My skin crawls every time I hear a noncommittal ooops, my bad

So, Dick Cheney admits full responsibility for shooting his friend while on a hunting trip, and claims it was the worst day of his life. This is supposed to make me feel good enough about him to drop the questions? No chance.

            I found four good definitions for the word responsible: 1) liable to be called upon to answer for one’s acts or decisions, answerable, 2) able to fulfill one’s obligations, reliable, trustworthy, 3) able to choose for oneself between right and wrong, and 4) involving accountability for important duties. I believe the Dick fails on all four counts.

            Waiting until someone else leaks the news before coming forward does not demonstrate acceptable liability or answering for acts or decisions. Isn’t this like the small child who says nothing until about scratching the dining room table until his brother tells on him three days later, and they’ve had a chance to talk over the story they will tell but still can’t keep it straight? The wise parent would say, “The scratch isn’t important, but your reluctance to come forward and admit the truth when it happened, and your failure to tell the truth now, is.”

            It is the obligation of every hunter to obtain the appropriate license, and follow the rules of hunting. A reliable person obeys all laws and rules. A trustworthy friend would rather lose a bird than a friend. A trustworthy leader would be conscious at all times about demonstrating ultimate self-control and caution, especially with a gun in his hand.

            Across the board, Dick Cheney’s message appears to be that he will choose wrong when it serves his purpose. He chose to go into a war with fake intelligence, and repeatedly states his wish to stand by that decision. To rub salt in that wound, he guarantees he will profit from that war by awarding bids to Halliburton, even though it has been proven the company has short-changed the taxpayers and cheated the people (troops) to whom the company delivers service. With this history, hearing several versions of exactly how the hunting mishap occurred (friendly fire takes on a whole new meaning when it is indeed a friend, huh) comes as no surprise, and leaves no question about this man’s ability to choose between right and wrong.

            Serving this country in a full-time capacity is an important duty. Dick Cheney and George Bush frequently cart half or Washington to Texas, exhibiting how little interest either of them have in proving they want to be accountable to the American people for their important positions. They whip in and out of cities, tying up traffic and reserving medical services, presenting themselves to select audiences for totally partisan gain, at the cost of every taxpayer, including those they have arrested for coming near them with opinions or criticisms. It is no surprise he offers the same level of accountability for his hunting mistake.

            My skin crawls every time I hear a noncommittal ooops, my bad come from a kid. Hearing it from Dick Cheney is about the same as hearing his infamous, “Go fuck yourself,” echoing across the world.

            This certainly doesn’t meet my understanding of responsibility. And if this was the worst day of his life, what does that say for the days he found out there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or the day he found out about the Abu Graib horror, or all the days he found out about other Americans being shot in Iraq with real bullets? I guess they don’t matter, since they aren’t friends and contributors?