Who Should Be On Trial-- Cheney, Morsi, Christie… Sisi?

Look, I'm all for holding politicians accountable for their criminal behavior and abuse of power. After reading Barton Gellman's brilliant book on Cheney, Angler, I'm more convinced than ever that Cheney should be rotting in a prison for the rest of his short miserable life, along with David Addington, his chief hatchet man. During the first Bush-Cheney term, Cheney had his way on everything. He reinvented the NSA as a weapon against American citizens which it still is today. By the second term, wiser heads had prevailed on Bush to rein him in a little. Gellman: "In the second term, the big donors who met with him periodically at the Hoover Institution were saying, according to David Brady, the deputy director, that Cheney seemed 'pissed off all the time, an increasingly bitter man who doesn't like where he is.'" He was especially bitter about his inability to persuade Bush to go to war against Iran and Noth Korea.

For more than a year, frustrated at the president's disinclination to use force, some Cheney advisors had been floating a scenario in which Israel could mount a largely symbolic strike that should force Bush's hand. David Wurmser, recently departed from Cheney's office, told a private strategy group in the first week of May 2007 that Israel could draw the United States into military conflict with Tehran by firing conventional ballistic missiles at Natanz. Missiles would not do much damage, but Iran would be likely to retaliate against nearby U.S. forces as well as against Israel.

…Never exchange concrete benefits for the promise of future behavior by a rogue regime, Cheney said. When Colin Powell suggested publicly in early 2001 that Bush would pick up talks where Bill Clinton had left off, he was forced to retract his remarks. "Sometimes you get a little too far forward in your skis," he said. The vice president did not oppose talks in principle, "but he was certainly for applying much more pressure, and getting others to do the same," according to Aaron Friedberg, an Asia policey expert who dod strategic planning on his staff. "We used ti talk around the office about a 'talk and squeeze' strategy." During interagency meetings, Cheney and his staff said North Korea should begin with "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement" of its nuclear program before the United States made any payments. That standard, said Undersecretary of State John Boltion during the first term, when Cheney's position carried the day, "is 'engagement' like we engaged the Japanese on the deck of the Missouri in Tokyo Bay in 1945." Washington need only discuss with Pyongyang, he said, "the terms of its surrender." … Cheney and his advisers believed that the North Korean regime was incapable by nature of honoring an agreement.

And Cheney worked to keep all contrary opinions from ever reaching Bush. He used the NSA to spy on everyone in the Adminsitration-- everyone. Gellman: "Anyone who sent a memo to Condi Rice, for example, addressed it to @NSA, and it went not only to the national security advisor, her two executive assistants, and two secretaries, but also to the vice president's office… Cheney's aides were called the Watchers by their nervous counterparts on other agencies."

That was a tangent… all that Cheney stuff. I just wanted to contrast how we treat our criminal pols-- protect them from prosecution and take anything else "off the table"-- with what Egypt is doing t with trumped up charges against its only ever legitimately-elected president Mohammed Morsi, who was removed and kidnapped in a military coup. He's being tied to "terrorism" and being forced to stand trial for espionage. His closest advisors are also being tried.

Some of the defendants, including Essam Haddad, Mr Morsi's second in command when president, were also accused of betraying state secrets to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

The prosecution also alleged Muslim Brotherhood involvement in a surge in attacks on soldiers and police following Mr Morsi's overthrow, centred mostly in the restive Sinai peninsula.

Some of the attacks, which have killed dozens of soldiers and policemen, have been claimed by Al-Qaeda inspired groups with no known links to the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood.

But prosecutors say the attacks were carried out to "bring back the deposed president and to bring Egypt back into the Muslim Brotherhood's grip."

The military junta that is in power called it "the biggest case of conspiracy in Egypt's history." I wonder if Chris Christie ever faces a trial for his George Washington Bridge scandal and conspiracy. I bet not.