In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir by Dick Cheney /Book Review

Dick Cheney (Author), Liz Cheney (Contributor)

Hardcover: 576 pages     Publisher: Threshold Editions (August 30, 2011) 
Language: English   ISBN-10: 1439176191   ISBN-13: 978-1439176191

REVIEW

If you’re thinking about going out and buying Dick Cheney’s, “In My Time:  A Personal and Political Memoir”--stop!  This is a call to boycott his self serving cherry-picked-factoid doorstop—times are tough, save the money.  There’s just no reason to purchase his book unless you’re studying the anatomy of a crack pot villain or want to donate even more to the wealth of the former United States Vice President.

We’ve all met someone like Dick Cheney  who's never wrong.  This vilifying of old colleagues and spinning yet another account of history will have to substitute for blowing up the countries he didn’t get to.  Vexing, venting and grumbling about his checked power and bad advice that was ignored should give most of us remaining on planet earth an after-the-fact sigh of relief.  Apparently, the all-knowing Cheney has little respect or positive to say about those who’ve disagreed with him—specifically George Tenet, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

Collectively, reviewer’s caution against hunting with Mr. Cheney, apparently for good reason.  His new memoir seems to indicate that the self imagined Mr. Field & Stream, is not done attempting to manipulate the herd into believing that diplomacy must be guided to the path of most destruction.  Apparently, military force is the only relevant doctrine in Cheney's repertoire—think privatized war and Halliburton," your contractor on the battlefield."

Cheney writes that future U.S. leaders should learn from our nation’s failed efforts to contain North Korea. It's hard not to agree that these are important lessons for American leaders and our diplomats of the future--just not for Cheney’s reasons.  The Vice’s views on 9/11, Iraq, torture and the future seems a worthy contribution to many a future church rummage sale.  That is, until we need to be reminded what we never want to become.

Cheney writes, “when we looked around the world in those first months after 9/11, there was no place more likely to be a nexus between terrorism and WMD capability than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”  Was Halliburton geared up and ready to go somewhere else? He attempts to deceive and minimize his blundering by admitting that in hindsight “some” of the intelligence he received was wrong.

Halliburton has become the object of several controversies involving the 2003 Iraq War and the company's ties to former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.  Cheney retired from the company during the 2000 U.S. presidential election campaign with a severance package worth $36 million.  As of 2004, he had received $398,548 in deferred compensation from Halliburton while Vice President.   Cheney was chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company from 1995 to 2000 and has received stock options from Halliburton.

The never-wrong Cheney stands on his assessment of Iraq despite being wrong--really?  How painful is that for the families who lost loved ones--parents, spouses, children, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and friends?  Apparently, the rest of the world is naïve in Cheney's eyes.