From wsws.org:
US Vice President Dick Cheney’s trip to Japan and Australia this week is an affront to the democratic rights of the American, Japanese and Australian people.
In defiance of majority antiwar sentiment in all three countries, Cheney’s goal is stepped up support for the criminal occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and for the Bush administration’s preparations for war against Iran.
Just three months ago, in the November congressional elections, the American people overwhelmingly repudiated the Iraq war.
Four years of bloodshed have virtually destroyed Iraq and killed or displaced more than four million of its people.
Over 3,100 American soldiers are dead and another 50,000 injured.
In Japan and Australia, large majorities oppose their government’s support for the US-led occupation.
A recent BBC poll, for example, found that 78 percent of Australians disapprove of the war.
Cheney has played a central role in the lead-up to, and prosecution of, the Iraq war.
More than any other figure within the White House, he scripted the false claims that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction” in order to fabricate the justification for war.
Defining the theme that shaped every public utterance by US government officials up to the March 2003 invasion, Cheney declared on August 26, 2002: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
Cheney in Australia while Iraq war veterans are in terrible situations: here.