The Vice President of the United States who, in many respects, is actually the President of the United States, recently made a trip to the Gulf. During the trip he visited Baghdad, where, as one might expect, he expounded on illusions of success and progress. Not surprisingly, according to Arabic media sources quoted by Juan Cole…

“Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that US Vice President Dick Cheney was greeted, on his surprise visit to Baghdad, by a rain of mortar shells on the Green Zone and by protests in several cities organized by Puritan Shiite followers of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. One could have added the bombing in Irbil, the seat of close US ally Massoud Barzani, the Kurdistan leader.

Aljazeera is alleging that high on Cheney’s agenda is getting the new petroleum bill passed through parliament. That legislation is certainly one of the four benchmarks the Bush administration has pushed on the al-Maliki government, and given Cheney’s background as CEO of Halliburton, it is plausible that the oil bill looms large in his visit. It is probably behind his scolding of Iraqi parliamentarians for even considering a two-month hiatus this summer.

Cheney arrived a day after a majority of Iraqi parliamentarians signed a petition in favor of the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Actually, last fall 131 signed a similar petition. By the rules of the Iraqi parliament, such petitions have no force. The sense of those deputies was communicated to a committee, which promised to report out the resolution to the entire parliament, which it apparently never did. So, Tuesday’s move shows a 10% rise in commitment to the principle of withdrawal over 6 months ago, but may be no more consequential. A petition is not a vote, and is a sign of how powerless the parliamentarians feel.”

To me, Dick Cheney is, by far, the most dangerous person left in the Bush administration. And while there are claims that his influence has been weakened by the Plame scandal, there is no denying that he still has clout. While there are those that believe the impeachment of the President is warranted, I would place the impeachment of the Vice President as a higher priority. Without Cheney, Bush is, in many ways, akin to the boy in Where The Wild Things Are that is just a boy despite the fact that he is wearing the suit of a monster and a crown.

One of Cheney’s stops during his visit was the aircraft carrier Stennis. Parked some 150 miles off the coast of Iran, from it Cheney railed against the Iranians in what can only be seen as an overtly symbolic gesture of America’s military presence in the region. US aircraft carriers continue to conduct noncoms off the coast of Iran, and one has to question the purpose of them if not to provoke the Iranians – something that I am sure Mr. Cheney would love to see happen.