dr. Griffin also cites the best-selling purveyors of “true stories” by real life anti-muslim Muslims, all of whom have been exposed and debunked as con-artists. The success of Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a humorous case in point since she is an atheist embraced by the Christian right and Harvard University. Islamophobia sells and paves the way for war – “holy” war that is, as long as it’s against Muslims.

Another success to the public relations department is that now, by definition, the US and Israel cannot commit terrorism. And thanks, as always, to the mainstream and mainstream alternative media, Americans have consumed such doses of anti-muslim reporting and language, that they connect the very word of Muslim with terror. Negative reporting on Muslims is rewarded, while negative reporting on other religious or ethnic groups leads to the unemployment line.

Global chaos is another success story for the neocon continuum. As neocon Michael Ledeen explains: “Creative destruction is our middle name.” And “Iraq is not what it’s all about. We have been at war for 20 years . . . Now, like or not, we’re in a regional war and we can’t opt out of it. We have to bring down these regimes . . . Undermining the governments of other countries? No big deal.”

Condoleeza Rice and Ehud Olmert chose “creative destruction” (constructive chaos) as the means by which Israel would destroy Lebanon, then, in a neocon alliance, destroy Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan and control the Persian Gulf. The “New Middle East” was the plan proudly announced by Washington and Tel Aviv.

And then there was Libya, which had to wait for the humanitarian efforts of Obama and Clinton in-as-much-as Muammar Gaddafi “renounced terrorism and handed over all of his weapons of mass destruction in 2003.” Then the B-team again picked up the neocon baton of constructive chaos in Syria: “civil war, foreign invasion and terrorism” since 2006, 5 years before the US intervention, supposedly due to Assad’s repression of dissent. However, Wikileaks cables reveal CIA involvement since March of 2011 before the dissent began. The SOP: sacrifice the innocent and blame the murders on the regime that is to be attacked. “By the end of 2015, the conflict in Syria had displaced 12 million people.”

Dr. Griffin provides us with the reasons for the US/Israeli/Saudi/Turkish alliance against Syria: Its support for Hezbollah, its independent monetary system, its control of resources and the shipment of resources, its ability to defend itself, its alliance with Iran, Shiite Islam, (the land of the Shiite crescent), and territorial disputes with Israel. (The Golan Heights in Syria were annexed by Israel in 1967.)

The points and the reasons for overthrowing the governments of Iraq, Iran and Syria are made clear by a Richard Perle et al document: “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” presented to Netanyahu. And another document: “Navigating through Turbulence: America and the Middle East in a New Century.”

The overthrow of Assad was so important to the neocon plans that “Clinton pushed for weapons to be sent to ‘jihadists within Syria, including ISIS’” (The interior quote is from Julian Assange, confirmed by Clinton’s emails.)

Another lie needed and concocted to sell the overthrow of Assad was that of the moderate rebels. As Biden admitted, “There was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers” Likewise, “the Free Syrian Army is little more than a cover for the al Qaeda-affiliated al Nusra” claims Alistair Crooke of British Intelligence. And when Obama balked on an outright attack against Syria, the neocon plan was propped up again by the NYTs, reporting Assad’s “barrel bombing of civilians.”

The drone program “taints and stains us all.” Chris Floyd describes it in his piece, “The NYTs Love Letter to Death Squads” of May 29, 2006. It has proved over time that the US has no compunction “to kill anyone anywhere on earth at any time.” (Ann Wright, “Army Chaplain Resigns over Drone Wars,” Consortium News, 12 May 2016.) The drone program signals that other countries have the same right vis-à-vis the US.

Chapters 11-15 explain how the attack of 9/11 was the event that the neocons planned and orchestrated to make their dreams come true, to make nightmares for those who seek the truth and for those around the world who have suffered torture, murder, starvation, chaos and the destruction of their homelands.

Bush and Cheney ends with a quote from William Rivers Pitt who describes how the events of 9/11 set us running for our lives.

We are still running because September 11 never ended. To the contrary, it grew, expanded, metastasized and ultimately subsumed this nation. We are a wildly different place, and a wildly different people than we were fifteen years ago . . . We accept [demeaning] things after a decade and a half of taming training. . . . September 11 gave us the horror and shame of Abu Ghraib as well as the disgrace of Guantanamo Bay. It gave us the concept of the Unitary Executive through which the president wields unlimited power in defiance of constitutional law. The USA PATRIOT Act exploded the surveillance dam and flooded the nation with watching eyes and ears. . . . Fifteen years later, the pall of poison smoke from that day still hangs low over us all.

The great mission for the remainder of the century is plain: We must get out from under the control mechanism September 11 has become.

Vermonter Jim Hogue is a historian, actor and investigative journalist.