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by RAY FLEMING

I wonder what Dick Cheney makes of Sarah Palin who will succeed him in the Vice-Presidential office in the White House if the Republicans win the US election? Dick Cheney - who travels the world alternatively dictating and supplicating according to the political needs of the moment. Sarah Palin - so far removed from the world Cheney inhabits that she had never held a US passport until she needed one to visit neighbouring Canada.

Mr Cheney was at it again yesterday In Georgia, inveighing against the Russian “bully” and its “illegitimate” actions. Does he never stop to think, even for a moment, that all the negatives he uses to criticise Russia can quite easily be employed to describe the actions of the United States? Has America never bullied another nation -- Pakistan, for instance; was not its invasion of Iraq illegitimate?

The Vice-President was in Georgia to offer assurances of America's support in its stand against Russia, and the speech he made illustrated perfectly how blinkered is his view of the world. He thanked Georgia for sending 2'000 troops to Iraq to join the US-led coalition - the third-largest contributor there - and then said: “Now it is the responsibility of the free world to rally to the side of Georgia.” As political non-sequiturs go, that takes some beating. In Mr Cheney's mind, clearly, the invasion of Iraq was a mission undertaken by the “free world” and not an illegal adventure by the United States and Britain.