Hello, Prestige Heads, welcome to American Prestige. I'm Danny Bessner, here as always with my friend and comrade, Derek Davidson, and we're very excited to welcome back to the podcast today, our old friend, Spencer Ackerman.

Spencer runs the ghost newsletter Forever Wars. He's the author of Reign of Terror, how the 9-11 era destabilized America and produced Trump.

He wrote for the Iron Man comic book series, and he wrote obituaries on Dick Cheney, who we invited him to talk about today, as well as Donald Ronsfeld, and lots of other stuff. So check out Spencer's work, but as I just said, we invited to talk about the death of friend of the pod, Dick Cheney. So I guess more than the death, but the life, life well lived. Spencer, thank you so much for joining us. Now, I appreciate it, guys. Who is more dedicated to the concept of American prestige than Dick Cheney?

He was, well, he's actually, he's a more interesting fellow structurally. I was also asked to write a no bit.

A more interesting fellow structurally than one might imagine but Spencer um

we could get your initial thought it's just a shame i mean it's a shame to see a life taken so soon

especially a good man you know a good man like that i mean i i just you know i have i have i'm

having a hard time processing but but you know i you know, I'll try to get through this.

We're here together. We're here to more together. So, Spencer, happy to get your first thoughts.

We could, we could go into who this guy was and where he came from. Kind of an interesting

background, actually, kind of a guy who straddles eras, and we could talk about that. But wherever

you want to start, let's start there. Guest choice, Steelers' choice.

I mean, here's the architect as much of, if not more, than George W. Bush of the War on Terror.

So the first thing that has to be said, by the estimates of the cost of war project at Brown University in 2021,

the war on terror killed something in the neighborhood on a conservative estimate of 900,000 people.

Likely, once you include epidemiological results, which is to say additional casualty.

Indirect deaths, yeah.

Yeah, because of the destruction of infrastructure in the countries that Cheney was a key architect of occupying, bombing, and invading.

The death toll is easily, I think it's fair to say, over a million people that can be attributed

to Dick Cheney.

Then comes tens of thousands of refugees.

And then comes the enormous destabilization that Cheney's works had on American political life that have brought us to this

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