I bet you are wrong. I call your bluff and we can settle up in hell. When history casts you into the firestorm reserved for genocidal maniacs, I will meet you and demand payment.

The stakes are simple: admit you were wrong, irredeemably, monstrously, and do so without reservation. No penance ever atones. No apology suffices, no shame, only inconsolable guilt.

For generations to come, all our judges will brand this time an atrocity, crimes against humanity carried out by a bully superpower without rival.

Nonetheless, Dick, I believe your motives are genuine, that you wish only the best for this country and will let nothing stand in the way of accomplishing whatever you see fit.

Your aggression in Iraq did not result from impudent desire to best or exculpate the father. Rather, yours was part of a plan, disclosed in the early '90s, to attack both Iraq and Iran.

Your belief in the supremacy of American democracy is saving grace and fatal flaw. Unlike your Christian compatriots, your religion is democracy and your deity, America. You exhibit zealotry redolent of the true believers' worst excesses.

Such obsession excuses way too much. With righteousness filling your sails and ruthlessness your moral compass, no sea, no matter how tempestuous, can stay you from your course.

To calculate the worth of so many considered innocent even by your own extreme standards, Dick, is an abomination. To judge them worthless makes your own crimes incalculable, your actions unforgivable.

You and your cronies of death kill at a distance. In a long line of legendary killers, your execrable crimes defy comprehension.

America's own affair with "collateral damage" is well established. If ever there were a "terrorist" nation, America too frequently fits the bill, from its inception, at its worst and best.

Even a cursory glance across American battlefields reveals veritable mountain heaps of civilians and non-combatants, though not as high as it would have been, since so many were incinerated, literally burned from the sky.

Far too often, expediency and indifference produce gelatinous incendiaries that efface any difference between enemy combatant and ordinary citizen, conflating enemy governments with all their peoples.

Not to be outdone, Dick, you have conducted the so-called "war on terror" with an assassin's aplomb and a sociopath's conscience, such as it is. Among a spectacular murder's row, you have performed like a champ's champ.

They say you used to smile and even laugh once in awhile. The other day, my 5-year-old son asked about my screen saver, a delightful likeness of your infamous scowl. "Why is that man so angry?" wondered my son.

Out of the mouths of babes, indeed. You have lost all sense of proportion, Dick. Your slavish devotion to the honorable cause of protecting America is admirable. Ends do not justify means, however, and your means end in desolation, destitution.

I know you are a gambler. After all, you have gambled the fate of American democracy for a shot at empire, the outcome of which you will never know.

Bet me and we settle in hell, Dick. History will adjudge you inadequate, an embarrassment were the costs less grave, instead, an inerasable stain on humanity, deserving of eternal censure.

Most assuredly, history will recognize you as the single, most powerful VP to date. Your intellect, ability, and strategic acumen are beyond reproach. What history will not sanction, I wager, is your vicious brutality and uncaring cruelty.

"Enemies" of state are not subhuman pawns to be disposed of as you deem necessary. Necessity authorizes atrocity and you, Dick, have authorized enough to earn you your own special inferno.

I do want to compliment you on your management of G.W. While your cabal installed the heir apparent and probably dictated the terms of the arrangement, your execution, so to speak, was impeccable.

Yes, you surrounded yourself with other true believers, like Libby, who fall on their swords without hesitation. Still impressive, though. Mine is not a quibble about management style or dour personality.

You are an obscenity, but certainly not useless. You will serve as a historical beacon to remind us all of just how close the road to unlimited devotion runs to the fascistic gates of hell.

Bet me, Dick.

(previously published in the HDN)