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What does Cheney’s lack of military service have to do with his analysis of the situation in Iraq? The answer is not one damn thing. You seem to conflate issues to serve some goal. Why that is I have no idea but doing that does not give credence to your views on either issue.

I, of course, agree 100%.

With some degree of hesitancy, because the thought of it is horrendous, I'm going to state this hypothetical. Had Vice-President seen combat in Vietnam and been killed by enemy fire, how would America have handled the wake of Clinton's 9/11? While President Bush surrounded himself with good men, the absence of Dick Cheney may have drawn things in a far different direction. The point I'm trying to make, albeit in a ham-fisted manner, is that Vice-President Cheney was truly "The Indispensable Man" for our times.

Yes, he's not without a few warts but his brave leadership, resolute firmness and steadfast morality continues to inspire. And he never apologizes to America's enemies.

There was a reason why the Founders designed the system so that control of the military would be by civilians. It is just weird, considering their reasoning (which is far more insightful than almost anything else since then, especially lately), that someone would believe that military experience gives anyone any sort of particular advantage as Commander-in-Chief or makes one candidate for the office necessarily better than another.

The purpose of the armed forces is to protect the country from foreign enemies. The president doesn't at all need to know anything about operational matters in the military to be able to direct them to fulfill the goal any more than I need to know the mechanics of the internal combustion engine to be able to drive down to the store for a gallon of milk.

Thinking otherwise is really just a variation on the mistaken notion that the chief executive is supposed to be some kind of wonk who knows everything about everything so he can tinker and fiddle with things in order to effect a solution. He is supposed to know the Constitution and the role provided for him by it and then confine himself to that. His job is not "to run the economy" or "to run the nation" or anything else.

The economy is not the government. The nation is not the government. Both are to be protected by the government from enemies both foreign and domestic. But when people in the government start believing because they definitely have the power to eff up both the economy and the nation that they therefore have some sort of responsibility or right to decide how the economy is to be run or what the goals of the nation should be, then they have demonstrated that they are unfit for office and have become enemies both of the nation and its economy.

George Washington said that we are to consider the government as an untrustworthy servant, necessary for accomplishing certain tasks, but never to be given control of the house. Increasingly since the founding we have been screwed over by untrustworthy servants spending our money and commandeering our time for their own purposes. It's time they were all fired.

I'm just tired of having big-government globalists -- who would convert to Islam before they ever put on a military uniform themselves -- pissing away thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers' pockets -- on these delusional nation-building campaigns.

My original point on this thread was that Cheney was a hell of a lot smarter in 1994 than he is in 2014 on this issue. If he thinks U.S. military intervention in Iraq is important, then let him send his own children and grandchildren to lead the invasion.