DICK CHENEY IS AN OLD HAND AT POLITICIZING BEHEADINGS

The body of James Foley was barely cold when Dick Cheney suited himself up to go on Sean Hannity's Fox show to blame (as he sees it) the real enemy: the Obama administration.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is predicting that the beheading of American journalist James Foley is just the start of more violence if President Barack Obama doesn't "deal with this crisis" in Iraq....

"... magnify that [beheading] a million times over because that is what's in store for the rest of the world if we don't deal with this crisis."

"I think every single day that goes by [Obama] is finding that there's a bigger and bigger gulf between his hoped-for view of the world and reality," Cheney said. "I think the danger is enormous, I don't think the president understands it."

Cheney commented that he believes Obama's view of the world is "fundamentally flawed" and that his aversion to military action has made other world leaders view the president as "weak and ineffective," saying "there is no question ... he is viewed as perhaps the weakest president in my lifetime." ...

Cheney is an experienced politicizer of jihadist beheadings, although the last time he did this he waited until a couple of years after the murder, so he could do his politicizing during a presidential campaign. That led to a rebuke from the victim's father:

Following a controversial speech by Vice President Dick Cheney, the father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is urging Democrats and Republicans to refrain from turning his son's death into a political football.

Judea Pearl expressed his sentiments after Cheney's August 12 [2004] speech, in which the vice president blasted Democratic presidential nominee Senator John Kerry for declaring that if elected, he would fight a "more sensitive war on terror." In the course of disparaging Kerry, Cheney invoked the Islamic militant killers of Pearl and another American, Paul Johnson Jr.

"The men who beheaded Daniel Pearl and Paul Johnson will not be impressed by our sensitivity," Cheney said.

Days later, when asked about the speech, Judea Pearl told the Forward: "The family of Daniel Pearl respectfully requests that his tragic legacy remain non-partisan." Pearl, an Israeli-born computer science professor at UCLA, said that he did not know of any politician -- Democrat or Republican -- other than Cheney who has invoked the killing in order to score points against a political opponent....

But Cheney didn't care, and doesn't care now. He's got a war to win. And it's not a war against the people who cut off Pearl and Foley's heads.