I'm looking through you, where did you go?

"Where's Mandela?"

This from Bush's latest head-scratcher press conference:

"Part of the reason why there's not this instant democracy in Iraq is because people are still recovering from Saddam Hussein's brutal rule. Sort of an interesting comment, I heard somebody say, `Where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas."

Saying, of course, that Nelson Mandela represents those who stand up against oppression and fight for their rights and freedom.

In the late 1980's when even prominent republicans like Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich were acknowledging the crime of Apartheid, Dick Cheney maintained the lie that the ANC was a terrorist organization and a fantasy that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist leader who deserved to be in jail.

Cheney defended his 1986 vote against a resolution that called for U.S. recognition of the African National Congress in South Africa, freedom for the organization's then-imprisoned leader Nelson Mandela and negotiations with the black majority. "The ANC was then viewed as a terrorist organization,'' Cheney said. "It was a step that we simply weren't prepared to take.''

Now, Cheney says he believes the ANC has "mellowed'' and Mandela is "a great man.''
"He deserves an enormous amount of credit for the transformation of South Africa,'' Cheney said "But I don't have any problems at all with the vote I cast 20 years ago.''

Of course you don't, Dick. As we have seen time and time again, the rules that apply to who we call a terrorist and who we call a freedom fighter has less to do with actual realities than it does with which way the political spectrum is leaning and who we see in our best financial interest as an ally or an enemy.

In the world of Dick Cheney and his ilk, something like Apartheid isn't measured in moral terms, but in "do we make more money with it in place or without it?"

Like with this war, human life is a distant secondary issue to the bottom line of profit.

And the spin-the-bullshit machine just rolls right along.

[graphic by Dancin' Dave]