Monday, June 28, 2010

The CHENI@D:
Volume Eleven

by Bill Costley


Book CXXI: CHENEY LIKELY


[newspoem]

Dick CHENEYs daughter Liz says:
the hospitalized former VPOTUS
could go home on Mon. after receiving
meds. to treat a fluid buildup related to
his aggressive form of heart disease.

The 69-year-old VPOTUS ,
who has had 5 heart attacks,
was admitted to GWU Hospital on Fri.
after experiencing discomfort.
His last heart attack, described
as a mild one, was in Feb.

Liz CHENEY tells
"FOX News Sunday"
that her father is feeling better &
hopes to be released on Mon.

CHENEY's office says CHENEY
has received intravenous meds & 
that he's "markedly improved."


Book CXXII: CHENEY DISCHARGED

[newspoem]

WASHINGTON -- Former VPOTUS  CHENEY
has been discharged from GWU hospital
after his latest bout with heart-related trouble.

CHENEY was admitted to GWU Hospital on Fri.
after reporting that he wasn't feeling well. He
underwent testing & ultimately received
medication to treat a fluid buildup related to
his aggressive form of heart disease.

His office said on Sunday that the former 
VPOTUS's condition has improved considerably,
& he left the hospital as expected on Mon.

CHENEY (69) has a long history of heart disease.


Book CXXIII: CHENEY’s NOFEAR™

for Peter Bates

CHENEY’s NoFear™ boggles:
“Don’t sweat it” says CHENEY,
“Steele’s in my pocket, Q-balls
safe & sound. Safer & sounder.”
What does CHENEY mean by it?
Can we decode his cryptic mind?
“What I don’t fear, I don’t doubt”
crypticizes big-daddy CHENEY,
“thanx 2 CHENEY NoFear™
America rules the whole world.”


Book CXXIV: CHENEY’s LVAD

[newspoem based on
 "Cheney's new heart device {LVAD} could be permanent"
by Kathleen Hennessey & Thomas H. Maugh II
Tribune Washington Bureau
Friday, July 16, 2010 12:00 am Updated: 10:30 pm.]


Former VPOTUS Dick CHENEY,
battling a lifetime of cardiac disease,
hasn't decided whether/not to seek a heart transplant,
but could use the device
surgically inserted into his chest
last week as permanent therapy for his condition;

according to a source
close to the CHENEY family
& to heart surgeons familiar with the treatment.
"He has not made any decision
yet about a transplant,"
He is totally focused right now
on recuperation & rehab
with his (current device)."

[The source asked not to be named
as commenting on private matters.]

The device implanted into the former VPOTUS' chest,
known as an LVAD (left ventricular assist device)
is often described as a temporary therapy
representing a "bridge" to a transplant,
fueling speculation that CHENEY, 69,
may be on the path toward seeking a new heart.

But experts said the newest models of the device,
essentially a pump, were considered "destination therapies"
that could last for years."There are patients who have been
having a wonderful quality of life for more than 5 years already,"
said Dr. Richard J. Shemin, chief of cardiothoracic surgery
at UCLA Reagan Medical Center. "Because it's
a more modern device,  smaller,  more efficient,
there is a lot of enthusiasm for it."
[Shemin has no direct knowledge of CHENEY's care.]

CHENEY, who suffered
his 1st of 5 heart attacks at age 37,
announced Wed. that he'd undergone surgery
last week to insert the device.
In a statement released by his office,
he called the procedure a new phase
of "increasing congestive heart failure"
but said he believed he would soon
resume an active life.

CHENEY may not be a good candidate
for a heart transplant,
primarily because of his age (69).
Due to the scarcity of available hearts,
surgeons typically prefer to reserve them
for younger patients with a longer expected lifespan.
Factors that could rule out a transplant:
uncontrollable cancer,
multiple organ failures,
chronic infection.


Book CXXV: WHISPERING’S HEARD

Whispering’s heard
from furthest right:

"A living donor for
VPOTUS CHENEY,
a new red heart to
propel him fwd to
rightest victory..."

Who steps fwd?
bakers’ dozens of
nearly-dead Wyomen.


Book CXXVI: TE@ P@RTY W@ILS

Mad as a whumping WWWalrus
roaring at a whacky-Hatter,
CHENEY raves: “NO tea!,
NO coffee! NO caffeine!
Can’t you see, hear, heart,
audiate my fix? NO, NO
caffeine! NO caffeine!”

“No caff, you fiend?” quips
the googly-eyed Hatter,
his whacky-grin absorbing
his unnaturalized smile.

The Dormouse burbles, as
The Tea-Pot bub-bubbles, &
The Tea-Party wails w/out, &
CHENEY clutches his metal heart.


Book CXXVII: CHENEY WOULD WOOD

CHENEY dreams of publishing
a sold-wood edition of his memoirs
suitable for cold WYoming evenings
before the blazing stone fireplace:

“Hell, they don’t have to read them;
they can just be warmed to the heart
as they feel the paper burn to ash:
The First Book you burn, not read!”

A deathly smile spreads across
CHENEY’s chilly jaws prefiguring
his long-desired DC-monument.
“They will come & kneel before me!”

(he thinks), “Kneel their gratitude!”
(dreaming of grateful generations.)


Book CXXVIII: MUBARAK A GOOD FRIEND

[newspoem based on “Cheney Calls Mubarak a 'Good Friend’”  SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – (AP)

Ex-VPOTUS Dick CHENEY called
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
a good friend & U.S. ally & urged
the Obama administration to move
cautiously as turmoil continued
to shake that nation's government.

CHENEY said the U.S. should
take measured steps in public,
suggesting too much pressure
could backfire. "There is a reason
why a lot of diplomacy is conducted
in secret, good reasons for confidentiality
in (some of) those communications;

I think President Mubarak needs to be
treated as he deserved over the years;
he has been a good friend," CHENEY said,
on the centennial of POTUS Reagan's birth,

noting it can be difficult for some
foreign leaders to act on U.S. advice
"in a visible way" without appearing
compromised in their own countries.
“The bottom line is, in the end,
whatever comes next in Egypt
is going to be determined
by the people of Egypt."

Looking markedly thinner than
during his days in Washington,
sitting throughout his remarks:

CHENEY said Mubarak helped
the U.S. get military aircraft
into the region in the 1991 Gulf War,
& committed troops to fight alongside
U.S. forces in the liberation of Kuwait.
"He's been a good man, a good friend
& ally to the United States.

We need to remember that."

About a possible outcome:
"I don't know. There comes
a time for everybody
when it's time to hang it up
& move on. That's a decision
only the Egyptians can make."


Book CXXIX: CHENEY PYRAMIDS

Pyramids stonily rise
for the CHENEY family
by CHENEY's WY house
in CHENEY Valley(tm)

where the Bozell family
& other conservative
families are choosing
CHENEY pyramids.

You can too. Contact
CHENEY.pyramid.com
Click: [Great Families]

Great conservatives
deserve great pyramids.


Book CXXX: ON OSAMA’S DEATH

A wan, drawn CHENEY
said briefly on MSNBC:

“This really is a great day
for an awful lot of people

who worked very hard
for a long time.” [QED]



Book CXXXI: FROM THE CHENEY ROLLS

Former VPOTUS Dick Cheney’s new memoir
claims he urged George W. Bush to bomb
a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site in June 2007.
--NY Times, August 24, 2011 by Charlie Savage
[Reporting contributed by Julie Bosman from New York,
and Helene Cooper, Mark Landler, Mark Mazzetti
and Steven Lee Myers from Washington.]

“Bush opted for a diplomatic approach after other advisers
—    still stinging over “the bad intelligence we had received
—    about Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction”.
“I again made the case for U.S. military action against the reactor,”
CHENEY writes: “But I was a lone voice. After I finished,
POTUS Bush said: “Does anyone here agree with the VPOTUS?’
Not a single hand went up around the room.”
Bush chose to try diplomatic pressure
to force the Syrians to abandon their secret program,
but the Israelis bombed the site in September 2007.
CHENEY’s account of the discussion
appears in his autobiography,
“In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir,”
due to be published next week.
A copy was obtained by The NYT.
CHENEY’s book, pugnacious in tone
expresses little regret about many of the most
controversial decisions of the Bush administration —
casting himself as an outlier among top advisers
who increasingly took what he saw as misguided…
on national security issues. Praising Bush
as “an outstanding leader,” CHENEY
whose guarding the secrecy of internal deliberations
was a hallmark of his time in office, divulges conflicts
with the inner circle: George J. Tenet, CIA director
resigned in 2004 just “when the going got tough,”
a decision CHENEY calls “unfair to the president.”
CHENEY believes SECSTATE Powell tried to
undermine Bush by privately expressing doubts
about the Iraq war CHENEY confirms he pushed
to have Powell removed from the cabinet
after the 2004 election. “It was as though he thought
the proper way to express his views was by
criticizing administration policy to people
outside the government. His resignation
“was for the best.”

CHENEY faults former SECSTATE Rice
for naïveté in her efforts to forge a nuclear weapons
agreement with North Korea, & reports he fought
with White House advisers over softening
the POTUS’ speeches on Iraq.CHENEY
acknowledged the administration
misunderestimated the challenges in Iraq,
but he says the real blame for the violence
was with the terrorists.

CHENEY defends the Bush administration’s
decision to inflict what he called “tough interrogations”
—    like the suffocation technique known as waterboarding —
—    on captured terrorism suspects, saying
—    it extracted information that saved lives
—    & rejects calling such techniques “torture.”
In discussing the much-disputed “16 words”
about Iraq’s supposed hunt for uranium in Niger
that were included in Bush’s
2003 State of the Union address
to help justify the eventual invasion,
unlike other aides, CHENEY saw no need to apologize.
SECSTATE Rice eventually came around to his view.
“She came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk
& tearfully admitted I had been right,” he wrote.

CHENEY’s book opens with an account of his experiences
during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,
when he (essentially) commanded the government’s response
from a bunker beneath the White House while Bush —
who was away hampered by communications breakdowns —
played a peripheral role. CHENEY writes the did not want
to make any formal statement to the nation that day.
“My past government experience,” CHENEY writes,
“prepared me to manage the crisis
during those first few hours on 9/11,
but I knew that if I went out and spoke to the press,
it would undermine Bush & be bad for him and for the country.
“We were at war. Our commander in chief
needed to be seen as in-charge, strong, & resolute
— as POTUS George W. Bush was.”
CHENEY appears to relish much of the criticism
heaped on him by liberals, but reveals he had
offered to resign several times as Bush
prepared for his re-election in 2004
because he feared becoming a burden
on the Republican ticket. After a few days,
however, CHENEY said that Bush
said he wanted him to stay.
In the Bush administration’s second term,
CHENEY’’s influence waned. When Bush
decided to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld as SECDEF
after the 2006 midterm elections, CHENEY
said he was not given a chance to object.
CHENEY praised Obama’s support,
as a senator from Illinois, for passing a bank bailout bill
at the height of the financial crisis,
shortly before the 2008 election, but criticizes Obama’s
decision to withdraw 33,000 additional troops
he sent to Afghanistan in 2009 by September 2012,
and writes that he has been “happy to note” that
Obama has failed to close the prison
in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as he had pledged.
CHENEY’s long struggle with heart disease recurs in the book.
he wrote a letter of resignation, dated March 28, 2001,
and told an aide to give it to Bush
if he ever had a heart attack or stroke
that left him incapacitated.
And in the epilogue, CHENEY writes that
after undergoing heart surgery in 2010,
he was unconscious for weeks & had
a prolonged, vivid dream that
he was living in an Italian villa,
pacing the stone paths to get coffee & newspapers.


Book CXXXII: WHERE {CHENEY} [HID]

exVPOTUS CHENEY now
admits he hid [in a bunker]
under his DC home "behind
a massive steel door secured
by an elaborate lock, w/a
narrow connecting hallway
lined with shelves filled w/
communications equipment,"
& @ Camp David, Maryland
& wayback home in Wyoming


Click here for Volume Twelve


Bill Costley has served on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the National Writers Union. He lives in Santa Clara, CA.
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