Wheatland schools remove anti-hate banners

More on this issue in the next few days. For now, please visit this site and sign the petition. Let the school board know that Wheatland is no place for hate.

- Meg Lanker, Editor

Docs 4 Patient Care rally in Casper Nov. 21st

This is a slideshow from the Docs 4 Patient Care rally in Casper, Wyo. last Saturday. The Underground was there to interview rally-goers and counter-protesters alike. A recap will follow Friday. A common thread running through the comments of rally attendees was fear. Fear of socialism, fear of government takeovers, fear of out of control spending, or fear for their own families. Stay tuned for The Underground's recap...

Me and Mr. Cheney: A history

Photo: Protesters assemble on Dick and Lynne Cheney Plaza before the dedication. Credit- Meg Lanker, The Underground

Me and Mr. Cheney: A history
Meg Lanker
Monday, September 28, 2009 2:56 PM MDT

It may have been excitement, but I want to believe it was solidarity. The two little boys raised their fists as I marched with the protesters past the University of Wyoming Lab School students on recess. One gap-toothed boy cheered wildly as Nancy Sindelar, a Laramie peace activist, shouted, “These are your rights, kids! It’s the First Amendment at work!”

I watched their eyes light up and the wheels begin to turn. We were more alive than any history book, any documentary, any slideshow. The enthusiasm and unease electrified the air as they pushed forward, crossing Prexy’s Pasture on their way to protest former Vice President Dick Cheney and his dreadfully, ironically-named Cheney International Center.

I marched in solidarity with them Sept. 10. I have marched in solidarity with them since 2003, as the crazy 48-hour deadline for the bombs to drop ticked away and the news anchors waited with baited breath. I knew this invasion was wrong in my inner core. I scrawled furiously in a notebook as the airstrike began on the Iraqi Presidential Palace March 19, 2003. The night vision with white puffs of smoke sanitized the carnage on the ground.

I remembered seeing similar images when the U.S. went into Iraq in 1990. I was in first grade at a small Catholic school in Ohio. My class wrote letters beginning with “Dear Soldier.” I still remembering wishing an unnamed soldier Merry Christmas and not quite understanding why.

Dick Cheney was around for Desert Storm as well – in fact, then-Secretary of Defense Cheney and General Norman Schwarzkopf oversaw the engineering and planning of Desert Storm. In 1990, Cheney said, "I do not believe the President requires any additional authorization from the Congress before committing US forces to achieve our objectives in the Gulf." An unnerving statement, considering what happened nearly 12 years later.

PBS’ Frontline oral history website devoted a section to the former vice president called “Cheney In His Own Words.” In 1991, Cheney gave his perspective on U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf: “We're always going to have to be involved [in the Middle East]. Maybe it's part of our national character, you know we like to have these problems nice and neatly wrapped up, put a ribbon around it. You deploy a force, you win the war and the problem goes away and it doesn't work that way in the Middle East – it never has and isn't likely to in my lifetime.”

Even then, Cheney knew. He knew this would never end – only go quiet for a period.

A friend of mine from my stint in the Navy was deployed to a ship running support operations for the 2003 invasion. He said they were told on the ship that they would “just know” if they were going to war. Later that night, as most prepared to sleep, the ship’s PA system erupted with AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells” and the sounds of pilots firing up the engines of their jets. It was time, he said. He began singing the lyrics to “Hells Bells” on the phone with me – “I’m a rolling thunder, a pouring rain/I’m comin’ on like a hurricane/My lightning’s flashing across the sky/You’re only young but you’re gonna die!”

He called it the “most patriotic time of his life.” This was a year after the invasion began and they finally pulled back into port.

I felt sick.

I watched President George W. Bush land on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln May 1, a ship that had been out to sea for nearly a year and was now forced to sit off the coast of San Diego because of security concerns. The sailors were mocked by the sight of their home for several days. I saw the “Mission Accomplished” banner, the beaming sailors, and a flight-suit clad Bush as pure political theater and nothing else.

Where was Cheney?

As Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and said, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” Cheney was nowhere in sight.

On July 2, 2003, when Bush famously said of the insurgency, “Bring ‘em on,” Cheney was still nowhere in sight.

Yet he took those messages to heart – even when the administration backed off both statements, claiming the notorious banner was “unclear” and letting the “bring ‘em on” blow over.

It also seems that Cheney was at his undisclosed location when Bush spoke of torture. On March 23, 2003, Bush said Iraqi soldiers were “welcoming” American troops, and were “surrendering gleefully, happily.” He emphasized to a cache of White House reporters, “They'll be treated well.”

Andrew Sullivan wrote in the Oct. 2009 edition of The Atlantic of Bush’s resounding condemnation of torture on June 26, 2003 on the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. This was roughly one year before the news broke of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In his speech, Bush said, “I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy.”

There was no mincing of words. According to the Bush administration – or at least Bush – Americans don’t torture.

But anyone who watched news coverage of the Abu Ghraib prison photos, the de-classification of CIA and internal memos urging Bush to declare Taliban and Iraqi insurgents as exempt from the Geneva Conventions, and finally, de-classification of internal documents detailing methods ranging from sexual abuse and threats to the use of power drills and loaded weapons in the “approved” interrogation methods – anyone who watched any coverage of these stories knows better, knows America has tortured.

And it was with this in mind, I watched Cheney transform over the years from a faintly sinister-looking boorish uncle to a chilling criminal organizer of torture at worst and a nefarious bully at best. He was a chief architect in a pre-emptive invasion to find weapons of mass destruction with faulty intelligence, to spread democracy like so much syphilis, and, as many of Cheney’s detractors allege, to secure a significant slice of the Iraqi oil reserves for U.S. corporate profit.

Cheney insisted in a landmark interview March 16, 2003 with the late Tim Russert that the Iraqi oil reserves “obviously, belong to the Iraqi people, need to be put to use by the Iraqi people for the Iraqi people and that will be one of our major objectives.”

In this interview, Cheney made statements that are tragically laughable in hindsight and disastrous in their lack of foresight. He claimed, “My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”

Russert pushed him on this statement and asked, “If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?”

Cheney replied, “Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators… The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question that they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.”

Russert asked about costs of the proposed conflict, which analysts placed at $80 billion then, with a cost of $10 billion for each year of occupation. Cheney declined to elaborate on projected costs in the interview, only acknowledging “there are estimates out there.”

As of Sept. 23, 2009, the cost of the Iraq War was over $165 billion – nearly three times the cost of the war in Afghanistan. Since 2001, the U.S. has spent over $912 billion on these two wars. Much of that money has gone to civilian firms contracted to rebuild Iraq. A principle firm is Cheney’s old haunt, Halliburton, and its subsidiaries.

Cheney headed up the energy development company Halliburton, which bills itself on its website as “one of the world’s largest providers of products and services to the energy industry.”

I wonder if Cheney remembers the speech he gave to the libertarian-leaning-conservative Cato Institute in 1998. The think-tank sponsors numerous symposiums and invited then-Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney to speak at a conference entitled “Collateral Damage: The Economic Cost of U.S. Foreign Policy.”

He delivered a speech on the topic of Defending Liberty in a Global Economy, expounding on the challenges of delivering adequate energy services to a war zone.

Cheney remarked, “The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is.”

And, in 2003, the U.S. went where the business is – the second-largest oil reserve in the world, under the sands of Iraq. Also, in 2003, Halliburton was awarded billions of dollars of no-bid government contracts to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq’s oil industry. Halliburton is also entangled with Blackwater USA, a private security firm under investigation for smuggling weapons into Iraq concealed in dog food bags and, in more serious allegations, of murdering Iraqi civilians for sport.

Since Halliburton held millions in government contracts even before the Iraq war, Cheney sold his Halliburton stock to avoid a conflict of interest as vice president, but retains a severance package and retirements benefits worth millions. These stock sales paid for most of the Cheney International Center.

Cheney and the black gold he holds so dear both share a common characteristic: Both can take the form of crude or refined. Whether it’s screaming, “Go fuck yourself!” at a fellow legislator on the House floor, to smirking “So?” at a reporter who, in 2008, points out two-thirds of Americans no longer think the fight in Iraq is worth it, Dick Cheney held the monopoly on evil in the Bush administration – so much so that I began to regard Bush as a puppet, a faux-martinet standing in as a mouthpiece for what Cheney had planned for America and Iraq.

And here we are. Two, then four, then six years crawled by as the body count on both sides rose and “Mission Accomplished” tasted not of victory but ashes. The war in Iraq appears to stagnate more and more as troops prepare to withdraw, and the forgotten conflict, Afghanistan, transforms into one step forward, two steps back.

As Cheney continually defended the actions of CIA interrogators who “may have” crossed the line on Fox News every time whispers of prosecution of the previous administration began, the University of Wyoming quietly prepared to dedicate the Cheney International Center.

A clichéd little birdie told me the dedication was prepared for Sept. 10 at 10:30 a.m. in front of the center on Dick and Lynne Cheney plaza. I confirmed the dedication with UW spokeswoman Jessica Lowell Aug. 30 and published the news on The Underground.

I knew I had to be there.

I wanted Cheney welcomed with the reminder that he sanctioned torture in the name of every American citizen. I wanted him to know that he could not buy honor. And I wanted him to know that not every Wyoming citizen claims him as a native son – never mind that he was actually born in Nebraska. A petty point, but Wyoming does have a tendency to disown those that dare move here from “back East” or, God forbid, California. Wyoming only claims a select few as its own.

I was also torn about protesting his visit. As the editor of The Underground, it is my job to remain objective when I report the news. I reported on his visit along with the opposition and planned protest to it, which thanks to several Laramie community members tipping off Mead Gruver of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, garnered national attention via the AP wire story “Protests brew over Cheney International Center.”

As the enthusiasm over the protest brewed, I began to suspect I could no longer be objective. This was cemented by UW President Tom Buchanan’s opinion piece in the Casper Star-Tribune Sept. 6 “Tolerance, diversity cut many ways.” Buchanan said he had reviewed a list of those protesting the decision to name the center after Cheney and recognized many friends and colleagues on this list.

Buchanan wrote: “The list includes some good friends and colleagues who have previously admonished the UW administration to support greater diversity and increased tolerance for all views. So it is ironic that they show so little of it when confronted by a situation that challenges their own comfort zone.”

The lack of understanding by the UW administration and Buchanan was incomprehensible and wholly offensive. I immediately fired off a letter in response.

In my letter, published in the Tribune Sept. 9, I wrote: “The protest to this decision has nothing to do with intolerance of Cheney's views or of narrow-mindedness. This has everything to do with naming the center after a man who is suspected of sanctioning torture internationally and numerous violations of U.S. citizens' civil rights.”

It was in that moment any ideas of objectivity fell away. I believe every journalist will one day face a crisis of conscience on whether or not to remain objective manifested by a breakthrough of passion. Mine came that day.

The day of the event, I scrawled the number for the Wyoming ACLU in black Sharpie marker on the arms and hands of nearly 50 people. I marched with the protesters. I created the music mix they blared from a small stereo as we marched from 22nd and Willett Streets to Prexy’s Pasture. I gave comments to the media as a facilitator. I counted nearly double the AP’s estimate of 100 protesters.

And then I stood in the media area, signed in and filmed the event, recorded the speeches and took comments for this feature from protesters, Cheney supporters, Tom Buchanan, and Jessica Lowell.

When Cheney walked out, the protesters booed, supporters cheered, but I remained silent.

When Former U.S. Senator Al Simpson commented on Cheney’s patriotism, how easy it was to protest and how anyone can be a “bitcher,” I continued to remain silent so as to not compromise my recording.

And when Cheney began to speak, not more than 20 feet from where I stood, all of the epithets and all of the curses I wanted shout at him about eight years of lies, sanctioning torture, buying honor, and sending my friends to die in an unjust war strained against my lips. I remained silent.

I remained silent because there were so many others hoisting signs and yelling what I have wanted to say to the man since I watched the bombs drop in 2003. The throng of protesters remained, for the most part, polite during the speeches – although Simpson’s comments certainly rankled a few.

The colorful signs elevated above the crowd spoke volumes. Some referenced the donation and torture: “We don’t want your blood money!” “UW: High priced whore” and “My USA doesn’t torture.” There were also references to Buchanan’s opinion piece: “Tom Buchanan tolerates torture” and “If thinking torture is wrong makes me intolerant, then I’m gladly intolerant.”

There were signs from supporters as well, both thanking Cheney for his donation and encouraging him to run for president in 2012 – although protester Will Welch dressed as a grim reaper-esque Darth Vader from Star Wars and carried a sign encouraging Cheney to add Vader to the 2012 ticket.

The demonstrators protested the naming for varied reasons, but many referenced the idea that Cheney was buying a mark of distinction at UW’s expense.

Chip Rawlins, a UW graduate student and Wyoming native, felt Cheney was receiving an undeserved tribute. “I think it’s wrong to honor someone like this who has done such severe damage to the United States and its reputation,” he said.

Protester and UW student Tim Earl said, “I don’t think that the university should allow Dick Cheney to clean up his legacy at this campus with this money with that building.”

Another UW student, Ruth Briggs, came out in support of Cheney and was dressed in a T-shirt with the message “Nobody likes a liberal.” She said she came out to show Cheney that there are “youth who aren’t influenced by the young liberal mindset, and that there are young conservatives who support Mr. Cheney.”

Briggs added she feels liberals outnumber conservatives on the UW campus. Later, she was able to have her picture taken with Cheney and he mentioned that he liked her T-shirt.

UW graduate student Dan DePeyer echoed many of his fellow protester’s sentiments. DePeyer helped organize the protest, sending a bulletin out to the members of the Facebook group, “UW Students Against the Naming of the Cheney International Center” and helped create signs for the rally.

DePeyer said, “I believe Cheney is guilty of war crimes, particularly torture, and he’s responsible for many international crimes.”

UW alumnus Mara Sobotka also helped organize people to rally at the dedication and led the march to campus. She said, “I am here to demonstrate that we do not support what Dick Cheney stands for."

Not everyone at the protest was a UW student or Laramie resident. Mark and Renee Sandefer of Colorado drove up to protest the dedication. Mark said he wants to see both the war in Iraq and Afghanistan ended and called for Cheney’s prosecution on charges of murder and crimes against humanity.

Renee said that the UW administration had committed “an atrocity” by allowing a “war criminal and a war profiteer to come in here and buy himself this honor.” She called the dedication of the center a “disgrace to this university and to this nation.”

Other supporters of the former vice president were just as vocal in their defense of Cheney’s actions and policies as his detractors. UW students Dillon Kinney and Dustin Stallings came out to support Cheney.

“I strongly believe that what he did was the best thing for our country,” said Kinney. “I think it’s great that the university can dedicate this in his honor and recognize what he’s done for us.”

Buchanan did not address the demonstrators in his speech but afterwards called the crowd “well-behaved” and “civil the way we hoped it would be on a university campus.” He said, “Considering the emotions here, Wyoming did itself proud. I’m sure there are folks who feel strongly on both sides.”

UW spokeswoman Jessica Lowell said of the crowd, “You know, in America, we have the First Amendment which entitles everyone to free speech and they certainly got their opportunity to use their First Amendments rights.”

In the end, I decided to wait a few weeks before writing about this event. Buchanan was correct in his assessment of the emotions running through the crowd that day. When Cheney began his speech, the cheers and jeers threatened to reach a fever pitch. Even though I decided to wait, the memories I carried away from the event remain fresh.

I carried away the memory of those kids, staring frozen in astonishment or applauding and shouting as we marched by their recess time.

I also carried away the memory forever burned into my mind’s eye of Cheney striding out of the international center and thinking to myself with a bizarre jolt, “But he’s just small, stooped old man with a cane…”

And I carried away the memory of being within a few feet of Cheney and feeling an unearthly coldness crawling across my skin on an unseasonably warm day as I heard him laugh. His laugh was humorless and bitter, his face blank as I looked him in the eyes.

Making eye contact with Cheney, I understood the arrogance needed to explain away five draft deferments, courtesy of the University of Wyoming and Casper College, with the statement, “I had other priorities in the 60's than military service,” and then later calling Vietnam “a noble cause” in which “had I been drafted, I would have been happy to serve.”

I understood the dispassionate indifference needed to look at reporters and the American people and insist the intelligence was never faulty, the CIA interrogators never crossed the line and that Iraq is still the noble cause he believed Vietnam to be so many years ago.

I understood and was dismayed – I know he will never answer any questions truthfully in any kind of investigation. Cheney creates his own acerbic reality, in which he is the star and the rest of the proletariat purely bit players.

Never mind the U.S. soldiers sent to die in the desert.

Never mind the lives battered and broken by the detention of innocents.

Never mind the legacy of national debt he helped create.

Never mind the quagmire enveloping the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Never mind the authorization of heinous threats and abuse as “enhanced” interrogation methods.

Never mind any of this because he gave the university so many millions made the good ol’ capitalist way – war profiteering. Perhaps the business school should have been named after him, with lessons in no-bid contracts and off-shore accounts. After all, Cheney was a rather successful capitalist.

Furthermore, none of this will ever fit into Cheney’s version of events. The protesters and the media were simply part of his routine. Sen. Simpson’s annoyance at the demonstrators provided a back-handed acknowledgment of the dissent. Cheney made no mention of the protesters in his speech, only smirking in their general direction a few times beforehand.

I tried to ask him a question afterwards and was pushed out of the way. My entire generation was pushed out of the way with the assistance of this man, so I should not be taken aback by his impassiveness.

Several of the protesters saw Cheney’s plane off at the airport here in Laramie. Accompanying them was a long, heavy list of names – names of soldiers killed in action since these disastrous wars began. They displayed the names prominently and flipped him the bird as the plane took off.

I know he saw.

But I doubt he cared.

Photo slideshow: Cheney International Center dedication

The University of Wyoming dedicated the brand-new Cheney International Center on Sept. 10. The center houses the programs for International Studies and a lounge for international students.

Around 120-200 people gathered to protest the dedication, which generated nationwide recognition and controversy.

Photos: Meg Lanker

All photos remain copyright The Underground and Meg Lanker

Letter to the Editor: An open letter to President Tom Buchanan

Editor:

An open letter to President Thomas Buchanan-

I am very disturbed about the fact that the University has chosen to name the new International Center after former Vice President Richard Cheney. I find this decision to be so inappropriate. I understand that money talks, but putting his name on such a place smacks of hypocrisy. He was not born here and he rarely lives here. I believe that he took up residency again only so that he could run with George Bush in that ill-fated election. A presidential and vice presidential candidate cannot be from the same state.

Doesn’t he already have enough places named after him? Why are so many people in Wyoming so proud of a person who has lied to us, has encouraged us to live in fear and has condoned the use of torture? He certainly has helped to bring down the reputation of the United States in the eyes of the world. He just doesn’t seem like a good role model for students.

I believe this to be one more smudge on the reputation of Wyoming; a reputation that is already quite sullied by past events. I am tired of defending Wyoming when I encounter people from “out there in the world.” Cheney, Matthew Shepard's death, the disparity in women and men’s income, to name but a few.

I am all for tolerance and diversity. But I don’t think that naming the building after him really speaks to tolerance and diversity. He appears to value neither.

I graduated from the University of Wyoming in the 1960s. There were certainly a lot of issues at that time. I thought we had come quite a way since. But when a situation such as this arises, I really have to wonder.

I hope that this decision will be rethought and that the Center will be named for someone really deserving of the honor; someone who has been successful in dealing in international matters and has enhanced our position in the world. We don’t have to be first or best but we do have to be principled. We haven’t been that for some time now. Dick Cheney certainly does not merit that honor.

Thank you for your attention to this letter.

Joan S. Borst
Sheridan, Wyo.

Tea Parties and unity: Where were they?

Photo: Protesters at the 9/12 Rally in Washington D.C., organized by FreedomWorks Foundation, a conservative organization led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Credit - www.huffingtonpost.com and the AP

Tea Parties and unity: Where were they?
Robert Roten
Sunday, September 13, 2009 12:46 PM MDT

Where were they?

The Wyoming 912 Coalition rally at Conwell Park in Casper yesterday was supposed to be about uniting the country and remembering the way it was united on 9/12/01, but it was really about divisiveness and about forgetting what happened on 9/12/01.

The rally was supposed to be about freedom, but it really wasn't about freedom at all. It was about giving up freedom and power, including the right to choose our health care, and giving that power instead to soulless corporations.

People carried signs that read, “Who gave unelected czars authority over us?” and “Freedom did not need change,” according to an article in the Casper Star-Tribune. The article quoted Casper resident Nancy Rinn as saying: “I think the people in Washington are stomping on the Constitution; they're trying to pass laws that are unconstitutional.”

Where were they, these tea party protesters, when George Bush and Dick Cheney were tearing up the constitution? Where were they when the government was listening in to their phone conversations with illegal wiretaps? Where were they when the government was reading their emails? Where were they when the government suspended habeas corpus and threw people into prison, “disappearing” them in the same way Josef Stalin used to make people vanish without a trace? Where were they when the United States government illegally tortured and killed prisoners of war?

Dave Kellett of Powell, president of the Wyoming 912 Coalition, reportedly said at the rally, “We were all Americans.” Kellett added, “There were no Republicans or Democrats, whites, blacks, Hispanics or Arabs,” on that day. The Arabs disagree with that, like the poor guy who was mistaken for an Arab (he was actually an Indian Sikh) and murdered by Americans in that spirit of unity that prevailed after 9/11. The Arabs were immediate suspects in the 9/11 attacks and anyone of Arab descent, or anybody with dark skin who looked like an Arab, was in for a tough time after the attacks. Arabs in America are still not above suspicion.

Just ask Cat Stevens about that supposed post-9/11 unity of Americans. They wouldn't even let the “Peace Train” singer back in the country. Judging by what I saw on TV of the crowd in Casper yesterday, there weren't a lot of blacks, Hispanics or Arabs among the tea-party people there, or at the big march in Washington, either. It is pretty much a pure white, far right, Fox News-watching bunch. Dave Kellet's idea of national unity is not what I'd call “fair and balanced.”

That's not the only thing about the post-9/11 climate the tea party people seem to have forgotten. They forgot the nation was united behind their president, George Bush, despite the fact that 9/11 happened on his watch. They must have been watching Fox News back then when wingnuts like Bill O'Reilly were saying that anybody who criticized President Bush was a traitor, or words to that effect. Fox News and the rest of the right-leaning news establishment bullied anyone who dared criticize our beloved President George Bush, and they said he did nothing wrong. They still claim he was damned near perfect to this very day.

Where were these Tea Party people when the Bush Administration let the country down and failed to prevent the 9/11 attacks? After all, it was pretty spectacular failure that would seem impossible to top, but Bush managed to do just that, with Katrina and the Iraq War. Through all those disasters, all those deficits, all those illegal acts, all the loss of all those personal freedoms, the Tea Party people kept silent. Where were they?

So why all those anti-Obama signs at the Wyoming 912 Coalition rally? Where is that old spirit of unity? What happened to that unity where everybody stood behind the president and you were a called a traitor if you did not? Obama has only been in power a few months and has yet to initiate any disasters like the ones that Bush did on an almost monthly basis. On the basis of protecting the country alone, he's already 100 percent better than Bush was. How could they forget the unity of 912 on this occasion? How could they keep quiet when this nation was literally falling apart and only now, when the country is starting to get back on track, they suddenly want to protest their very own president?

Why? What has gotten them stirred up? Health care reform? They actually like the fact that their insurance company can drop them from coverage when they get sick? They like the fact that they have to stick with a job they don't like, or face losing their coverage or paying sky-high COBRA payments? Do they enjoy being jerked around by insurance companies that are not held accountable by anyone, including their own government? They ought to be protesting outside insurance companies, not protesting the guy who is trying to fix this mess. The Tea Party people act as if they are being directly paid by the health insurance industry to put a stop to health care reform.

The Wyoming 912 Coalition people are also very concerned about the federal budget deficit. They are afraid they will have to pay for health care reform with higher taxes, and that might be true, but where were they when the Reagan Administration and two Bush Administrations ran up deficits in the trillions? Where were they when the Bush Administration cut trillions of dollars of taxes on the wealthy, and started two wars at the same time? Where were they when the Bush Administration started a war in Iraq that would end up costing trillions of dollars, and paid for it with deficit spending?

The Tea Party people cheered when Rep. Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at President Obama, and they put that proudly on their signs, even though Wilson, not Obama, is the liar here. Where were they when President Bush lied about the reasons for going to war with Iraq? None of them had the courage to stand up and call President Bush a liar, even though he was. Fox News, the rest of the media and most of the American people just went along for the ride. Now they stand up, but what do they really stand for?

Now, after more than 4,000 soldiers were killed and trillions of dollars have been wasted in the Iraq war, now, they finally stand up for principles they completely abandoned for the past 20 years. Now, they stand up to avoid paying for the health care of poor people. That's not what you'd call noble, or Christian, or Muslim. They are willing to finance the death of hundreds of thousands of people and spend trillions of dollars for war without complaint, but they don't want to spend a nickel to pay for the health care of needy citizens of the United States of America, including those wounded fighting for this nation. Shame on them.

The tea party people weren't concerned when our soldiers died for nothing. They weren't concerned about a war that made this nation less secure, rather than more secure. They weren't concerned with the mounting deficits caused by deeply irresponsible government fiscal policies. They weren't concerned when the government did little to avert the Hurricane Katrina disaster and did less to alleviate the suffering of Americans afterward. The tea party people were silent then.

Now that the nation has been brought back from the brink of another Great Depression, thanks to government fiscal intervention, now that the United States is once again gaining some respect in the world for more rational foreign policies, after being a laughing stock and a pariah for the past eight years, now, the tea party people are protesting. They want to get rid of Obama and all he stands for. They want to return to the good old days of George W. Bush, the good old days of letting insurance companies decide who will live and who will die.

God help us all if they get what they are wishing for.

Robert Roten is a journalist with over 25 years of newspaper experience, including 20 years as a reporter, editor, photographer, columnist and editorialist at the Laramie Daily Boomerang. Since retiring from the Boomerang in 2000, Roten has been president of the Laramie Film Society and the Laramie Astronomical Society and Space Observers (LASSO). He has operated his own movie journalism web site, Laramie Movie Scope, for the past 13 years. He also has a weekly movie show, Laramie Movie Scope News, on KOCA radio in Laramie. He is also a member of the Online Film Critics Society and contributes frequent movie reviews to rottentomatoes.com. He is a former member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Society of Environmental Journalists. Roten is a resident of Laramie, Wyo.

Video of Dick Cheney's speech

Stay tuned for a news feature on the event, a behind the scenes look at the protest, and an opinion feature on the former vice president. For now, here's my filming of Dick and Lynne Cheney, plus the ribbon cutting.