Cheney and Other Republican Liars and Hypocrites

Since 2002, no government official lied about the war in Iraq more than Dick Cheney. In a different era, the vice president would have been impeached and sent packing. Cheney's outing of a CIA officer whose husband's factual report on Niger yellowcake disagreed with Cheney's self-serving fantasies should have been enough to send the vice president to jail. Dick Cheney's authoritarian and anti-social character has been on display repeatedly but in no case was it more obvious than when he shot a friend of his in the face with a shotgun and it was the friend who was obliged to apologize. Strange man, Dick Cheney.

I am proud to be yet another blog linking to Larry Wilkerson's article in The Washington Note:

...when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops "the Cheney method of interrogation and torture", the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way.

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009.

(snip)

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

(snip)

There in fact were no such contacts.

It's a national disgrace that right-wing Republicans continue to coddle such liars as Dick Cheney. But Cheney wasn't the only liar. We have to include such 'stalwart' Republicans as Donald Rumseld, Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzalez, Douglas Feith, and yes, George W. Bush. There were plenty of others. The fact remains that the Bush Administration felt comfortable lying to Congress for eight years. But they didn't stop there. They lied to the American people.

Now Nancy Pelosi is accused of lying about what she was told by an administration that had little credibility. Our country needs a reliable non-political CIA but Bush and Cheney were doing everything they could to politicize parts of the government that had always been nonpolitical and bipartisan. As an example, the Bush Administration promoted people like Dusty Foggo to the number three spot at the CIA:

Foggo is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria after pleading guilty to a single count of fraud as part of a plea bargain. He is the highest ranking CIA officer ever to be convicted of a federal felony.

The fraud was part of a bribery ring that included Foggo's old friend, contractor Brent Wilkes, and former [Republican] Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, both of whom have been sentenced to years in prison.

Court papers filed this week offer the most detailed glimpse yet of Foggo's misconduct, which included getting his mistress hired to a $100,000 a year job at the CIA and steering millions of dollars in CIA contracts to Wilkes.

Even in the CIA there were people under Bush who were feeding at the public trough.

Again, most people in the intelligence community are competent professionals. But Bush and Cheney were not shy about bending the rules and finding people who would do the same. Here's another example of life under Bush by way of Talking Points Memo:

Adm. Mike McConnell came in as the Director of National Intelligence with a rep for being professional and non-partisan, a calling card the Bush Administration has put to its own uses.

(snip)

In his first months as DNI, McConnell did plenty to undermine that rep. He told Congress that three German terrorism suspects had been arrested due to intercepts made possible by the then-new Protect America Act when in fact they were obtained under the old FISA law. Soon after, McConnell offered a especially misleading account to Congress of a supposed FISA Court ruling that had delayed the U.S. from spying on the kidnappers of U.S. troops in Iraq. And throughout congressional debate on a surveillance law he claimed that the debate itself endangered American lives.

Then earlier this year, he suggested that a questioner at a public event at Johns Hopkins was "disappointed" that the U.S. hadn't suffered additional terrorist attacks. And now McConnell has really let lose, framing the Senate debate on the surveillance bill as being between those who think "we shouldn't have an Intelligence Community" and those who do. That has prompted a letter from Sen. Russ Feingold demanding an apology for those false characterizations of the debate.

There were other people besides McConnell who served at Bush's pleasure and thought nothing of lying to Congress. We know Cheney and others were liars. We know they lied to people like Pelosi. Until proven otherwise, I think we already know who the liars are. In the current political climate, Dick Cheney will never be prosecuted and sent to jail for his crimes. At the very least, he should go home and the news media should stop paying attention to a man who lied his way into a war our nation did not need.

The Nonexistent Credibility of Bush & Co.

During Congressional hearings held on the mafia some forty to fifty years ago the most common response by mafia types being questioned was invoking the fifth. Thanks to the 'leadership' emanating from the White House, a line of questioning might lead to a more nonsensical line of defense these days:

Congressman: Did you kill One-armed Sonny on July 31 on order from Mafia boss Corleone?

Hitman (after hesitating, consulting his lawyers, and pausing): I don't recall.

Congressman: Let's take this step by step. You were seen by two witnesses. You still had your gun when you left the building. The five bullets that hit One-armed Sonny came from your gun. You had blood on your jacket. You have agreed to testify in exchange for leniency. So I ask again, just the first part of the question: did you kill One-armed Sonny?

Hitman (same drama as before): I have no memory of causing his death.


Welcome to the era of the hazy memory defense.

Scooter Libby has hazy memory.

Karl Rove has hazy memory.

Alberto Gonzales has hazy memory.

Donald Rumsfeld has hazy memory.

Gonzales and Rumsfeld are also somewhat adept at playing rope-a-dope, which is simply filling their alloted time with nonsense and bullshit as they evades proper and legal questions from Congress. They won't even give a straight answer to the press.

Cheney is now attempting the hazy memory defense.

Dan Froomkin of White House Watch (in a column called "Cheney's Unmistakable Admission") has this post on our ethically-challenged Vice President:

In an interview yesterday, CNN's Larry King asked Vice President Cheney if he dispatched Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card to a Washington hospital room to pressure a sedated John Ashcroft, then attorney general, to approve surveillance techniques that Ashcroft's subordinates had concluded were illegal.

Cheney's response?

"THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't recall -- . . . I don't recall that I gave instructions to that effect.

"Q That would be something you would recall.

"THE VICE PRESIDENT: I would think so. But certainly I was involved because I was a big advocate of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, and had been responsible and working . . . to get it to the President for approval. By the time this occurred, it had already been approved about 12 times by the Department of Justice. There was nothing new about it.

"Q So you didn't send them to get permission.

"THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't recall that I was the one who sent them to the hospital."

Have you ever heard such a non-denial denial? Seriously: Can anyone reading this see it as anything but an admission that Gonzales and Card (then White House counsel and chief of staff, respectively) were following Cheney's orders?

He doesn't remember sending them to the hospital. Well, what does he remember?

Froomkin has a good summary of the events and issues involved. His post is a reminder that bloggers need to summarize events more often as more facts are uncovered and as more bamboozlement and distractions comes from the Bush Administration and their enablers in the media. The noise machine that seems to be about 90% of the function of the White House these days spends a great deal of time denying events while deliberately compounding and confusing the issues at the same time. Make no mistake. At this late date, we have no reason to trust Bush and Cheney's claims. Congress needs to take a hard look at everything these two are doing and have done. The fact that our Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, is still hanging on to his job tells us that we have a serious problem and that the problem is higher up.



Update: See Dan Froomkin's latest column on Thursday ("Karl Rove's Immunity")

Some Thoughts on Impeachment

One of the disturbing things about Bush's lawyers is the irritating habit they have of combing through history to look for precedents to justify the president's and vice president's actions. Of course, some of the precedents that Bush's lawyers use were made unlawful a long time ago and in other cases they have to do some fancy topological pretzel-twisting to make their precendents fit the current era, but that doesn't seem to stop them. And it's disturbing that there are so many people in the media that take the Bush Administration's convoluted arguments seriously. So everything I say about impeachment should be taken with a grain of salt. In fact, we are, as a nation, in very dangerous, uncharted territory.

We as a nation do not like to see our laws broken, even by very powerful politicians. In particular, we do not like to see anyone set themselves above the law. But the tools for holding the president and vice president accountable to the American people are damaged. Most of those tools ultimately require the cooperation of the Bush Administration in one way or another. In the past, there were enough officials with integrity to see to it that the law was observed to its fullest. When President Nixon tried to sabotage the investigation of his White House, there was enough integrity in the Justice Department and enough pressure from both parties in Congress to resist Nixon and to continue the investigations, but it was a near thing at the time.

There are other legal alternatives (see John Dean's latest article) that do not require relying on Bush's Justice Department but the means of accountability mentioned the most often in recent months is impeachment. But impeachment carries a bad taste these days because of its association with political motivations, Congressional grandstanding and even vengeance. We are in uncharted waters and there aren't many places to look for leadership on the issue of accountability. But there are some if one cares to look around and think about these things. Two who come to mind, at least in terms of discussing impeachment, democracy, and the law, are John Dean and Bill Moyers. Crooks and Liars has a video on a Moyers' discussion of impeachment; below the video is a quick summary that quickly gets to the issue that concerns so many of us:

In this clip PBS’ Bill Moyers sits down with The Nation’s John Nichols and conservative constitutional attorney Bruce Fein from the American Freedom Agenda to discuss the crimes and abuse of power by George Bush and Dick Cheney and the need to impeach them both. While Nichols and Fein come from different ends of the political spectrum, they are in total agreement on this issue. Congress must put impeachment on the table because if they do nothing to stop Bush and Cheney now, we will see future presidents follow in their footsteps which would be a disaster for our country.

Maybe our next president will undo much of the damage that Bush and Cheney have done. But in 2012 or 2016, if we allow the nonsense of the last six years to go unchallenged, we could elect a resentful Republican or an over-zealous Democrat who might dangerously take things further than Bush and Cheney. It's not an abstraction. These kind of things have happened in other countries.

I don't know if impeachment is going to happen or not. I don't even know if it's wise for the Democrats to pursue impeachment in terms of what may happen in November 2008—and that has to be a consideration because if Congress is returned to the Republicans without the Republicans reforming themselves, we can only expect more trouble. The Republican Noise machine is alive and well and an impeachment proceeding might be just the thing to rejuvenate sympathy for Bush, Cheney and the Republicans. On some serious abuses of the US Constitution and violations by the Bush Administration, the mainstream media has been irresponsibly slow to acknowledge what is happening and the media stars, in particular, have often done a poor job of informing themselves. Clearly, there are obstacles. But, if it's possible to do impeachment proceedings right, it would be the responsible thing to do.

Impeachment, however, would not be easy to pull off. It's up to the House to indict or impeach a government official and that requires a simple majority. To convict a government official (and thereby remove that official from office), however, would require two-thirds of the Senate. The Senate is where the key problem would be. Even if the Democrats can get all their members and two independents to go along with conviction, it's very difficult to imagine getting 17 Republicans to vote for conviction. These are not the Republicans of thirty years ago. Republicans in the Senate had six years to hold Bush and Cheney accountable when they had the majority but they refused to do so. It would have taken only a dozen or so joining the Democratic minority to hold the president and vice president accountable simply in terms of legislation and oversight; but a dozen responsible and courageous Republicans could not be found. Political courage, in fact, is not in abundance in either party these days.

I'm in sympathy with people pushing for impeachment and it's clear the momentum for impeachment, in fact, is going to have to come from the people. I know when she first became Speaker of the House that Nancy Pelosi said impeachment is not on the table, but we've been learning a lot since then. It heartens me that Senator Barbara Boxer said recently that impeachment, in fact, is on the table. That doesn't mean it will happen.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Bush Administration has had plenty of time in the last six years to cover its tracks. Even when Democrats knew something was going very wrong over at the White House, they didn't have the authority and the power to gather real information and real evidence with the subpoena and oversight powers needed to properly gather the needed material. The Republicans in Congress did everything they could to impede and obstruct investigations and oversight, both traditional and perfectly normal functions of Congress. Give a couple of criminals four or five years to cover up their crimes, as the Congressional Republicans appear to have done, and they just may get away with it, particularly if they have a rather large retinue of lawyers. And there's another issue involving the duties of Congress. Clearly, the Bush Administration has broken any number of specific laws, including those involving habeas corpus and domestic surveillance. But again, without the kind of Congressional hearings that can clearly explain to the public what the problem is and why these things matter, it is difficult to pursue these issues along lines of impeachment (and in the current environment, we can't necessarily expect much clarification from the media). If impeachment is to take place in the next six to eight months, there's a lot of ground to cover. The public, at long last, knows something is very wrong with the Bush Administration but articulating what is wrong is going to take some doing even at this late date. And just because the public is having difficulty trusting Bush and Cheney, that does not mean the public will trust those bringing impeachment proceeding against the president and vice president.

I've been browsing some discussions on impeachment that one can find on blogs. Keep in mind that I fully believe the president and vice president are liars, that they launched a campaign of deliberate deception and that they lied their way into a war in Iraq, a war we did not need, a war, in fact, that seems to have no particular purpose (at least one that Bush will admit) after four years of White House recklessness and incompetence. If the evidence can be found and presented, the campaign of deliberate deception is clearly the most impeachable offense. But there's the catch. I suspect finding concrete evidence of deliberate deception is not as easy as it sounds (the Nixon tapes, for example, were vitally important as far as evidence that the public could understand and accept). I have spent probably hundreds of hours poring over various materials and there's no question in my mind that the president and vice president actively deceived the American people. But there's very little that is concrete. No matter what issue is used to bring charges against Bush and Cheney, impeachment will require more concrete and understandable evidence that we have seen so far.

Dennis Kucinich has offered documentation for the impeachment of Cheney but much of the 'evidence' consists of press briefing transcripts. Impeachment will require much stronger material than that. Being wrong is not impeachable. Being incompetent is not impeachable. I worry that all Bush and Cheney need to do when it comes to the deceptive statements they made about Iraq is say that it's what they believed at the time, and that in 'their judgment,' what they said was reasonably true. Even Cheney's aggressive assertions of things he supposedly knew with certainty would require nothing more than a simple apology from Cheney to get him off the hook (one of the reasons the impeachment of Clinton was such a fiasco is that once Clinton apologized for his perjury, the impeachment proceeding had no real justification). Impeachment proceedings are going to require powerful evidence and very coherent arguments. And above all else, the proceeding have to be convincing to a majority of Americans. If impeachment is to succeed, there's a great deal of work to do.

I hope to say more on this in the coming weeks. My blogging time is limited these days but I think about these things all the time and there's a great deal more to discuss.

The Delusional and Contrary Mr. Bush

It's hard to escape the notion that if liberals say the night is dark, a right-wing contrarian like President Bush will get it in his head to say the opposite just to spite liberals. Right wing conservative pundits have made a living out of being contrarians but the effect of such nonsense on the affairs of our country can only be described as a fiasco when put into action and made part of official American policy. In the end, we are witnessing a national tragedy of historic dimensions.

The month of May was not a good one for Bush's war in Iraq. The death toll of our soldiers in May comes to 124 and the total coalition deaths, which for some reason does not include Iraqis fighting on our side, is 129 deaths. Not since the bizarre punitive battles that took on the entire city of Fallujah have so many Americans died. The attack on Fallujah remains a symbol of Bush's bizarre war; destroying an entire Iraqi city because of the crimes of a few against a handful of contractors who ignored travel warnings against going into Fallujah not only doesn't make sense, the destruction of a city of 300,000 was an operation that can hardly be considered American. The military opposed the initial plan from the White House to attack Fallujah back in April 2004; it was considered counterproductive. But Bush and his inner circle pushed on.

And now three years later, there is no sign that Bush has learned a thing. But he still considers himself the Decider-in-Chief. Think Progress draws our attention to an article by Georgie Anne Geyer in the Dallas News:

..by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness.

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."

Destiny. Methinks the president has a touch of what some call the Napoleonic complex. Years before being handed the keys to the White House by his father, Bush once asked Queen Elizabeth who the back sheep was in her family, obviously making it clear that he was the black sheep in his own family. There is no sign that frat boy ever grew up. The bunker mentality of the president is not healthy and Congress need to come to grips with President Bush's increasingly delusional view of the world. A president with that kind of bunker mentality cannot properly do his job and cannot properly serve the American people.

We have a problem of course in the vice president. There is no other way to describe Cheney except to say that he takes pleasure in being sneaky and dishonest. I say that because 'last throes' Cheney has repeatedly lied to the American people, and among his friends he tells stories that are supposed to be about how clever he is but that, to my mind, show a very different person than Cheney would like us to see. Cheney has no understanding that there is no United States as we know it unless there is law and that law is the US Constitution and the laws that follow thereby from Congress. So we have a dysfunctional right wing president and a dysfunctional right wing vice president and a sluggish Congress that is finally becoming aroused but that is still doing too little to hold Bush and Cheney to account.

Navy Tries to Put Cheney Back in the Attic

Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly has more on the third carrier group, the Nimitz, that appeared at one point to be joining the USS Eisenhower in the Persian Gulf. The Eisenhower is on its way home and the Nimitz has taken its place, meaning we have two carrier groups in the gulf instead of the three that would have heightened tensions (isn't the price of gasoline and oil high enough for Bush and Cheney's oil friends?). Drum's post offers some interesting details on what may have been a showdown between the Navy and Cheney's lunatic fringe.

After Four Years of Reckless Incompetence, Cheney Says It's 'Game Time'

It does not take four years to win a war unless something goes very wrong. Some of the possible things that can go wrong include:

a) The two sides are evenly matched.

b) A guerilla war, insurgency, rebellion, whatever you want to call it, is fueled by the growing unpopularity of an occupying army and the leaders who sent that army to war.

c) The dominant military power in a conflict is led by incompetents.

Suffice to say, the two sides in Iraq are not evenly matched. We are a superpower but we have a poor idea what it is we are trying to accomplish and our civilian leaders have little concept of the place where we have gone to war and little understanding of the post-colonial world we live in. Bush and Cheney's war has gone wrong largely because of b and c.

Dan Froomkin of White House Watch writes:

When it comes to today's visit by the beleaguered, credibility-challenged vice president to leaders of the fractured, mostly powerless government of war-torn Iraq, the White House is setting expectations appropriately low.

(snip)

The other message Cheney brings: "It's game time" -- raising the question what has it been up until now exactly?

Todd J. Gillman of the Dallas Morning News is liveblogging the vice president's trip -- complete with photos -- as well as filing pool reports to his print colleagues.

Gillman writes in a pool report that "according to a senior administration official who gaggled en route and on background, the message Cheney is bringing boils down to this:

"'We've all got challenges together. We've got to pull together. We've got to get this work done. It's game time.'

"The urgency of the situation also came through as this same senior official said: 'Everybody's got to sit down, raise their game, redouble their efforts.'"

Since the spring and summer of 2003, when has the situation not been urgent? Wasn't it 'game time' when Bush decided on war? Wasn't it 'game time' when Bush heard warnings of a possible terrorist attack just before 9/11? Wasn't it 'game time' when Bush repeatedly went on vacation, becoming the most vacation bound president of the modern era? Wasn't it 'game time' as Bush and the White House wasted hours and days and weeks stuffing the federal government with cronies, ideologues and political hacks instead of professionals (believe it or not they can still be found among Democrats, Republicans and independents) who know what they're doing?

Perhaps the reporters misread the meaning of 'game time' and it is a reference to the 2008 election? I know the American people have their own lives to live and are slow to come around on these things sometimes and I happen to be one who respects that because I respect our democracy. Democracy, by nature, is flawed, but it is by far still the best thing we've got.

But if the nonsense by Bush and Cheney continues for much longer, the American people are going to have to start pushing Congress to impeach the president and vice president. In my view, Bush and Cheney made themselves impeachable when they launched their war in Iraq with a long string of outright lies and then led us into a war we did not need and that has no purpose. No WMDs. No al Qaida connection. No democracy. No regional stability. But lots of very high-priced oil that a growing number of Americans cannot afford.

Let us say out loud the obvious: the motivations, words and actions of Bush and Cheney have not been honorable from day one of their fiasco in Iraq. And it's long past time for the media to stop pretending, despite the evidence to the contrary, that somehow Bush and Cheney mean well. They have broken too many laws and broken faith with the American people far too often for that charade to continue. I know, impeachment is not likely, it's messy and unpopular, but given the unwillingness of Bush and Cheney to mend their ways, it is now becoming the responsible course of action for our nation to take.

Telling It Like It Is

Bush's failing presidency is in full meltdown. The only remaining embarrassment is how long the Republicans in Congress will keep trying to prop up our incompetent and corrupt president and vice president. Bush and Cheney are dangerous and are in serious need of adult supervision. It's time to stop pretending that we can ignore the problem.

Truthout has an article by Robert Scheer that simply tells it like it is when it comes to Dick Cheney:

While he is still as dangerous as any cornered animal, Cheney stands brightly revealed as the main culprit in cherry-picking the evidence to make the case for a stupid, failed war. He has been exposed as a vindictive, inflexible ideologue, who attempts to destroy all who publicly disagree with him, such as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Wilson's CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. His extensive ties and loyal political service to energy and defense companies such as Halliburton (which now, in a burst of honesty, is moving its headquarters to Dubai), reveal him to be a man of deep corruption.

Like Nixon during Watergate, Cheney is now shrilly on the defensive. "National security made me do it!" he insists, clinging to pseudo-patriotism, that last refuge of scoundrels. But it is an argument that no longer flies with a public that has caught on to the rhythm of his screechy lies. After all, this is the leader, dominating a weak president, who pushed so hard for a complete occupation of a Muslim country not linked to 9/11. A man who hung his arguments for adventuristic war on known falsehoods, such as the attempted purchase of yellowcake uranium in Niger.

In fact, the recent terrorist bombing in Afghanistan that came too close to ending the vice president's life aptly underscored just how reckless the decision was to direct our policy away from the religious fanatics of al-Qaida, based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and instead pour our resources into overthrowing Osama bin Laden's sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein.

For six years, Bush and Cheney have piled mistake upon mistake, lie upon lie, reckless gambles upon reckless gambles. Most people can't even follow all the scandals emanating from these two very rigid right wing ideologues who have no business running a government, let alone taking on the growing problems of the 21st century. And there are other scandals Republicans have given us.

Think of the lies and scandals surrounding Republicans that can be summarized in a word or short phrase. Leakgate. Abu Ghraib. Rendition. Bora Bora. Cakewalk. Mushroom cloud. Aluminum tubes. Yellowcake. Mobile weapons labs. Duke Cunningham. Hookergate. Jack Abramoff. Phone jamming. Katrina. Enron. Iraq reconstruction. Looting in Baghdad. Fallujah. Dubai ports deal. Walter Reed. Foleygate. Terri Schiavo. 'Pay to Play.' K Street project. Domestic spying. No bid contracts. Halliburton. Privatization. And now our latest scandal which doesn't quite have a name yet: the firing of eight U.S. attorneys purely for political purposes (feel free to add more in comments; I'm sure I've missed a few).

The media has not been helpful. The utter nonsense coming out of the mouths of pundits and some Washington reporters about Scooter Libby simply flies in the face of the facts. Americans are finally paying attention; Editor & Publisher has the numbers on Bush's possible pardon of Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's former right hand man:

You might get a different impression from the tone of the media coverage, but a new CNN poll finds that less than 1 in 5 Americans back a pardon for former top White House and vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Nearly 70 % of Americans oppose a presidential pardon for Libby after his conviction on perjury and other charges related to the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Just 18% percent said they would support a pardon for Libby. "Meanwhile," CNN reports, "a narrow majority said they believe Cheney was part of a cover-up in the case."

The only Americans standing in the way of holding George W. Bush and Dick Cheney accountable are roughly about two dozen Republicans senators and perhaps sixty Republican representatives. But the walls are crumbling and the Republicans know it. Each day the scandals surrounding Bush and Cheney are growing—and one by one Republicans are throwing in the towel on those two reckless and incompetent men.

Ending Cheney's Cold War Brinkmanship with Iran

After giving us a $2 trillion war, a foreign policy that doesn't make any sense and the lowest credibility the United States has experienced since the 19th, it's time for Congress to put restrictions on Cheney's recklessness.

Here's an article in Foreign Affairs, of all places, by Ray Takeyh that argues detente with Iran and more realistic foreign policy goals:

Over five years after the Bush administration vowed to transform the Middle East, the region is indeed profoundly different. Washington's misadventures in Iraq, the humbling of Israeli power in Lebanon, the rise of the once-marginalized Shiites, and the ascendance of Islamist parties have pushed the Middle East to the brink of chaos.

In the midst of the mess stands the Islamic Republic of Iran. Its regime has not only survived the U.S. onslaught but also managed to enhance Iran's influence in the region. Iran now lies at the center of the Middle East's major problems -- from the civil wars unfolding in Iraq and Lebanon to the security challenge of the Persian Gulf -- and it is hard to imagine any of them being resolved without Tehran's cooperation. Meanwhile, Tehran's power is being steadily enhanced by its nuclear program, which progresses unhindered despite regular protests from the international community.

This last development has put Washington in a bind. Ever since the revolution that toppled the shah in 1979, the United States has pursued a series of incoherent policies toward Tehran. At various points, it has tried to topple the regime -- even, on occasion, threatening military action. At others, it has sought to hold talks on a limited set of issues. Throughout, it has worked to box in Iran and to limit its influence in the region. But none of these approaches has worked, especially not containment, which is still the strategy of choice in the Iran policy debate.

If it hopes to tame Iran, the United States must rethink its strategy from the ground up. The Islamic Republic is not going away anytime soon, and its growing regional influence cannot be limited. Washington must eschew superficially appealing military options, the prospect of conditional talks, and its policy of containing Iran in favor of a new policy of détente. In particular, it should offer pragmatists in Tehran a chance to resume diplomatic and economic relations. Thus armed with the prospect of a new relationship with the United States, the pragmatists would be in a position to sideline the radicals in Tehran and try to tip the balance of power in their own favor. The sooner Washington recognizes these truths and finally normalizes relations with its most enduring Middle Eastern foe, the better.

I take the article with a grain of salt and I'm not sure that containment is out of the question if we talk about a broader definition of what containment might mean. But I take the article far more seriously than anything Dick Cheney has to offer these days. In a way, it's a major slap at the vice president.

I can remember in the 60s and early 70s relatives and friends of my parents who were in the defense industry reading Foreign Policy (I know because I was back in their dens browsing through their magazines). Things have a way of coming full circle when dealing with reckless incompetents like those in the Bush Administration. It's ironic that the most aggressive American foreign policy since the early 20th century is crippling American power and America's options for the 21st century.

A Republican with a Conscience

There are still prominent Republicans left who care more about what's right for the nation than what's convenient for the Republican Party. Former presidential candidate and Republican, Pete McCloskey, was always known for his thoughtful integrity. Truthout carries an article by McCloskey that focuses on the growing scandal in the Bush Administration surrounding the firing of US Attorneys for political purposes:

One of the tragic moments in American history occurred in November 1973. This was the famous "Saturday Night Massacre," when President Richard Nixon, faced with the demand for incriminating tapes and documents by Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, took an action that would lead to his resignation from the presidency in disgrace less than a year later. Nixon ordered U.S. Attorney General Elliott Richardson to fire Cox. When Richardson refused and instead resigned, as did his second in command, William Ruckelshaus, U.S. Solicitor General Robert Bork stepped up to fire Cox.

(snip)

Now, 32 years later, another Republican attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, faces questioning by both the Senate and House Judiciary committees, on grounds that he has used his high office for political purposes to remove eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom had been involved in investigations of Republican congressmen, such as Randy "Duke" Cunningham of San Diego, Robert Ney of Ohio and John Doolittle of Rocklin (Placer County).

That action triggered a tough inquiry into the Watergate scandal by the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by U.S. Rep. Peter Rodino, a mild-mannered congressman from New Jersey. In July 1974, after seven months of public hearings, the committee in a bipartisan vote adopted several articles of impeachment....

In 1973, Pete McCloskey was the first member of Congress to openly call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. There was something called accountability in those days and the American media was not shy in those years in calling for that accountability as well. Bush and Cheney committed acts in 2002 and 2003 that were impeachable when they fraudelently made a case for war in Iraq, then tried to cover up their fraud. However, impeachment could have been avoided if the media had simply done its job by shining a bright light on the administration's behavior. If Americans knew in 2004 what they know now, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would have been sent packing in the 2004 election.

More on Cheney's Poor Judgment and al Qaida

The other day, I pointed out that the Bush Administration had al Qaida on the ropes and failed to finish the job in late 2001 and 2002; Cheney's posturing comments against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi avoid the obvious: that Cheney's incompetent policies have done much to enable al Qaida to come back. Truthout has a long article by Robert Parry of Consortium News that explains in much detail why the vice president is so wrong:

Vice President Dick Cheney says he stands by his accusation that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plan for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq would "validate the al-Qaeda strategy." And he apparently thinks he got the better of this latest war of words.

However, if Pelosi ever goes beyond complaining that Cheney is impugning her "patriotism" – while Cheney counters that he is only questioning her "judgment" – she might point out that it is the Bush administration that has "validated" al-Qaeda's 9/11 strategy over the past five years.

Captured al-Qaeda documents reveal that Osama bin Laden's principal goal in the 9/11attacks was to lure the United States into a clumsy counterattack in the Middle East that would alienate Muslims, help al-Qaeda recruit more jihadists and bog down the American military in a no-win war.

Though bin Laden was mistaken in believing that Afghanistan would become the central front, he was right in pretty much every other part of his plan. At the time of 9/11, al-Qaeda was a fringe player in the Muslim world, with its leaders driven into exile and holed up in the mountains of Afghanistan.

I don't agree with everything that Parry says but he adds a number of useful details. There should be no doubt at this late stage of the war that Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld are responsible for the fiasco in Iraq, the failure to deal fully with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan by rushing off to Iraq, and subsequently the resurgence of al Qaida.

More on That 'Senior Administration Official'

I wrote on Wednesday on Cheney's bizarre habit of playing senior administration official as a way of cloaking his comments. There are times when the media has to rely on anonymous sources to write a story the public needs to hear, particulary in whistleblower situations. And there are times when it's important for an administration to talk off the record (such as testing an idea by allowing an unsourced administration figure to talk openly about something as a way of testing public reaction or possibly the reaction of a foreign government). But too often the Bush Administration has gotten somewhat absurd in its use of unsourced comments.

Ron Hutcheson of the McClatchy Washington Bureau has more on the Cheney nonsense:

The exchange during Cheney's flight to Oman on Wednesday highlighted the absurdity of a practice that's damaged the credibility of journalists and government officials alike. It's much easier to believe what people say when their names are attached to their words. Statements from unidentified people invite readers to doubt that the speakers exist outside of the reporter's imagination. If anonymity is designed to promote candor, it's difficult to find in the anonymous official's quote.

The Bush administration's use of anonymous sources has become a sore spot for reporters in the wake of a series of journalistic scandals involving fabricated quotes. ...

...in Washington, anonymity is too often a cloak for cheap shots and self-serving comments. Some officials insist on anonymity to minimize damage if they misspeak or say something that might be embarrassing. Reporters play along to maintain good relations or out of fear that they might miss something if they refuse to participate.

(snip)

"This has definitely achieved absurdity," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an organization that helps journalists protect their sources. "I don't look at this as anonymous sourcing. I look at this as big-time game playing. The only way to describe it is stupid."

Cheney is one of the most secretive elected officials in our nation's history. In many ways, he's more secretive now than when he was Secretary of Defense. His secrecy obviously invites the question: what is he hiding? Playing senior administration official doesn't help the public and raises any number of questions about the administration's credibility. The more important question, of course, is this: when is the Bush Administration going to start being straight with the American people?

Strange Days in the Bush Administration

First, the good news. The Bush Administration says it plans to talk to the Syrians and Iranians. Of course, it's good news only if the Bush Administration follows through on its statement, something it has not always done. So we will see if this is real or more nonsense.

Now for the strange news that keeps coming out of Washington:

Recently, we saw the Bush Administration trying to claim some of our troops were being killed by explosive devices made in Iran. What they offered was shaky evidence and the Bush Administration was forced to backpedal, before it was shown the devices were being made in Iraqi workshops as most people assumed all along.

We have the Walter Reed scandal with administration figures saying that no one cares about our wounded soldiers and veterans more than they do though mysteriously their Republican friends in Congress kept failing to provide oversight or money. Alas, it appears to be another heckuva job Brownie moment that has become such a familiar hallmark of this particular presidency.

One of the latest things is the Bush Administration's backpedaling on North Korea's so-called uranium enrichment program, which was always an iffy matter. All along, plutonium, not uranium, appeared to be what the North Koreans were using for their nuclear arms program. And the bomb most likely to fizzle is the plutonium bomb which has to built just right. We are fortunate that Bush is not the only incompetent in world affairs; North Korea called its own bluff and their missiles failed and later their nuclear device failed to make the statement they were hoping for (one suspects they may have known they had a troubled program and picked the bomb most likely to succeed and it wasn't good enough, hence no second try). Bush's many bizarre exaggerations of other nation's arms programs is leading to serious repercussions and makes it more difficult to engage in arms control in the future. We are fortunate that other nations, such as those in Europe, take arms control more seriously in terms of careful monitoring, analysis and diplomacy. At least there are people around who still know what they're doing. But they're certainly rare in the Bush Administration.

But nothing matches the bizarre and strange behavior of Dick Cheney. The more we learn about the arrogant and self-assured Vice President and his delusional assertions, the more evident it becomes that Dick Cheney needs to step down. He blew Iraq. He blew North Korea. Along with Bush and Rumsfeld, he was dead wrong to put Afghanistan on the back burner. But Cheney is itching for action in Iran as if he still retains some credibility.

No one is more the topic of discussion these days than Dick Cheney and much of that discussion has been prompted by Cheney's odd behavior—more prominent lately possibly because of the Scooter Libby trial and Cheney's close connection to the affair. As secretive and low profile as Cheney has been for most of Bush's six years in office, he has been a source of real concern from the beginning when he turned out not to be the steadying hand many people thought he was going to be. Sidney Blumenthal has an article in Salon that focuses on Cheney:

Cheney's implication that the U.S. presence in Iraq cannot possibly be an inspiration for terrorism is simply not shared at the highest levels of the senior military, including commanders on the ground in Iraq. I have learned that they are privately reading, circulating, and in agreement with a new article written by terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, senior fellows at the New York University Center on Law and Security. (Bergen is also a fellow at the New America Foundation. For purposes of full disclosure, I am also a senior fellow at the NYU Center.) Their article, "The Iraq Effect: War Has Increased Terrorism Sevenfold Worldwide," published in Mother Jones, provides empirical evidence for careful conclusions:

"Our study yields one resounding finding: The rate of terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups and the rate of fatalities in those attacks increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the average fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, which accounts for fully half of the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks in the post-Iraq War period. But even excluding Iraq, the average yearly number of jihadist terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities still rose sharply around the world by 265 percent and 58 percent respectively."

Draining military and economic resources from Afghanistan in the run-up to invading Iraq contributed to Afghanistan's current crisis. While money and materiel were siphoned to Iraq, Afghanistan was starved. "Aid per capita to Afghans in the first two years after the fall of the Taliban was around a tenth of that given to Bosnians following the end of the Balkan civil war in the mid-1990s," Bergen noted in testimony on Feb. 15 before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan James Dobbins has said, "Afghanistan was the least resourced of any major American-led nation building operation since the end of World War II." But the Iraq policy has had other ricochet effects, according to Bergen and Cruickshank:

"Since the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan has suffered 219 jihadist terrorist attacks that can be attributed to a particular group, resulting in the deaths of 802 civilians. The fact that the Taliban only conducted its first terrorist attacks in September 2003, a few months after the invasion of Iraq, is significant. International forces had already been stationed in the country for two years before the Taliban began to specifically target the U.S.-backed Karzai government and civilians sympathetic to it. This points to a link between events in Iraq and the initiation of the Taliban's terrorist campaign in Afghanistan. True, local dynamics form part of the explanation for the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the use of terrorism, particularly suicide attacks, by the Taliban is an innovation drawn from the Iraqi theater."

(snip)

Rather than approaching a climactic struggle against free-floating sects of "Islamofascism," the administration has been a party since Sept. 11 to concrete regional conflicts in which not only were economic, social and diplomatic instruments ignored but international military help was also rejected. Belatedly, in Afghanistan, circumstances of the administration's own making have forced it to concede the necessity of getting assistance from allies. Yet the movement of 1,400 British troops there is a direct reflection of the disintegration of the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq. Those very troops are being redeployed from southern Iraq, the British sector now being ceded to control of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, which Bush's "surge" is supposedly intended to suppress.

To repeat a point I made the other day, the Bush Administration had terrorists and al Qaida knocked back on its heels in the months after 9/11 but by refusing to finish the job in Afghanistan (or deluding themselves that they had done their job despite what a number of terrorist experts were saying), they gave al Qaida a breather. More important, by attacking Iraq with such a fraudelent case for war, a case so fraudelent that it was evident to the whole world—and by allowing such stupid and inflammatory acts as Abu Ghraib—Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld, through their own recklessness and incompetence, breathed new life into al Qaida and several terrorist groups.

On any number of issues, Cheney has some explaining to do. He has been treated, up to now, with far too much deference—and perhaps fear—by the media and generally Republican members of Congress. He is no expert and no visionary. He is a right winger caught in a rigid ideology that belongs in the cocktail lounge of a conservative country club; it is where Cheney belongs—in such an environment he can snarl and sneer all he wants, just so he isn't taken seriously by anyone in government. Congress needs to demand serious answers from Cheney. If answers aren't forthcoming, cut the funding for his office. If that doesn't work, begin impeachment proceedings. What we can no longer afford to do is pretend that Dick Cheney is not a major problem.

Cheney: The Man Behind the Curtain

Cheney's recent high profile adventures and comments do not appear to be working in his favor. The media is beginning to nail Cheney for some of his nonsense. Remember all the bizarre stories we've heard over the last six years that are by anonymous sources high in the administration? Editor & Publisher has an AP story on one possible source:

So who are those "senior administration officials" you hear quoted in the media?

Sometimes they're VERY senior administration officials.

Take the person who briefed reporters aboard Vice President Cheney's plane after his secret stay in Afghanistan. He didn't want his name used when he talked to reporters, but he kept using the words "I" and "me" as he referred to Cheney and to the reason for the vice president's visit.

It makes it hard to quote Cheney if reporters have to recast quotes in fictional form (I know, I know, there are accepted conventions for this sort of thing, but when anonymous sources are abusing the process to float politically convenient fictions or to out CIA operatives to exact revenge, journalists and editors need to acknowledge they're being used).

Editor & Publisher also has an item on Bob Woodward and his thoughts on journalism:

Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said Wednesday that journalists in the U.S. should have been more aggressive in their reporting during the buildup to the Iraq War, according to the Agence France Presse wire service.

Speaking at a conference in Tokyo, the journalist who broke the Watergate scandal reportedly said that the media should have done more to verify claims that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Woodward means well and certainly has caught up to events to some extent but he goes on to say that reporting on the ground was probably necessary (in Iraq) and that the story might have taken years to properly investigate. Actually, there were red flags stretching all the way from June 2002 to the invasion in March 2003. There were reporters, particularly of the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau (now McClatchy), who were doing stories that seriously challenged administration claims, but many big-name reporters (Woodward included) didn't follow up on those developments. And of course, it would have been useful at the time to know which high level administration figures were doing such heavy-handed spinning and whether indeed there was any reality to their claims. But at this late date, we do know one thing for certain: Cheney's calculated habits of political expediency have done enormous damage to our democracy, our national security and our nation.

Dick Cheney and Joe Wilson's Trip

Larry Johnson of No Quarter has the story on Dick Cheney and the trip taken by Joe Wilson to Niger. Cheney indeed was the cause of the trip and received a report from the CIA; it's always been a red herring about whether Cheney personally sent Joe Wilson—it's was only important that a knowledgeable person was sent and that person was Joe Wilson, the man who eventually blew the whistle when the Bush Administration claimed Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger. It's no different than anyone has expected who has been following the story from the beginning, except more of the details are now getting filled in five years after Joe Wilson's original report to the CIA (after his trip) that correctly said there was no Niger/Iraq connection; here's the end of Johnson's long post:

Cheney was given an intelligence report in response to his original query on 12 February, 2002. The report made clear that Niger was playing ball with the U.S. and was not about to even meet with Iraqis, much less sell them uranium. But Cheney and Bush had other plans. They were going to go to war with Iraq regardless of what the intelligence said. But we now have a clear picture that the intelligence community was trying to tell them uncomfortable truths that Bush and Cheney did not want to hear. Just remember that as the U.S. death toll in Iraq continues to soar.

Give it a read. Justice is getting very slow in our country. In 2004, several Republican senators covered up for Bush. And the White House has been very good at creating multiple fabrications to distract attention from the facts and the facts are not pretty. It's just further evidence that the administration, at its highest levels, is run by arrogant, dishonest and incompetent people who dragged the United States into an unneeded war.

More Reasons to Start Withdrawing

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were not honest with the American people in the case they made for war in Iraq. If they intend to launch a military strike against Iran, it is highly unlikely that they will be honest with the American people. Given the chaos of war, in fact, the Bush Administration can literally concoct whatever story it wants. Keep in mind that President Bush still shows no sign that he knows what he's doing. Simply because he has a vice president adept at pushing and pulling levers does not mean we have anything approximating a rational foreign policy that is working in the best interests of the United States. Basically we have the equivalent of two juvenile delinquents playing with a very powerful chemistry set in the middle of an ammunition dump; does anyone still think they know what they're doing?

I've been reading about the deaths at Najaf and can only shake my head. I have no idea what happened. I suspect Bush and Cheney have no idea what happened. Our media, which sometimes cannot get close enough to these events, has no idea what happened.

Juan Cole of Informed Comment pointed out yesterday that there are contradictory versions of the events:

Well, a big battle took place at the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Saturday night into Sunday, but there are several contradictory narratives about its significance. Iraqi authorities, claimed that the Iraqi army killed a lot of the militants (250) but only took 25 casualties itself. The Shiite governor of Najaf implied that the guerrillas were Sunni Arabs and had several foreign Sunni fundamentalist fighters ("Afghans") among them. He said that they based themselves in an orchard recently purchased by Baathists. Other sources said that the militants were Shiites. I'd take the claim of numbers killed with a large grain of salt, though the Iraqi forces did have US close air support. I infer that the guerrillas shot down one US helicopter.

That's one narrative. Here is another. The pan-Arab London daily al-Hayat reported that the militiamen were followers of Mahmud al-Hasani al-Sarkhi. It says one of his followers asserted that the fighting erupted when American and Iraqi troops attempted to arrest al-Hasani al-Sarkhi. The latter tried last summer to take over the shrine of al-Husayn in Karbala. It may have been feared that he would take advantage of the chaos of the Muharram pilgrimage season to make a play for power in Najaf. Al-Hayat says that although As'ad Abu Kalil, governor of Najaf, said the attackers were Sunnis, the director of the information center in Najaf, Ahmad Abdul Husayn Du'aybil, contradicted him. The latter said, "At dawn, today [Sunday], violent clashes took place between security forces and an armed militia calling itself "the Army of Heaven," which claims that the Imam Mahdi will [soon] appear." ...

Confused yet? Remember that it's unlikely our government has people on the ground in that area who understand what happened. Laura Rozen of War and Piece points to another version on Missing Links that is somewhat different from anything above but that has elements we've seen before:

Zeyad at his Healing Iraq website has new information on circumstances surrounding the Najaf fighting, including this:

Another story that is surfacing on several Iraqi message boards goes like this: A mourning procession of 200 pilgrims from the Hawatim tribe, which inhabits the area between Najaf and Diwaniya, arrived at the Zarga area at 6 a.m. Sunday. Hajj Sa’ad Nayif Al-Hatemi and his wife were accompanying the procession in their 1982 Super Toyota sedan because they could not walk. They reached an Iraqi Army checkpoint, which suddenly opened fire against the vehicle, killing Hajj Al-Hatemi, his wife and his driver Jabir Ridha Al-Hatemi. The Hawatim tribesmen in the procession, which was fully armed to protect itself in its journey at night, attacked the checkpoint to avenge their slain chief. Members of the Khaza’il tribe, who live in the area, attempted to interfere to stop the fire exchange. About 20 tribesmen were killed. The checkpoint called the Iraqi army and police command calling for backup, saying it was under fire from Al-Qaeda groups and that they have advanced weapons. Minutes later, reinforcements arrived and the tribesmen were surrounded in the orchards and were sustaining heavy fire from all directions. They tried to shout out to the attacking security forces to cease fire but with no success. Suddenly, American helicopters arrived and they dropped fliers saying, “To the terrorists, Surrender before we bomb the area.”

The story continues with more elements. Is it plausible? At first glance, yes, and maybe at a long second look, it is. Is it true? I have no idea. This is what we're fighting in the Middle East, a land of plausible stories, any of which could be a lie, any of which can kill our soldiers. Two of our soldiers died in that battle and it's not clear that they knew what their mission was. It's doubtful that Robert Gates knew what their mission was. It's doubtful that Bush and Cheney knew what their mission was. And keep in mind that Bush and Cheney also tell 'plausible' stories. And they're thinking about attacking Iran.

Congress needs to wake up and rein these guys in. Republicans like Richard Lugar cannot continue to be thoughtful one moment and then waffle the next. It's time for both Democrats and Republicans to start exercising the full power of Congress to keep us from sliding into a wider war that no one understands and that we quite clearly do not need.

The Cheney Problem II

The Scooter Libby trial is focusing attention on Vice President Dick Cheney like never before and the details we are learning are not putting Cheney in a good light. Americans can no longer ignore Cheney's hubris and incompetence but there have been signs for at least four years that much of this actually goes deeper. The problems with the secretive vice president are mounting.

That hasn't stopped Cheney from admitting that the job of Republicans in Congress is to bow to the superiority of the Bush Administration; here's the story from CBS News:

Vice President Dick Cheney shot back at Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who has accused the Bush administration of playing "a ping-pong game with American lives" by sending more U.S. troops into Iraq.

"Let's say I believe firmly in Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican," Cheney said. "But it's very hard sometimes to adhere to that where Chuck Hagel is involved."

Given his hypocritical bullying of his fellow Republicans and given the facts and behavior of the Bush Administration in the last six years, Cheney's comment has no other fundamental interpretation than this: when it comes to Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, Republicans must rubber stamp the incompetence, recklessness, deceptions and abuse of the US Constitution no matter what. That is behavior an overwhelming majority of Americans cannot afford.

Dan Froomkin of White House Briefing is back and has some comments on the Cheney situation:

While Dick Cheney undoubtedly remains the most powerful vice president this nation has ever seen, it's becoming increasingly unclear whether anyone outside the White House believes a word he says.

Inside the West Wing, Cheney's influence remains considerable. In fact, nothing better explains Bush's perplexing plan to send more troops to Iraq than Cheney's neoconservative conviction that showing the world that we have the "stomach for the fight" is the most important thing -- even if it isn't accomplishing the things we're supposed to be fighting for. Even if it's backfiring horribly.

But as his astonishing interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer laid bare last week, Cheney is increasingly out of touch with reality... ...

The secretive Cheney has the largest staff of any vice president in history; in essence, it's a government within a government with little oversight by Congress. Cheney has ignored repeated media requests to interview some of his people and understand his 'unusual' operation. President Bush has, by law, the ultimate authority in his government but it's never been clear how he and Cheney divide up their responsibilities. In the past, some critics have argued that Cheney is the real president while Bush is the public relations man.

Americans have a right to know what's going on in a government that has been elected by the people and why so much behavior is deliberately being hidden from us (Google Halliburton, Iraq reconstruction, defense contracts, and Republican campaign donors just as a place to start). As I mentioned above, Cheney has resisted all attempts to understand his operation; Justin Rood of TPM Muckraker has a story that may begin to peel back the layers of secrecy by revealing some of the people who directly work for Cheney (note that Cheney apparently has others burrowed in various departments around Washington):

Stamped "For Official Use Only," the four-page document lists 81 employees, including six who worked for Lynne Cheney. That's well over the 30 or so names Cheney's office is said to submit routinely to directory services.

The directory shows 23 staffers who worked exclusively on national security and homeland security issues. Meanwhile, three positions were dedicated on domestic policy issues; one of those was vacant at the time of the directory's publishing.

It's not clear how much overlap there is with the list we posted earlier of 41 staffers serving Cheney from the Senate's payroll according to a 2006 report. But at least now we're in the ballpark of the 88 staffers Laura Rozen estimated to be there.

In the next few months, Congress needs to ask what these people are doing. If there isn't cooperation forthcoming from Cheney, Congress should seriously consider cutting Cheney's staff budget in half, investigating Cheney's role in starting the war in Iraq and investigating his obvious interest in widening the war, possibly with Iran.

Since August 2003, when Cheney lied about a nuclear program in Iraq, the media and his fellow Republicans have walked on egg shells perhaps because of Cheney's threats and famous vindictiveness that resulted in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. The more the country learns about Cheney, however, the more it becomes obvious that his behavior is unacceptable by any rational interpretation of the US Constitution and that his resignation is long overdue.

The Cheney Problem

This has not been a good week for Cheney. But at least Americans are finding out more about this strange character who talks about insurgents in their last throes and says he knew for certain that Saddam Hussein still had a nuclear weapons program in 2003 when all the evidence says otherwise.

Let's begin with Cheney's bizarre interview with cable news softball tosser Wolf Blitzer; Digby of Hullabalo had a few excerpts from that:

Cheney went on Wolf Blitzer and demonstrated that he has totally lost touch with reality:

(snip)

CHENEY: Well, this is the argument, that there wouldn't be any problem if we hadn't gone into Iraq.

BLITZER: Saddam Hussein would still be in power.

CHENEY: Saddam Hussein would still be in power. He would, at this point, be engaged in a nuclear arms race with Ahmadinejad, his blood enemy next door in Iran.

BLITZER: But he was being contained, as you well know, by the no-fly zones --

CHENEY: He was not being contained. He was not being contained, Wolf. Wolf, the entire sanctions regime had been undermined by Saddam Hussein.

BLITZER: But he didn't have stockpiles --

(snip)

Awesome, isn't it?

His demeanor was extremely hostile and aggressive. Blitzer tried to inject some truth into the interview but Cheney would have none of it --- much like his earlier showdown with harpy wife, Lynn.

What with the sophomoric salvo against Clinton in the WaPo yesterday by daughter Liz, it appears that the Cheney family is having a very public meltdown.

Digby's blog has a series on the Libby trial and offers other examples of Cheney's delusions.

Here's another take on Cheney by Ron Hutcheson of the McClatchy Washington Bureau:

On Wednesday, a testy Cheney sparred with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer over Iraq and al-Qaida and insisted that Bush administration policies have succeeded in both cases. While he's acknowledged mistakes in Iraq, he bristled when Blitzer suggested that Cheney had lost credibility because of blunders there.

"I just simply don't accept the premise of your question," he said, cutting the interviewer off in mid-sentence. "I just think it's hogwash."

(snip)

"The vice president doesn't know what he's talking about," Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Fox News last Sunday. "He has yet to be right one single time on Iraq. Name me one single time he's been right. It's about time we stop listening to that ideological rhetoric."

Cheney insisted on CNN Wednesday that "there's been a lot of success" in Iraq, and said that if the Senate passes a non-binding resolution opposing the administration's troop buildup there, "it won't stop us." The biggest threat to victory, he said, is if "we don't have the stomach for the fight."

The vice president also claimed success in weakening al-Qaida, removing the terrorist group's leadership below Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, "several times". "We've had great success against al-Qaida," Cheney said.

Several times? Is Cheney trying to gloss over the ridiculous number of times the Bush Administration has taken out the 'number two' man of al Qaida? How many number two men was al Qaida supposed to have? And did Cheney miss Rumsfeld's famous memo where he suggested we might be creating more terrorists than we're killing? Our military had al Qaida on the ropes until a certain president and vice president decided to put Afghanistan on the back burner and head for Iraq while Osama bin Laden went the other way. Cheney has a odd memory.

By the way, I sometimes read too fast and I misread what Joe Biden said on my first reading. When Biden talked about "it's about time we stop listening to that ideological rhetoric," I thought he said 'ideological neurotic.' Actually, it makes sense. Or to describe Cheney more accurately, he might best be described as a delusional 'ideological neurotic.'

Perhaps George W. Bush is also becoming a bit neurotic about the long shadow being cast from the vice president's office. Scarecrow of Firedoglake makes the case:

For the umpteenth time, George Bush felt compelled to remind the press that he is in charge by declaring, "I am the decision maker." I would have thought that being the President of the United States and the Commander in Chief and all would have settled the matter, but apparently this President feels he needs to say it again lest we (or his own VP) forget.

(snip)

But I suspect the President's deeper identity problem stems in large part from the fact that his Vice President keeps saying and doing things that make it look like Dick Cheney is the decider, or if not, that he remains so completely out of control and out of bounds as to make the President appear foolish, weak and a helpless victim of his Vice President's never ending excesses.

This week we got repeated reminders of how much trouble a dishonest and arrogant Vice President can create for an Administration. Official Washington and its media are being reawakened once again by the Libby trial, in which the ever loyal Scooter is on trial for lying, but in which the defendent in waiting may well be Mr. Cheney himself. By the end of the week, government witnesses were detailing Mr. Cheney's and/or his trusted deputy's guilty knowledge of Ms. Plame's identy and status, while Ms. Martin, a trusted member of Mr. Cheney's own communications staff, described under oath how fixated Mr. Cheney had become about anyone who might reveal how badly he and the Administration had spun the facts to gin up a pretext for going to war.

A paranoid vice president who has a habit of making half the officials in Washington look over their shoulders could probably make anybody neurotic, including the president. The amazing thing is how long this character has stayed in office. I mean, he can't even shoot straight.

Will Cheney Be Sitting Behind Bush Tonight?

At least the opening of the Libby trial hasn't been boring (see Kevin Drum). Both the defense and prosecution make Cheney a central figure in the Leakgate affair that came out of Bush Administration deceptions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (specifically the Niger/Iraq uranium yellowcake story that Joe Wilson debunked). If nothing else, Patrick Fitzgerald may put a number of things on the record, after all.

There are a number of blogs covering the Libby trial so I wasn't planning on doing much but this is a huge story after all and I've been following it since the day I picked up the paper in early September 2002 and read about the famous aluminum tubes just as the campaign to justify the war began; I remember it as a red flag moment—the timing was just too cute (I grumbled for weeks but as I have noted elsewhere, I didn't come out fully against the coming war until February of 2003).

In the excerpt below, I'm quoting from the reliable Steven Clemons of The Washington Note though MSNBC has already updated parts of the story (I dislike this practice, by the way, and prefer major updates to be noted, or simply a new story to be written):

Wow. This just from MSNBC news alert:

WASHINGTON -- Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald used his opening statement in the CIA leak trial Tuesday to allege that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff lied about Cheney's early involvement in the disclosure of a spy's identity.

Fitzgerald said Cheney told his chief of staff, "Scooter" Libby, in 2003 that the wife of Iraq critic and former ambassador Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA, and that Libby spread that information to reporters. When that information got out, it triggered a federal investigation.

Think Progress has more specific details about what the prosecution said:

Libby is now on trial for perjury. His defense is that he simply forgot who told him that Plame worked for the CIA. But in court today, prosecutors outlined a powerful case establishing that Libby had reason to remember who told him and motive to cover it up. MSNBC’s David Schuster said today’s revelations from prosecutors are “new and will astound a number of people, even those who have been following this case.” Among the new claims:

– “Vice President Cheney himself directed Scooter Libby to essentially go around protocol and deal with the press and handle press himself…to try to beat back the criticism of administration critic Joe Wilson.”

– Cheney personally “wrote out for Scooter Libby what Libby should say in a conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper.”

– “Scooter Libby destroyed a note from Vice President Cheney about their conversations and about how Vice President Cheney wanted the Wilson matter handled.”

And here's the story from the defense side from The Guardian:

Attorneys for former White House aide ``Scooter'' Libby said Tuesday that Bush administration officials tried to blame him for the leak of a CIA operative's name to cover up for Bush political adviser Karl Rove's own disclosures.

Attorney Theodore Wells, in the opening statements of I. Lewis Libby's perjury trial, said Libby went to Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003 and complained that the White House was subtly blaming him for leaking Valerie Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak.

``They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb,'' Wells said, recalling the conversation between Libby and Cheney. ``I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected.''

Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. Now that's quite a pair. In Dante's Inferno, in one of the rings of hell, two ambitious thugs whose conspiracy unravelled spend their hours blaming each other for their downfall and they are doomed to gnaw at each over and over until the end of time. I don't wish such a fate on Rove and Libby, but they seem to be wishing it on each other.

Of course Libby blaming the White House for making him the fall guy to protect Karl Rove is a bit of a crock. When Bush, Cheney, Rove and Libby are involved, bad things just seem to happen? I seriously doubt that Bush or Cheney will be impeached because of the politics involved and the failure of the media and the continuing failure of a now Republican minority in Congress to come to grips with a reckless and law-breaking administration, but no one should doubt that the president and vice president are impeachable for any number of things they have done, including committing fraud in making the case for war in Iraq. If not for the protection of a rubber stamp Republican Congress, a number of Bush Administration figures would also have faced prosecution by now.

Perhaps Bush will make a lame crack or two tonight in reference to Cheney or Libby. If Cheney is sitting behind him, it will be one more embarrassment for Bush. And the nation.


Note: I'm still inclined to let other bloggers follow the trial closely but I'll be popping my head in now and then.

Why President Bush Needs to Be Reined In

I've been gone most of the day but Steve Clemons of The Washington Note summarizes some of the potential problems with Bush and Cheney's Iran policy better than I have seen else elsewhere. Give it a look. Trusting George W. Bush these days without legal guarantees in place is not a good idea. Congress needs to work something out.

Dick Cheney's Foreign Policy

George W. Bush is ultimately the 'Decider-in-Chief' and supposedly Condoleezza Rice is in charge of foreign affairs but Steve Clemons of The Washington Note argues, after noting Bob Woodward's recent book, that it's Cheney who's driving our dysfunctional foreign policy:

...Woodward was duped about the diminishing power of Vice President Cheney and his team. Woodward clearly spent a lot of time with Defense, State, and intelligence officials, but he failed to see the forest for the trees in his analysis of who was driving and influencing America's national security portfolio.

Clearly, the President is important and calls a lot of the shots, but the key question that Woodward never gets to is who really controls the national security bureaucracy. As former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson so clearly put it on October 16, 2005, a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" hijacked the national security decision-making process. ...

(snip)

...what Woodward completely misses is that Dick Cheney is the only figure in this presidential administration who has followers -- or what one might otherwise call disciples and acolytes.

The President has no followers -- or very few. They just don't know what his "world view" is. Some are loyal to the persona of George W. Bush, but that is different than knowing what the President would think about some policy or situation. Rice has few followers in the administration. Hadley none. Rumsfeld was despised, and his brilliant "snowflake" strategy helped keep everyone on edge and also helped him evade accountability at every turn. Such types don't generate "followings."

(snip)

...Cheney's followers populate the entire national security bureaucracy. He has allies, spies, and fellow travelers in State, Defense, the CIA, the NSA, the DNI, the DIA, all of the uniformed services, and throughout the government. They know his world view and don't need instructions on what to do or what he might think. They know it. They know he wants a war with Iran -- and his team of followers are doing what they can to move us in that direction.

(snip)

Some friends in the blogosphere like Brad DeLong contest my view and argue "that they all work for the czar" -- meaning that George Bush is much more in control of matters than my model would suggest. That may be the case -- but still, within the bureaucracy it is the paradigm that Cheney has established which has tied together a network of like-minded adherents. Bush may ultimately be driving that franchise, but Cheney's frame is still the dominant structure that followers connect to.

I largely buy this view, particularly because of Cheney's loyalists that he personally has scattered through the government. George W. Bush has the final authority but he is neither an idea man or an able administrator who knows how to push and pull the levers of power or even how to do real diplomacy or negotiations (again, I think once more of Bush's dismal performance last summer in Russia). Bush is what he has always been: the sales type, the p.r. guy, the political gamester, the wheeler dealer, the guy who can talk a good game but who doesn't really know what he's doing. Yes, he has the final say but he defers to similar-minded people like Cheney.

Here's a thought to keep in mind. In general, I oppose impeachment because of the divisiveness it would involve, though I strongly believe Cheney and Bush have done things that are impeachable. Unfortunately, millions of Americans still don't fully understand how much Bush and Cheney have violated the US Constitution or even how much is legally required of the executive branch that Bush and Cheney have ignored. Most Americans still don't understand what a serious crisis in government we have. This is one of the reasons why so many of us have been critical of a media that simply hasn't done its job over the course of six years.

On the other hand, we may be heading for deeper trouble. So here's my thought: I believe that if Cheney alone were impeached, Bush's presidency would be so crippled that it will be difficult for him to drag us into a broader war in the final two years. I'm not advocating impeaching Cheney alone but it should be seriously thought about, even prepared for, if the conscious recklessness, disregard of the law, and arrogance of the Bush Administration continue, particularly if they insist on dragging us into broader war without Congressional authorization (I didn't mention incompetence, but technically, incompetence is not impeachable (and it is open to interpretation, after all) but we may have to consider a rewording of that part of the US Constitution; perhaps a new Congress should have the right to vote no confidence in a policy and that no confidence vote would be sufficient to reopen negotiations on new legislation; I know, these ideas can open minefields but it's something to consider).