THE DISPOSITION TOWARD EVIL

Artwork by Fernando Botero

In the twentieth century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran minister and author of an important work of philosophy raised again Aristotle's question of a disposition toward evil. It was not so much a single evil act that concerned Bonhoeffer, a German, as it was the disposition toward evil. His concern led him to leave a safe position in the United States and return to Germany to oppose Hitler. He was implicated in the plot to kill the Fuhrer, and Bonhoeffer was sent to prison and then to Flossenburg concentration camp. Shortly before the liberation of the camp he was stripped, marched through the corridors to the gallows, and hanged. His legacy is that an ordinary man, not a hero, may raise the hero's question about a government. Do the actions of the Bush Administration and its supporters in the Congress result from a disposition toward evil? And if that is not the disposition of all of them, it cannot be denied in the case of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Wolfowitz, and even Bush himself.

--Earl Shorris, "The National Character", Harper's Magazine, June 2007

Historians are bound to look on early 21st Century America with a harsh eye.

Even Andrew Sullivan, a noted conservative writer and former supporter of the Bush/Cheney policies, is now disturbed that the administration has recycled many of the same techniques, and similar language used by the Nazis. Sullivan does not equate 1937 Germany with 2007 America, but does warn his readers of the administration's fondness for Gestapo technique.

The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is German for "enhanced interrogation". Other translations include "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation". It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court.

Also: the use of hypothermia, authorized by Bush and Rumsfeld, was initially forbidden. 'Waterboarding" was forbidden too, unlike that authorized by Bush. As time went on, historians have found that all the bureaucratic restrictions were eventually broken or abridged. Once you start torturing, it has a life of its own.

What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable.

The Republic that generations have passed down to us is in real danger; and what is required is for the new majority in Congress to do what voters have entrusted them to do. The public wants American troops to be withdrawn from Iraq. But Congress instead capitulated to the president; and the majority democrats removed the timelines for troop withdrawal, which they had previously touted and included in a bill they had presented a few weeks before.

On Memorial Day, Cindy Sheehan announced that she was physically, emotionally, and financially exhausted, and said that she had finished with the Camp Casey campaign and was returning home.

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."

What was heartbreaking in her statement was her conclusion that her son Casey had died for nothing, and also her belief that she had failed him by her inability to carry on as she has.

The democrats in Congress cannot be forgiven for what they did, as they enabled the president's endless war. It doesn't matter whether you call them cowards or not. The so-called opposition party can no longer excuse themselves with promises to do the right thing next time. They have made that excuse one too many times.

Of what use are democrats in Congress if they won't stand their ground against an out-of-control president? One of the most banal excuses floated about, is the idea that these democrats were thrown into panic by the approach of the Memorial Day holiday. It is presumed that their guts surged with fright as they watched the latest glamor-packed Army recruitment ad on television, or when they heard the patriotic humming of Lockeed and Boeing commercials.

We should mark this down as complicity; and perhaps the democrats are not so much afraid as they are bound, deep down, to many of the same illusions and false duties that compel the republicans.

The disposition toward evil can express itself in the doing of evil, or in the enabling of those who do evil. This disposition can also manifest in the national myth, the collective illusions, the false mirror in which a nation sees itself.

Consider these cautionary words, written by Simone Weil during the Second World War:

That which is essentially different from evil is virtue accompanied by a clear perception of the possibility of evil, and of evil appearing as something good. The presence of illusions which we have abandoned, but which are still present in the mind, is perhaps the criterion of truth.

"THIS ADMINISTRATION"..."THE WORST IN HISTORY", SAYS JIMMY CARTER

An Associated Press article quotes former president, Jimmy Carter, who has broken from the tradition of ex-presidents withholding criticism of a sitting president. Carter, who aimed his harshest words at Bush's Iraq war policy, also condemned Prime Minister Tony Blair. In a BBC radio interview, Carter described "the almost undeviating support" of the President's British ally as "a major tragedy for the world". The former president had strong words to describe Blair's support of Bush: "Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient".

Carter emphasized that a break of political continuity basically separates the Current Occupant of the White House from past administrations:

The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me.

We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that sometime in the future our security might be endangered...But that's been a radical departure from all previous administration policies.

The AP article continued:

Carter, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, criticized Bush for having "zero peace talks" in Israel. Carter also said the administration "abandoned or directly refuted" every negotiated nuclear arms agreement, as well as environmental efforts by other presidents.

Carter also offered a harsh assessment for the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which helped religious charities receive $2.15 billion in federal grants in fiscal year 2005 alone.

"The policy from the White House has been to allocate funds to religious institutions, even those that channel those funds exclusively to their own particular group of believers in a particular religion," Carter said. "As a traditional Baptist, I've always believed in separation of church and state and honored that promise when I was president, and so have other presidents, I might say, except this one."

Though Jimmy Carter's declaration comes belatedly against the White House and its Current Occupant, it does dramatize the building political crisis. This decision can be seen as requiring courage, and has already put former President Carter and First Lady Rosalyn Carter at the receiving end of threats, coming from American right-wing extremists.

UPDATE: Monday, May 21, 2007

Jimmy Carter today chose to modify his previous commentary that appeared in an Arkansas newspaper. Carter did not retract any of his sharp attack on Prime Minister Blair, but revised his remarks with respect to Bush, saying he intended no personal sort of criticism of the president.

Following a White House denunciation of Carter's original remarks, the Democratic former leader said he had intended to describe Bush as the worst president since scandal-plagued Richard Nixon.

"My remarks were maybe careless or misinterpreted. But I wasn't comparing the overall administration and certainly not talking personally about any president," Carter told NBC.

"I have been very careful and still am not to criticize any president personally," he said, while restating his opposition to Bush's policies on Iraq and the Middle East.

In a weekend commentary published by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Carter had written: "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history."

--David Edwards, Raw Story

WE CELEBRATE THE 4TH BIRTHDAY OF THOLOS OF ATHENA

Jason, who is still alive, is vomited up by the dragon that protects the Golden Fleece. Nearby stands Athena, poised to rescue the hero.

"Homer meant by Athena mind and intelligence. And the maker of names appears to have had a singular notion about her, and indeed calls her by a still higher title, divine intelligence, as though he would say, This is she who had the mind of God." --Plato, Cratylus, p. 147

Let us imagine American life before and after the Revolution, or life before and after Harper's Ferry, or again, before and after Martin Luther King Jr.'s march on Selma, Alabama. The nation has survived bloody internal convulsions, as well as foreign wars; and up to this point we have survived to contemplate the "before and after". Nonetheless, our birthday today at Tholos seems to be the most solemn one so far; and we have to wonder whether "mind and intelligence" or some other aspect of God will light our way beyond the present chapter of history.

As citizens of an American nation (or as citizens of any nation) we recognize that--like the naked man in the mouth of a dragon--we are not in the usual kind of trouble.

Christian and Islamic absolutists are convinced they won't die themselves, as they bring the "before and after" to a crashing end.

How shall we frame the end of history? Clearly a species that will continue to slow cook its habitat rather than change lifestyles is not in line for "natural selection". Creationists can't figure out how mass extinction takes place. It won't be so biblical when no one's around to enjoy the end of history, and witness the harsh judgment of those they always hated, feeling liberated enough to clap and cheer and howl, as folks do at a football game. We give God more credit than that; we think God is more subtle.

Most people don't know that God was put on trial at Auschwitz by a small group of learned Jewish men who were imprisoned there. Elie Wiesel had lost his mother and little sister in the camp by that time, and it broke his heart to witness that trial. He was only a boy himself; but he understood the finding that God was wrong.

There was a "before Auschwitz" and an "after Auschwitz" and it is our responsibility to remember what happened. Keeping the "before and after" is a sacred obligation. And Elie Wiesel has said that "the opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference". Believing what he said, we cannot be indifferent to Israelis bottling up Palestinians in a ghetto. We cannot be indifferent to an American-led jihad for oil. We cannot be indifferent to Sunni and Shia pinning notes on the bodies of each other's Iraqi relatives, which read "this is what happens to unbelievers".

"There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be done. One person--a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, a Martin Luther King Jr.--one person of integrity can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs."
--Elie Wiesel, Night, p. 120

Look at the Golden Fleece! How beautiful! How near at hand and elusively out of reach! It is the venerated object that bestows blessings and healing upon the community that possesses it. Now is the moment when it should belong to the whole world.

wislawa szymborska TORTURES

Nothing has changed.
The body is a reservoir of pain;
it has to eat and breathe the air, and sleep;
it has thin skin and the blood is just beneath it;
it has a good supply of teeth and fingernails;
its bones can be broken; its joints can be stretched.
In tortures all of this is considered.

Nothing has changed.
The body still trembles as it trembled
before Rome was founded and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are just what they were, only the earth has shrunk
and whatever goes on sounds as if it's just a room away.

Nothing has changed.
Except there are more people,
and new offenses have sprung up beside the old ones--
real, make-believe, short-lived, and non-existent.
But the cry with which the body answers for them
was, is, and will be a cry of innocence
in keeping with the age-old scale and pitch.

Nothing has changed.
Except perhaps the manners, ceremonies, dances.
The gesture of the hands shielding the head
has nonetheless remained the same.
The body writhes, jerks, tugs,
falls to the ground when shoved, pulls up its knees,
bruises, swells, drools, and bleeds.

Nothing has changed.
Except the run of rivers,
the shapes of forests, shores, deserts, and glaciers.
The little soul roams among those landscapes,
disappears, returns, draws near, moves away,
evasive and a stranger to itself,
now sure, now uncertain of its own existence,
whereas the body is and is and is
and has nowhere to go.

KURT VONNEGUT WAS BEAUTIFUL

"Many years ago I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and responsible America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas."

--Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without A Country, p. 71-2


"Where are Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln now when we need them? They were country boys from Middle America, and both of them made the American people laugh at themselves and appreciate really important, really moral jokes. Imagine what they would have to say today.

One of the most humiliated and heartbroken pieces Mark Twain ever wrote was about the slaughter of six hundred Moro men, women, and children by our soldiers during our liberation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. Our brave commander was Leonard Wood, who now has a fort named after him. Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

What did Abraham Lincoln have to say about America's imperialist wars, the ones that, on one noble pretext or another, aim to increase the natural resources and pools of tame labor available to the richest Americans who have the best political connections?

It is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln. He always steals the show. I am about to quote him again.

More than a decade before his Gettysburg Address, back in 1848, when Lincoln was only a Congressman, he was heartbroken and humiliated by our war on Mexico, which had never attacked us. James Polk was the person Representative Lincoln had in mind when he said what he said. Abraham Lincoln said of Polk, his president, his armed forces' commander-in-chief:

Trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy--he plunged into war.

Holy shit! And I thought I was a writer!

Do you know we actually captured Mexico City during the Mexican War? Why isn't that a national holiday? And why isn't the face of James Polk, then our president, up on Mount Rushmore along with Ronald Reagan's? What made Mexico so evil back in the 1840s, well before our Civil War, is that slavery was illegal there. Remember the Alamo? With that war we were making California our own, and a lot of other people and properties, and doing it as though butchering Mexican soldiers who were only defending their homeland against invaders wasn't murder. What other stuff besides California? Well, Texas, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.

Speaking of plunging into war, do you know why I think George W. Bush is so pissed off at Arabs? They brought us algebra. Also the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which Europeans had never used before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman Numerals."

--ibid, pp. 75-7
AP Photo/Buzz Orr

jean chilner morris: PIECES OF CHESS

The cruelty of men
(Disguised as gallantry)
Pushes to the precipice
This dazed, beleaguered
Seeker...
Who leans staring
Into space or death.

Men have hurled you
Into the abyss;
They seek themselves,
And leave you staring
Back in horror, pity.

Possessed by feeling...
You are alone...alone
Beyond the shallow
Rim of the unfeeling.

SWEET JESUS

The innovative artist, Cosimo Cavallaro should have known that a six foot, genital inclusive, standing sculpture of Christ, made of 200 lbs. of dark chocolate, would land him in a world of trouble. And I guess it didn't help that he entitled the exhibit My Sweet Lord.

The religious right moved with dispatch, when it was announced that a mid-town Manhattan exhibition of the huge confection was in the planning stages. The ultra-conservative Catholic League was quickly on the case and Guardian reporter, Ed Pilkington, describes a campaign in which “the league sent emails to 500 other religious groups—including Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist with a combined reach of millions—calling on them to boycott the Roger Smith hotel in which the gallery, The Lab, is based.”

Pilkington writes that “Within 24 hours the hotel was so inundated with calls and visiting protesters that it pulled the exhibit.”

As Catholic League president and right-wing mouth-organ, Bill Donahue, put it...”All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don't react the way extremist Muslims do when they're offended.”

A counter-demonstration of sorts, roughly a dozen local anarchists, were gathered outside the lobby of the hotel, chanting “Eat the Chocolate Christ.”

The 45 year old sculptor, Cavallaro, explained that he just liked to do art with foodstuffs. One of his most famous projects involved the 1999 interior decoration of a house in Wyoming with ten thousand pounds of spray-on cheese.

President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are informed of the existence of a Chocolate Christ

NOTE FROM AN ANGRY DEMOCRAT

From my friend, Benny, the firecracker salesman. By the way, this is what a real live progressive Democrat sounds like--or SHOULD sound like at this particular moment, if he is the real thing. Born in deep East Texas, but he crawled out of that red dirt loblolly wilderness, shed the alligator suit and learned how to think for himself. This is the real McCoy--no compromise with the truth, no pusillanimous half-measures. The code he lives by: "The only thing you find in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos."

So, here's the note I just received from him in my e-mail box:

Did you get a thing from Camp Casey Easter meet-up and act-up? I don't think I'm up to it. What is going on in our Congress is simply that the half-way Blue Dog Democrats won't sign onto anything unless it is deeply compromised, watered-down, and ineffective. They represent districts that contain voters that resent being forced to elect Democrats in the first place and think that the oceans rising to cover Hillsboro and Texarkana is not nearly so scary as taking the Confederate flag down from the Georgia statehouse. There are a few good progressives left, but before they can vote for anything that makes a nickel's worth of difference, they have to be elected to office, and have you looked lately at the American citizen who does the deciding of whom to elect? Parts of Massachusetts and California and Oregon is all that remains of the nation inspired and devoted to the Enlightenment. The best and brightest were sitting at University Christian Church when you were the only speaker in the entire lousy temple with a shred of ordinary human decency, and not a one of them gave a flying fuck for any principle or any virtue, or for anyone but their own goddamn self. And one is branded a bomb-throwing red if you're not sitting in the Amen section of the First Baptist Church every Sunday morning listening to the most puerile, hateful, clap-trap you can possibly imagine in your sweatiest, bourbon-soaked dream. If Pelosi had an ounce less grit or single-minded devotion to working her ass off for a country that doesn't feel a dime's worth of gratitude for her leadership or for her diamond-hard devotion to doing the best job possible for this ungrateful, self-absorbed nation, which hasn't even a willingness to become informed of what is happening in the world besides a big-breasted blond bimbo over-dosing and killing her stinking, trifling ass with grossly over-priced pills from Rexall drugstore or the Dallas goddamn Cowboys beating Washington in a football game on television, she would go back to San Francisco and leave the malignant greed-heads to do whatever they wanted without anyone to interfere or do one fucking thing to impede their rule, just like before she was chosen to serve as Speaker. It is, I am accepting a bit more every day, a rare privilege to be acquainted with even a handful of friends and family that remain kind and steadfast and thoughtful. I can't imagine Ms. Pelosi or any other intelligent member of Congress maintaining a willingness to give a shit, or certainly not to beat their head against a brick wall day after day for a nation of selfish, rich, stupid, and mean citizens. If I continue to look honestly at my country, or even at humanity its own self for more than a few quick minutes, a craving for whiskey becomes pretty bothersome. Reality has been difficult for me for some reason since I was a kid. I'm really glad I'm not trying to fix this unworthy country like those losers in our Congress. --Ben H.

wislawa szymborska DINOSAUR SKELETON

Beloved Brethren,
we have before us an example of incorrect proportions.
Behold! the dinosaur's skeleton looms above--

Dear Friends,
on the left we see the tail trailing into one infinity,
on the right, the neck juts into another--

Esteemed Comrades,
in between, four legs that finally mired in the slime
beneath this hillock of a trunk--

Gentle Citizens,
nature does not err, but it loves its little joke:
please note the laughably small head--

Ladies, Gentlemen,
a head this size does not have room for foresight,
and that is why its owner is extinct--

Honored Dignitaries,
a mind too small, an appetite too large,
more senseless sleep than prudent apprehension--

Distinguished Guests,
we're in far better shape in this regard,
life is beautiful and the world is ours--

Venerated Delegation,
the starry sky above the thinking reed
and moral law within it--

Most Reverend Deputation,
such success does not come twice
and perhaps beneath this single sun alone--

Inestimable Council,
how deft the hands,
how eloquent the lips,
what a head on these shoulders--

Supremest of Courts,
so much responsibility in place of a vanished tail--

CHAVEZ GIVES A SPANKING WHILE BUSH STUTTERS

From Democracy Now, This excerpt from Hugo Chavez's speech in Buenos Aires:

"The imperial little gentleman that's visiting Latin America today said about seventy-two or forty-eight hours ago in one of his speeches, when he was announcing that he was leaving for Latin America, he compared Simon Bolivar to George Washington. In fact, he even said the ridiculous thing -- and I can't say it's hypocrisy, because it is simply ridiculous, the most ridiculous thing he could say. He said, today we are all children of Washington and Bolivar. That is, he thinks that he is a son of Bolivar. What he is is a son of a -- but I can't say that word here.

So he has said -- he has said -- and you should listen to what he said here -- he said that now is the time to finish the revolution that Washington and Bolivar commenced . How's that for heresy? That is heresy and ignorance, because we have to remember -- and I say this with all due respect to George Washington, who is historically one of the founding fathers of that country -- but we must also remember the differences and how different George Washington and Simon Bolivar were, are and will always be.

George Washington won a war to gain the independence of the North American economic elite from the English empire, and when Washington died, or, rather, after his independence and after having been the president of the United States, after ordering the massacre of the indigenous peoples of North America, after defending slavery, he ended up being a very rich owner of slaves and of a plantation. He was a great landowner. That was George Washington.

Simon Bolivar, however, was born with a silver spoon, and at eight years old his parents died and he inherited a large fortune, together with his brothers, and he inherited haciendas and slaves. Simon Bolivar, when history led him -- and as Karl Marx said, men can make history, but only as far as history allows us to do so -- when history took Bolivar and made him the leader of the independence process in Venezuela, he made that process revolutionary. Simon Bolivar turned over all of his land. He freed all of his slaves, and he turned them into soldiers, and he brought them here. He brought them to Peru and Carabobo, and he worked together with the troops of San Martin to liberate this continent. That is Simon Bolivar.

And Simon Bolivar, having been born with that silver spoon in his mouth, when he died on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, when he died on December 17 in 1830, he was dressed with a shirt of someone else, because he had no clothes. Simon Bolivar is the leader of the revolution of this land. He is the leader of the social revolution, the people's revolution, the historical revolution. George Washington has nothing -- nothing -- to do with this history."

{snip}

"It would appear that [Bush] doesn't even dare mention my name, because he was asked in Brasilia today in a press conference -- I saw it, I watched it at the hotel -- and the journalist asked him, “It is said that you are here to stop Chavez's movement in South America.” And it looked like he almost had a heart attack when he heard "Chavez," because he actually stuttered a couple of times, and he actually changed the subject. He didn't answer the question. He didn't answer the question at all. So he doesn't even dare."

CHENEY'S BLOOD CLOT

Vice President Dick Cheney has a blood clot in his leg, tests revealed on Monday. Cheney went to the doctor's office in Washington D.C. complaining of a “mild calf discomfort,” following a nine day trip to Asia and the Middle East that ended last week.

Ultrasound revealed a deep venous thrombosis or blood clot in his left lower leg. Blood clots of this type are normally considered dangerous, since they can move to the heart and cause heart attack or stroke. But this particular blood clot is actually quite old, and has apparently been inside the Vice President for most of his life.

“In fact, I would say this clot has been in Dick Cheney's brain since he was about twelve years old,” says Dr. Sam Cleavern, Chief Surgeon at Jacob And Wilhelm Grimm Memorial Hospital, and Cheney's personal physician. “You might say, it's more like an entity than a common blood clot,” Cleavern added.

When pressed further for a description, Cleavern hesitated, then said, “Well, you might say it's something like a troll or a homunculus.” Apparently, it's been feeding off Cheney's brain, sucking it out in minute degrees till now there's virtually nothing left. It appears the homunculus has literally taken the place of the Vice President's brain.

Dr. Hans Bordeleou of New York University says that when a blood clot occurs in the leg, there can be pain or swelling. If the condition worsens, some people suffer shortness of breath or may even cough blood. He disputes the notion of a homunculus at large in the Vice President's body, calling the theory absurd.

Nevertheless, when Cheney addressed a Veterans of Foreign Wars meeting at a Washington hotel on Monday morning, several witnesses reported seeing his eyes bulge, become reddened, and blood shoot from his mouth over the podium. However, the Vice President continued his speech as if nothing unusual had happened.

Rumors of Cheney's odd behavior have been flying around the blogosphere for several years, none of which have been confirmed. A nurse at the hospital that treated 79-year-old Harry Whittington, whom Cheney shot in the face with a 28-guage shotgun in February, 2006, said the Austin lawyer had confided to her that just before Cheney squeezed the trigger, Whittington thought he saw the Vice President's eyes bulge and blood spray from his mouth. Reached for comment, Whittington would neither confirm nor deny the story.

During his recent trip to the Middle East to talk about the “surge” in Iraq and possible war with Iran, several witnesses reported seeing the Vice President's eyes bulge as he spoke. At least two high ranking military commanders described the Vice President's expression as "pop-eyed," and said that blood either "spurted" or "dripped" from his mouth.

Another officer, Major General William Fefferman, noticed blood spray on his uniform after speaking with the Vice President face to face. He said he saw the flecks of blood in a mirror a few minutes after speaking with Cheney about attacking Iran. He recalled the air between them appeared to turn pale red as Cheney spoke of “annihilating America's enemies.”

Said General Fefferman, “If you want to know what I really think, I believe it was God talking to me. God is now speaking through Dick Cheney. I love God and I love Dick Cheney, and whatever God or Dick wants me to do, I will do it, no questions asked.”

Dr. Cleavern believes the homunculus is now acting on its own, traveling freely throughout Cheney's body. “Currently, it's in his left leg. Tomorrow, it could be in his right leg. Or it may travel elsewhere,” Dr. Cleavern said. “It may even decide to return to the Vice President's head. We just don't know what it's next move is going to be. It's subject to change at a moment's notice.”

Currently, the medical staff at the D.C. hospital is uncertain how to treat the condition.