No doubt it was a “somebody” and not the management at CNN, since the cable news network serves as an enthusiastic Bush-Cheney cheerleader, only out-cheerleadered by Fox News. No doubt, as well, “somebody” will be flushed out and fired for this egregious crime.

Dick Cheney’s crimes against humanity are so numerous and heinous no mere X flashed on the screen a few times for less than a second can do them justice.

For instance, as Secretary of War under Dubya’s daddy, Cheney oversaw the 43-day bombing campaign of Iraq in 1991—the most devastating concentrated bombing attack in history at that time—aimed at electrical, water, and sewage treatment systems, in short civilian infrastructure. “Though international law specifically prohibits civilian targets, Pentagon planners and U.S. politicians knew perfectly well that the civilians would die as a result of those bombs,” Robert Jensen wrote in September, 2000. Every Iraqi target was “perfectly legitimate,” Cheney told the Washington Post, adding “if I had to do it over again, I would do exactly the same thing.”

Like a serial murderer unable to stop his destructive rampages, Cheney conspired with the neocons to invade Iraq a second time. Cheney is responsible for proffering the fraudulent yellowcake documents (cooked up by Italian fascists once led by World War II Nazi figure Licio Gelli).

As the Fitzgerald indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby notes, Cheney was the source to Libby of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.

Since Cheney is a sadist, he likes the idea of torturing innocent people. Cheney connived with his staff (most notably David Addington and John Hannah) to continue a policy of torture, directly violating the Geneva Conventions. It wasn’t all that long ago people were prosecuted at the Nuremberg tribunal for torture—but then we lived in a more sane world in those days.

Cheney is connected to several criminal organizations, including the war profiteering Carlyle Group (in 2003, Dick received the Citizen Works’ “Daddy Warbucks” award for his shameless war profiteering). He is a former Senior Fellow with the American Enterprise Institute (where he was speaking when the mysterious X appeared on his face), served on the Advisory Board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and has been linked to the Project for the New American Century. He is a world-class war criminal and multiple offender who makes the (dead) al-Zarqawi look like a piker.

Dick is responsible for the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Bolton (then vice-president of the American Enterprise Institute), and other criminals.

In short, a mere X on Cheney’s face is hardly recompense for Cheney’s long and sordid career as a war criminal and scourge of humanity.

I’ll feel better when he’s in an orange jumpsuit.