Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld

Michael, your calling to the attention of LRC readers the brilliant analysis of Edward C. Duggan detailing the pivotal roles of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in the lead up to the War in Iraq was magnificent. Duggan’s bold thesis is certainly to be highly commended, both in its thoroughness and scholarly execution. It provides much intriguing background and insight regarding the Machiavellian careers of these two power elitists who have played decisive overt and covert roles in the National Security State since the Nixon administration. It definitely uncovers many unsavory pieces of the puzzle regarding the transformation of the American republic in the direction of an emerging fascist dictatorship.

I believe other crucial clues in this transformation have been Cheney and Rumsfeld’s masterful orchestration of surreptitious coup d’états in their behind-the-scenes quest of total power. Besides being grand strategists of geopolitical hegemonic machinations as masterfully outlined by Edward C. Duggan, both Cheney and Rumsfeld were second to none in entrenched bureaucratic warfare and internecine duplicity.

Was Dick Cheney, Deputy to the Assistant to the President, Richard Nixon, and long-time colleague of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, the real “Deep Throat?” After the dust of the Watergate scandal had settled Rumsfeld became Gerald Ford’s Chief of Staff, and Cheney became Assistant to the President. But that was only the first step. In the Halloween Massacre of 1975 (to which Duggan alludes) Rumsfeld moved up to Secretary of Defense, and Cheney took Rumsfeld’s slot as Chief of Staff. They would let no obstacle stand in their way, even such formidable obstructions as Richard Nixon or Nelson Rockefeller.

Even while formally out of office, Cheney and Rumsfeld took command of one of the most secret and sensitive extra-constitutional subversive programs of the National Security State, that of Continuity of Government (COG), which that dogged researcher Peter Dale Scott has illuminated here, here, and here.  In his White House command post on the morning of September 11. 2001, Cheney implemented COG and thus began the draconian chain of events which have led us where we are today.

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7:04 pm on June 26, 2014