by Dee McLachlan
Sacha Baron Cohen is a very successful British actor and comedian, known for his outrageous fictional characters, such as rapper Ali G, Borat Sagdiyev, and Brüno, the flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion show presenter. (And there is an Australian connection. He is married to Australian actress, Isla Fisher.)
Cohen’s modus operandi was to interact with unsuspecting ordinary folk, or interview someone of note. Few realized that they were being set up for comic situations and self-revealing ridicule.
And now after many years, Sasha Cohen is back. I watched two episodes of “Who Is America?” on Stan last night. In the second episode, Cohen interviews former Vice President Dick Cheney. I’d like to congratulate Cohen. This is one of the best interviews I’ve seen revealing the psychopathic warmongering mentality of our leaders, especially that of Dick Cheney. And this through comedy.
Due to copyright restrictions I cannot show the clip from Stan, but I have transcribed sections below.
Sasha Cohen’s fictional interviewing character is Israeli born Colonel Erran Morad — an anti-terror expert. The Colonel sits down with former VP Dick Cheney — “one of the greatest humanitarians” — to discuss, wars, torture, dicks, shooting quail (and Quayle), and water boarding.
Here is the transcript (Morad has a hilariously strong Israeli accent):
COL ERRAN MORAD: It is a great honour to be next to a real ‘minch’. Dick Cheney, shalom.
DICK CHENEY: Thank you. Its good to be with you today. I look forward to the program.
COL ERRAN MORAD: You started so many wars… Afghanistan, Iraq one, Iraq two. Which was your favourite war and why?
DICK CHENEY: Oh, I think it was what we did in Desert Storm, I really do. I never thought of it as having a favourite war.
COL ERRAN MORAD: Of course you got to enjoy it too.
DICK CHENEY: Sure. I loved being Secretary of Defense, especially war time. Especially during Desert Storm.
COL ERRAN MORAD: Its fun.
DICK CHENEY: We had the capacity, you know… I deployed half a million men and woman to the gulf.
COL ERRAN MORAD: Fantastic. Fantastic.
DICK CHENEY: We had stealth technology, we had precision guided munitions. We had all of this capability we developed, and er, some of it was used for the first time.
COL ERRAN MORAD: What do you think Iraq would be like if you didn’t liberate it? Would it have been a breeding ground for terrorists, and unstable?
DICK CHENEY: Hmm. I think it would have been yes. Umm, I… we felt that it was… umm, an important strategic interest. [Finally an admission.]
COL ERRAN MORAD: I have killed some terrorists. How does it feel to be the king of terrorist killers. I mean, you killed 100,000 actual terrorists and about 700,000 potential terrorists.
DICK CHENEY: Well, (smile) it was never personal.
COL ERRAN MORAD: Of course.
DICK CHENEY: I wasn’t in the same position as you are, where it was kill or be killed.
COL ERRAN MORAD: We wanted to see more of you. We wanted to get rid of Bush and see more Dick. Was that ever your aim?
DICK CHENEY: No, never was. [Emphatically.]
COL ERRAN MORAD: What about your family, your wife… Did you wife want to see more dick? [Cheney is still taking the interview seriously]
DICK CHENEY: Well, she wasn’t eager to go back into politics. We’d had a great run, and it was never an objective of hers.
[Music interlude.]
COL ERRAN MORAD: Why is it that people don’t give you enough credit, for the many ways that you improved interrogation and humane torture?
DICK CHENEY: Well you’d have to ask them… er… We had a lot of very good people working for us… err
COL ERRAN MORAD: Torturers or…
DICK CHENEY: Interrogators.
COL ERRAN MORAD: Sure, sure.
DICK CHENEY: We don’t call it torture.
COL ERRAN MORAD: What do you call it?
DICK CHENEY: Enhanced interrogation, that’s what we call it.
COL ERRAN MORAD: My neighbour in Tel Aviv is in jail for murder… or as we call it enhanced tickling… You know enhanced tickling, murder… is the same thing.
DICK CHENEY: Yeah. [Thinking.]
COL ERRAN MORAD: To prepare for the interview, I googled ‘dick’ and ‘torture’ and a whole lot of strange contraptions came up. But these are nothing to do with you?
DICK CHENEY: No (smile). I haven’t seen that, I’ll have to do that. I’d like to see how they treated that.
COL ERRAN MORAD: …There were contraptions with spikes and constraints. And one was a rod that goes deep inside the ‘pupic‘… [Cheney is still not catching on.]
DICK CHENEY: No.
COL ERRAN MORAD: Is this anything to do with you?
DICK CHENEY: We didn’t do anything like that. Waterboarding was the most physical we got.
COL ERRAN MORAD: Water boarding is not torture. I once waterboarded my wife… she was cheating on me. I needed to find out with whom. So I waterboarded her. It turned out she was not cheating. Now I know to trust her words. Actually she is a lot more compliant ever since.
DICK CHENEY: Hmm. Well I didn’t have that problem.
Then Sasha Cohen (Col Morad) discusses the hunting incident, trying to get Cheney to admit that he was actually hunting vice president Quayle for “stooping” his wife… and not just shooting quail. Cheney enjoys the banter.
Col Morad then takes a selfie — a ‘dick pic’ — with Cheney.
To conclude the interview, Col Morad asks Cheney if he would sign his waterboarding kit.
COL ERRAN MORAD: Is it possible to sign my waterboard kit?
DICK CHENEY: Sure. [And signs.]
Cheney doesn’t blink an eye when credited with killing 700,000 ‘potential terrorists’ — another word for civilian. And he is completely disconnected to the consequences of his actions, and says that they invaded Iraq, as it was a place of “important strategic interest.” BINGO.
Why are these people not in jail?
These people are not in jail, because the judicial system is just as criminal.
But time and chance happeneth to them all.
You just wait and see.
John Winston Howard and Co will be getting a great ‘tickle’ out of this interview.
After all, when johnies uncle Dick visited Sydney uncle Dick was provided with a red carpet trip across the Sydney Harbour Bridge with all other traffic forbidden.
They had a quiet chat at the back of a cruise of the harbour. Wonder what they discussed, off the record? (I recall the photograph of their cosy lone togetherness on the cruise)
For the poor official government 911 conspiracy theorists, just search transport minister Norman Mineta’s testimony to Lee Hamilton concerning the Dick’s response to the ‘young man’ who came into the bunker warning thrice, of ‘incoming’ and the Dick response.
Per favour of a reader please put up the video of that testimony. I have just seen it but not able to link it at present.
Cohen is smart, just enough for fun but is a distracting bullsitter.
Why? Is he completely ignorant?
Nah; Cohen must know as much as we! Yet he does not go for the obvious kill shot.
He is BS.
Protecting whom?
And Dick is not as stupid as he appears!
When you look at our politicians is that the best Australia can come up with ?
Surely not , when good people cannot get a foot in explains a lot about who is really running the show here .Everything has been inverted , bad is good etc.
Who’s next , chairman Albanese ?
Baron-Cohen is an extremely effective propagandist, deceptively luring interviewees into traps.
However he was recently embarrassed when he was caught out by a US gun shop owner who recognized him through his disguise. The gun shop owner called him out and he fled like a coward. Baron-Cohen’s gambit was nothing new with tis particular hit-piece, to paint US gun-owners as unsophisticated red-necks to erode the bona fides of the 2nd amendment. However this gun shop owner was articulate and well-informed as well as well-armed.
Baron-Cohen is a disingenuous, dishonest disgrace and every single piece of work he undertakes is carefully calculated and measured to advance the interests of one small group of people.