A fortnight after taking office, our new president got some unsolicited advice from the old, departed vice president: Do things just as I did or you will bring catastrophe upon the nation. It will be your fault and failure. Any departure, whatsoever, from the policies I hatched means a "high probability" that terrorists will successfully carry out a nuclear or biological attack. Be warned young man, the blood will be upon your hands.

Barack Obama, Dick Cheney admonishes, must embrace his dark deeds - abduct people, torture them, imprison them without charges, deny them legal representation, spit on basic human and civil rights, illegally spy on tens of millions of innocent Americans, trample on the Constitution, declare the president is a monarch accountable and answerable to no one, brand nations as irredeemable enemies, treat allies with contempt and behave as the world's bully. 

Failure to follow every one of Dick Cheney's pronouncements will result in a national disaster. "When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry," Cheney said in an interview with Politico.

Like Rush Limbaugh, Cheney's bosom buddy and side kick in serial lies, distortions, misrepresentations and straw man arguments, Big Dick takes on unidentified "people," "they" and the amorphous "administration." Who is more concerned about reading Miranda rights to bin Laden's killers than protecting Americans? Cheney couldn't name one, even if keeping his government-provided, socialized medicine pacemaker depended on doing so.

Cheney - just relinquishing the vice presidency during the worst administration in U.S. history - has the arrogance and chutzpah to give a gratuitous and condescending lecture to a president just starting out after being elected with a promise to take the nation in a new direction.

Cheney's purpose was not to share his experiences in a generous and gracious gesture, but rather to engage in a transparently partisan act of self-vindication and attempt to scuttle Obama's willingness to try something new.

"If it hadn't been for what we did - with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, the Patriot Act, and so forth - then we would have been attacked again," Cheney told Politico. "Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-causality attack on the U.S." 

Cheney conveniently ignores his own role - as head of Bush's taskforce on terrorism - in completely ignoring the threat of al Qaeda until after the Sept. 11th attacks. Cheney received the same CIA briefing as Bush on August 6, 2001 in a warning entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" and did nothing to respond to the threat. When Bush appeared before the 9/11 Commission, he would only do so accompanied by Cheney, a reflection of the Vice President's significant role in shaping U.S preparedness to the threat from bin Laden, which was essentially to do nothing.  

The more solemn and ominous Cheney sounds, the more pure bullshit he's spewing. It's hard to find a politician on earth who lies with such serenity and ease, certainly polished by a lifetime of practice.

His latest, monstrous lie is that inmates released from Guantanamo have "gone back to the business of being terrorists" and he's able to precisely quantify the recidivism. Cheney told Politico 61 of those set free - "that's about 11 or 12 percent" - are now back spreading terror.

First of all, George W. Bush made the decision to release them. Is he therefore responsible for their return as merchants of murder? The Pentagon tosses recidivism numbers out willy-nilly. They are widely inconsistent and there is no way to confirm the claims. Do freed terrorists sign up with some kind of international parole office and report each week about what they are up to?

Cheney argues Gitmo provides a "first-class program" and "a necessary facility" where prisoners are well treated and fed. By what measurements? How many suicide attempts have there been? Why have so few been charged with specific acts of terrorism? How many young men rotting there were rounded up in Afghanistan because rival tribesmen got paid bounties from the CIA? How effective is the American gulag for recruiting terrorists?

There is nothing in our history that compares to Cheney's attempt to undercut a new president and his vile message is a naked attempt to justify his own failures and try to escape the harsh judgment history will soon provide.

With a degree of arrogance - stunning even by Cheney's standards - he's trying to thwart the historic verdict on his malfeasance in a shameless display of self-righteousness. Here's a guy who spent weeks at a time hiding in his bat cave consumed with paranoia and his psychotic sense of self importance and indispensability. How has the nation survived for even two weeks without Cheney's wisdom and strong hand?

Cheney was the supreme inside operator easily manipulating an inexperienced and usually disinterested president who deferred to his judgment and gave him wide powers no president ever before ceded to a vice president - powers that have no basis in the constitution.

Cheney is trying to position himself for history as a wise, valiant leader who protected the nation in times of great peril. He should be remembered as a ruthless, hack politician. Some highlights of his public life need amplification.

Cheney was an enthusiastic supporter of the war in Vietnam but applied for and received five draft deferments once telling a reporter, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service." In fact, Cheney was angling to grab any political job he could and spent most of his adult life feeding at the public trough.

His most profitable stint in the private sector was as Chairman and CEO of Halliburton, a job he got cashing in on his connections as Secretary of Defense in the administration of George H.W. Bush.

During the Gulf War Cheney accelerated the privatization of the U.S. military, and Halliburton had an entire division providing those services. During Cheney's watch, Halliburton paid millions of dollars in bribes to foreign governments.

Halliburton and other war profiteers raked in more that $100 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon's deputy inspector general says there are more than 150 open investigations into allegations of bribery, defective products, bid-rigging, theft and conflicts of interest stemming from the wars.      

That's the legacy of Cheney's public and private careers. Senator Patrick Leahy publicly questioned Cheney still receiving residual payments from Halliburton while vice president. Cheney's response was to tell Leahy, "Go fuck yourself."

Cheney has two convictions for drunk driving and shot a hunting companion in the face following a luncheon where he had "a beer." Cheney hid from the Sheriff for a day and did not visit the wounded man in the hospital.

No one - not even George W. Bush - did more to shape and sell the lies that led to the war in Iraq than Dick Cheney. He said - without reservations - that Iraq had resumed a nuclear weapons program and that Mohamed Atta, one of the 9/11 terrorists, met with Iraqi intellegence operatives in Prague. Both are demonstrable lies.

Cheney got his deputy, Scooter Libby, to reveal the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame and imperil the lives of everyone she had contact with during her career. The motive was pure vengeance against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who exposed the lie Cheney and Bush peddled that Iraq was trying to buy enriched uranium from Niger.

After more than one million Iraqi casualties and more that 4,500 American soldiers killed, PBS's Jim Lehrer recently asked Cheney if the war was worth the carnage. "I think so," was all Cheney could say.

Cheney's policies have fostered terrorism and made the nation less secure. He said in the Politico interview that protecting the nation's security is "a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business." If he tossed in "greedy, malicious and vengeful," Cheney would have perfectly described his approach to public service. Get out a wooden stake and pound it into this vile, evil man's dark, political heart.

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BILL GALLAGEHR