Dick Cheney: evil and stupid, right up to the end

Seymour Hersh's informative report on the challenges and opportunities the Obama administration finds itself with regard to the Middle East is worth a read. But it contains this little reminder of how very involved Dick Cheney has been over the last eight years, in every single foreign policy disaster, especially when it comes to Israel's disastrous incursions in Lebanon and Gaza. Oh, and what an asshole he is, personally, to boot.

The Obama transition team also helped persuade Israel to end the bombing of Gaza and to withdraw its ground troops before the Inauguration. According to the former senior intelligence official, who has access to sensitive information, “Cheney began getting messages from the Israelis about pressure from Obama” when he was President-elect. Cheney, who worked closely with the Israeli leadership in the lead-up to the Gaza war, portrayed Obama to the Israelis as a “pro-Palestinian,” who would not support their efforts (and, in private, disparaged Obama, referring to him at one point as someone who would “never make it in the major leagues”). But the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of “smart bombs” and other high-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel. “It was Jones”—retired Marine General James Jones, at the time designated to be the President’s national-security adviser—“who came up with the solution and told Obama, ‘You just can’t tell the Israelis to get out.’ ” (General Jones said that he could not verify this account; Cheney’s office declined to comment.)

Has there been a more corrosive figure in our national politics in decades? And has there been anyone who's done more to harm the respective national interests of the United States and Israel?