"Rarely has a US president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many," ran the line in a comment piece about Iraq published in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. Amazingly, the author was not talking about George W. Bush, the man who led the US into a disastrous war that cost the lives of 4,500 Americans, 100,000 Iraqis and nearly a trillion dollars in debt. The writer was taking aim at the current president, Barack Obama.
What's more, the piece was penned by Dick Cheney, one of the architects of the Bush Doctrine that sought to spread democracy through military power, the success of which can be easily measured in the pictures of mass executions and men digging their own graves that are filtering out from the disintegrating Iraqi state.
In the article, bizarrely published as a joint piece with his daughter Liz (some pundits have speculated that his family are the only Republicans left who will stand with Cheney), the former vice president excoriates Obama for "abandoning" Iraq to Al-Qaeda-inspired ISIS, jihadist militants who now straddle both Iraq and Syria, launching sectarian attacks on those who might oppose their mission to create a cross-border Caliphate.
And where was al-Qaeda before the 2003 invasion? One place it wasn't is Iraq, demanding an answer to just how the current president is responsible for the hard-line Islamists currently occupying the cities of Mosul and Tikrit and threatening to march on Baghdad?
And this from the man who in 2003 had said that he thought American forces "really would be treated as liberators" and who remains unrepentant about the American and Iraqi lives taken by the conflict and the deep financial hole left in the US national coffers after they were plundered for an illegal war.
Of course, Cheney isn't the sole cheerleader for the 2003 invasion that has failed to offer penitence. Last week, conservative commentator Bill Kristol, former envoy to Iraq Paul Bremer, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and the increasingly baffled John McCain, not only failed to show contrition, but all, apart from McCain (he didn't know what he wanted), advised the current White house to return to the use of force in Iraq.
In Britain, a similar lack of self-awareness has plagued Tony Blair, with London Mayor Boris Johnson going as far as to call the former PM "unhinged" over his assertion that the failure to deal with the war in Syria is responsible for the crisis in Iraq, not the 2003 war for which he was - and remains - a staunch advocate.
Yet Cheney's remarks are perhaps the most galling, with the former VP following up his comment piece by announcing the establishment of a non-profit group nefariously named the "Alliance for a Stronger America", with its mission to educate and advocate for the policies needed to restore American pre-eminence and power in the world.
And where did Cheney make this announcement? On YouTube, stood next to his daughter and wearing a cowboy hat. The post was followed by a joint appearance on Fox News, an interview in which even the GOP shill presenting was forced to ask if Cheney might have the wrong end of the stick as to who was responsible for the crisis unfolding across the region.
Unfortunately for Dick, the world has moved on and so has his party, with the modern GOP far more influenced by the Libertarian movement's strong non-interventionist bent than has been the case any time in the recent past.
Whereas Cheney could once rely on the Republican hierarchy and a US national media to take note, now the former VP is forced to scramble for hits on YouTube, his inane ramblings on foreign policy, the Obama administration and the crisis in Iraq competing unsuccessfully with the latest J-Lo album teaser and a video on how dogs react to humans barking.