CHENEY, FEITH, WOLFOWITZ, RUMSFELD MUST ALL RESIGN

TIME magazine "has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official - whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon - that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says 'action' on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was 'coordinated' with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the 'authority to execute RIO,' or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year. "

Cheney has invoked the usual Bush White House 12-step program, step one of which is DENY. (NB, Steps 2 to 11 are also DENY).

Tensions between Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon neo-cons and the U.S. military's top brass are already very, very, um,... tense. This new Cheney scandal will do nothing to improve things. But what will it take to break this damn camel's back?

"The war itself has led to, rightly or wrongly, the feeling among many in the military that they're not receiving competent direction, that it is too ideological, and that a lot of their military efforts have been wasted by what they regard as poor, inept planning for the stability phase," says Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official now with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

University of North Carolina military historian Richard Kohn says Rumsfeld's relationship with the military brass has been as tense as any defense secretary except Robert McNamara, the Vietnam War era Pentagon chief.

"The Constitution calls for civilian control of this department," Rumsfeld once told reporters. "And I'm a civilian."

The US Constitution also calls for civil liberties, doesn't it? It says only Congress can declare war, doesn't it? It says Presidents can be impeached for lying, doesn't it? And it says something about sacking and imprisoning all the lying neo-conservative Nazi swine who have usurped the corridors of power... doesn't it?