Sandie MacKnight

VICE's depiction of Cheney is chilling. Dick Cheney is cold in his calculating exercise of power. He fully supports ideology of "unified executive power" for the presidency and exercises it as puppet'master in "W's" administration. He contributes to the abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of the right-wing media of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. He promotes the soft touch in dealing with "W" and the electorate saying that the Republicans have the aforementioned right-wing media to do the yelling for them. He promotes the Koch brothers & Oliver Norquist's "Citizens for Tax Reform" efforts whose greatest goals have finally been realized under the current administration. He initiates the war against Iraq and allows/promotes the religious civil war that erupts after the demise of Saddam Hussein. (He had -before the war-solicited letters from oil companies that might be interested in the oil fields of Iraq - if those ever became available.) Halliburton, his private sector employer as CEO, gives him a $26 million severance pay. (As Lynne says, "Halliburton isn't stupid.) Rumsfield & Cheney laugh when reps from the Pentagon question Halliburton's billing to the Defense Dept. (Rumsfield laughs heartily in an early scene when Cheney, as a naive Congressional intern asks, "What do we [as Republicans] believe?" Cheney is portrayed as a Republican who cares about his own family, but has no feeling for anyone else. [Sound familiar?] Cheney's influence is still felt in the U.S. government. It is worth seeing.