Cheney's Fear

I'm not the first person to point out that Cheney is afraid of a lot of things. Remember his "undisclosed location" while Pres. Bush eventually returned to the White House after 9/11? Then there was his asking Google to "hide" his official residence from Google Earth (no such privilege for the White House).

This fear was on hand again in his most recent speech with his picture of terrorists waltzing into the U.S. with a nuclear weapon (something even countries like Iran and Korea seem to have trouble producing) and the need to do everything to prevent such a thing happening. This is his "1%" theory: if there is even a 1% chance of something bad happening, all measures to prevent (well, non-economic measures: consider the consequences if Conservatives applied this rule to climate change) are justified.

Think about this for a minute. Short of locking up everybody in prison, there is no way to make the country 100% safe. And if Gitmo is any example, our ability to identify potentially dangerous people is rather low. (So far, over s 500 or the some 800+ detained have been released - by the Bush Administration.)

Although I deplore pop psychology, I can't resist indulging in it. Cheney has suffered 4 heart attacks. Is it possible that Gitmo and torture are the price America has paid for a Vice President scared beyond reason of dying?