People say not to speak ill of the dead. I never could understand that. A) They can’t hear you — They are, almost without exception, dead. B) If we don’t speak ill of them when they’re dead, that’s almost the entirety of all time. After our birth, most of what we are is dead. You’re alive for an exceedingly brief amount of time and then you’re dead for millennia. So that’s a long time for everyone to speak positively about anyone, especially awful human beings. And Dick Cheney was an awful human being.How do I know he was an awful human being? Because in 1986 as a US congressman he voted against sanctions on apartheid South Africa and against a resolution urging Nelson Mandela’s release — And yet no one remembers that Dick Cheney did that because his record is so vomit-inducing that voting to keep Mandela imprisoned is a footnote.Without further ado, here are 18 reasons to speak ill of Dick Cheney now that he’s gone (or when he was alive).Dick Cheney was either the Secretary of Defense or the Vice President during the US invasion of Panama, the first US invasion of Iraq, the second US invasion of Iraq, 9/11, the US invasion of Afghanistan, and all the scandals that went with these events. He never said the US should not have committed any of these acts.Dick Cheney’s horror show began way before he was Vice Prez. He served as the Sec. of Defense under George H. W. Bush during the 1989 US invasion of Panama that killed hundreds. The US committed grave human rights abuses and war crimes under Cheney’s close watch.During the first Iraq War, Cheney as Sec. of Defense oversaw the bombing of civilian infrastructure in Iraq — Destroying water, power, and other systems.One of the worst episodes of the first Iraq War was the “Highway of Death” in which Dick Cheney’s Pentagon targeted, bombed, and killed countless Iraqi troops and others fleeing Kuwait, trying to get home. They were sitting ducks on a highway in the middle of a desert.He led the House GOP effort to defend President Reagan during the Iran-Contra Affair.Cheney lobbied to keep Nelson Mandella imprisoned even though he had already been in prison for 22 years.He led the charge for the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on zero (or cooked) intelligence connecting Iraq to 9/11, as well as false intelligence about WMD. The invasion killed over a million people, the vast majority innocent civilians.He also led the charge for the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan. Estimates of the number of people murdered during this 20-year war vary, but it is definitely over 500,000.Cheney was both one of the architects and the key voices behind the Global War on Terror, which is more accurately called the Global War of Terror. Between the US military and economic attacks on Yemen, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the number of people murdered is likely close to 6 million, according to Brown University’s Cost of War study. (See Chart by Nafeez Ahmed)Cheney regularly and repeatedly misrepresented pre-war intelligence in order to manufacture consent for these wars.He was one of the key figures pushing for and endorsing the use of torture (illegal under the Geneva Conventions). When the Torture Report came out detailing the US government’s vast array of war crimes, Cheney said, “I’d do it again in a minute.”He was an important champion of ripping up the Constitutional rights of Americans. For example he pushed for warrantless wiretapping.He had blatant conflicts of interest as both the Vice President (and basically the President) and a former CEO of Halliburton. His Energy Task Force was found to have detailed maps of Iraqi oil fields, adding evidence to the claim that the invasion of Iraq was about oil.Cheney was one of the nation’s most prodigious war profiteers.He helped weaken checks and balances on Presidential power, thereby giving a dictator’s toolkit to Donald Trump… or whoever comes after him.He created a framework for secretive policymaking, allowing for abuse of power and heavily decreasing civilian oversight of corruption.As CEO of Halliburton, one of the world’s largest fracking / oil companies, Cheney gave humanity a big push in the direction of possible (probable?) doom as the planet heats up and the environment attempts to sustain.And last but not least—He shot his friend Harry Whittington in the face with a shotgun. Once out of the hospital, Whittington apologized to Dick Cheney (apparently for having his face in front of Cheney’s shotgun).I’ve decided to end the list here because it could go on for days and my fingers are going numb. Please feel free to add to this list in the comments.Dick Cheney was not just a war criminal, not just a pro-torture psychopath, not just a harbinger of doom who led the charge that killed 6 million innocent people — He was also a loving husband and father. And therefore we shouldn’t speak ill of him now that he’s passed.…I’m kidding. Fuck that lunatic.
