Unindicted war criminal Dick Cheney is afraid of being tried for war crimes according to former Colin Powell chief-of-staff Lawrence Wilkerson. It also appears that he won’t have any friends left among former members of the Bush administration once they read In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir.
“I think he’s just trying to, one, assert himself so he’s not in some subsequent time period tried for war crimes and, second, so that he somehow vindicates himself because he feels like he needs vindication. That in itself tells you something about him,” Wilkerson told ABC News, explaining that Cheney may have “angst” because of receiving deferments instead of serving in the Vietnam War like Wilkerson and others in the administration.
“He’s developed an angst and almost a protective cover, and now he fears being tried as a war criminal so he uses such terminology as ‘exploding heads all over Washington’ because that’s the way someone who’s decided he’s not going to be prosecuted acts: boldly, let’s get out in front of everybody, let’s act like we are not concerned and so forth when in fact they are covering up their own fear that somebody will Pinochet him,” Wilkerson said alluding to the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested for war crimes.
Wilkinson also described Cheney as being power-hungry:
Wilkerson adds, “Something happened to Dick Cheney and it wasn’t just 9/11,” which Cheney cites as deeply changing him. Wilkerson said the former vice president always “coveted power” and that Cheney was “fully expecting that he was going to be vice-president” when he headed up the search team for Bush.
“I can’t speak to the psychosomatic or the genetic problems with heart attacks or whatever, but I can speak to power,” Wilkerson said. “He wanted desperately to be president of the United States … he knew the Texas governor was not steeped in anything but baseball, so he knew he was going to be president and I think he got his dream. He was president for all practical purposes for the first term of the Bush administration.”
