VICE PRESIDENT CAUGHT UP IN PROSTITUTION SCANDAL

From CounterPunch:

Cheney and the DC Madam's Cookie Jar

"WMR has confirmed with extremely knowledgeable CIA and Pentagon sources that the former CEO who is on Deborah Jeane Palfrey's list is Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney was CEO of Halliburton during the time of his liaisons with the Pamela Martin & Associates escort firm. Palfrey's phone invoices extend back to 1996 and include calls to and from Cheney...while he was the CEO and maintained a residence off Chain Bridge Road in the Ballantrae neighborhood in McLean, Virginia, a few blocks from the headquarters of the CIA...."

More here.

"WMR" refers to the usually extremely accurate website run by investigative journalist Wayne Madsen. He gets good dirt and I'd be linking to him all the time except for the fact that his site doesn't link individual posts, which is damned frustrating. Anyway, this is totally believable. Cheney is a hard drinking, hard-core motherfucker. OF COURSE he was using hookers when he was in the private sector.

Now I have to admit that I've never really made up my mind about the ethics and morals of prostitution. I know that as the business is currently constructed, that is, as an illegal enterprise, it's really awful for the women involved; on the other hand, prostitutes working in the legal and regulated environment of Nevada appear to be less oppressed. Tough call, so I'm not scolding the Veep here simply for using prostitutes. What I am doing is calling him out for the standard GOP variety of hypocrisy that allows prominent right wing figures to rhetorically blast, say, drug users or freaky sex people, while doing the same thing themselves on the side. Think Rush Limbaugh or Ted Haggard.

And, oh yeah, using prostitutes is also breaking the law.

The real question here is if the corporate media picks up the story. ABC News has already declared that these phone records contain nothing of any real political interest, so it sounds like the whitewash is already underway. Lemme tell ya, the Dems would be fools not to ram this down the Republican elephant's throat.

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