One thought too many

We've all lived through Dick Cheney's outrageousness. Alongside his grim reaper Addington and legal waterboy John Yoo, he's perpetrated many grievances against America's reputation and standing in the world--not to mention against human beings.

But this one makes me angry. The New York Times reports that in 2002 Cheney and his cohorts tried to persuade Bush that military action in an American city was justified. Evidently, sleeper cells were on his mind and nothing short of military action could appease him. In contrast to his almost too cool public appearances, this grim episode proves how absolutely unhinged Cheney was during this time period. To be sure, in 2002 danger was in the air, and we wanted our public officials to be acutely sensitive to the very real possibility that more strikes on domestic soil was immanent. Nevertheless, to contemplate something so drastic in a case where more or less nothing was at stake, demonstrates the underlying paranoia which had seized his mind. Of course, the military strike never took place, evidently due to Bush's cooler, more reasonable mind (sic!). But the fact that it was even seriously deliberated evinces what Bernard Williams once quipped as 'one thought too many'.