Dick Cheney, one of the brave men who started the Iraq war and helped make the world safe for water-boarding has canceled a speaking engagement in Toronto Canada due to security fears. The April engagement was promoted by a company named Spectre Live Corp.
“He felt that in Canada the risk of violent protest was simply too high,” said Ryan Ruppert, president of promotions company Spectre Live Corp., which had booked Mr. Cheney for an April 24 appearance at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
In September, Mr. Cheney was speaking at a private club in Vancouver when protesters massed outside the front door harassing ticket holders and in one instance, choking a security guard. The former vice-president was reportedly held inside the building for more than seven hours as Vancouver Police in riot gear dispersed the demonstrators.
“God forbid there was ever an emergency,” said Ruppert, noting Cheney’s history of heart problems.
Cheney has said he has no regrets about his embrace of water-boarding and “harsh” interrogation techniques. And after leaving office he said "I would strongly support using it again if circumstances arose where we had a high-value detainee and that was the only way we could get him to talk."
However Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aide to ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell, says
“He’s developed angst and almost a protective cover, and now he fears being tried as a war criminal.”
Bigtime.
Maybe he’s developed a greater degree of angst in his later years, which would be understandable in an unindicted war criminal with a mechanical heart, but he’s always been a big talker who kept himself well insulated from any actual danger or conflict.
If he, indeed, had to spend “more than seven hours” parked inside a private club, I have two thoughts:
1. Boo hoo. Forced to sit in a plush oversized leather chair, nursing a top-shelf Scotch. Now we know the real meaning of “torture.”
2. You mean the club didn’t have alternate exits? Don’t they have fire laws in Vancouver? And even if the club has one solitary obvious front door, you’d think the first thing they’d arrange for a Cheney visit is a discreet alternate way in and out of the building. Isn’t that rule #1 for security planners? Especially for Dick f’n Cheney?
Even moreso with a facility like the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. I’m sure there are numerous ways in and out, some very easily protected. Once again, as he’s proved over and over again throughout his career, starting with his five draft deferments during the Vietnam War, the man is the very model of a modern Chickenhawk.
Well, we can eliminate paranoid from his psychiatric chart; because he is wanted for trial as a war criminal in several countries.
Canada-Avoidance-Syndrome is, however, a serious issue for an old oil-man like himself…’cause everyone knows thats where the Tar Sands are!
Looks like, when the Neocons rise again and devise a plan to invade Canada, the Generalissimo will just have to stand on the southern shore Lake Erie and wave a hanky as the Halliburton Specials make the crossing.
Hell, just give the fucker the shotgun he used on his friend on that hunting excursion. Of course, he probably blast his own security guards.