What Happened to Unruly Cheney?

It was reported for the first time two weeks ago that daughter of US Vice-president Mary Cheney, 34, had come to the Jordanian capital of Amman to go further to Baghdad for participation in the Human Shield international organization's actions. The news was published by the newspaper Al Quds Al Arabia (Arabian Jerusalem) issued in the Arab language in London. It was immediately picked up by the Jordanian mass media (the influential local newspaper Al Rai was the first to publish it). The son of Canadian Foreign Minister William Graham was also mentioned among the children of high-ranking officials of the west who decided to go to Iraq to demonstrate their protests against the US-led war.

According to the information of Al Rai, the Jordan authorities didn’t allow Mary Cheney to cross the Iraqi border. This was published in the newspaper during the first week of the US/UK aggression in Iraq. In addition, Mary's mother, as Al Rai reported, was going to leave for Amman as well to persuade the daughter not to go to Iraq.

A bit later, the information about Mary Cheney’s doing was reported by majority of Russian TV and broadcasting stations. It was stated with reference to London's Arab-language Al Quds Al Arabi that American Vice-president Dick Cheney would soon come to the Jordan capital to "give a lecture" to the daughter.

The Washington Post denied the information and reported it was unfounded. No more reports about the fate of Mary Cheney followed after that. At present, it's actually very difficult to find out the truth under conditions of a cruel propaganda war.

However, PRAVDA.Ru sources in Amman don not confirm information that someone of the Cheneys actually came to Amman recently to go further to Baghdad. Indeed, if the daughter of the US vice-president actually participated in the human shield activities near Iraqi strategic objects, the state television of Iraq would have certainly made it the topic of the day and more information would have been published on the subject.

For the time being, Baghdad still remains a human target for the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz's hawks. Relatives and children of the US high-ranking officials are already used to CNN reports about the carnage in Iraq and watch them on TV rather calmly. And this is at the time when American Tomahawk missiles rush to the Iraqi capital, causing much damage to the city and injuring a real human shield, the Iraqi people.

Sergey Stefanov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva