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.

Nuclear Weapons and the Gang That Can't Shoot Straight

A sign of poor judgment in recent years are the number of conservatives who think nuclear weapons ought to be used in war. Not only have Cheney and others talked about using nuclear weapons in such places as Iran (to strike its nonexistant nuclear program) but they appear at times to have also encouraged Israel to act as a proxy. The Bush Administration even tried to start a nuclear bunker buster program and although it was reportedly taken off the table, we have no real proof that some sort of nuclear bunker buster program did not go forward. Given the secrecy of the Bush Administration, this is an issue that has never been satisfactorily resolved.

The real issue is that the Bush Administration has been trying to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons. To lower the threshold may require removing certain civilian controls. We don't know if that's what has happened, but last year the air force transported what they thought were unarmed missles to Louisiana (see Washington Post story). Today, we learn fuses for nuclear weapons were sent to Taiwan; here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times:

Pentagon officials said the material sent to Taiwan consisted of four electrical fuses for the ICBM nose cones. The fuses, used to trigger nuclear weapons, do not contain nuclear material.

But experts on nuclear security said the mistaken transfer showed a serious deterioration in the safeguards and controls that the U.S. military has over its nuclear warheads.

"This is really unbelievable," said Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which advocates reducing the number of nuclear weapons. "If the Russians had shipped triggers to Tehran, we would be going nuts right now."

The gang that can't shoot straight still occupies the White House. We know that former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, eased rules on special missions using conventional missiles to take out terrorists. One or two of those missions have succeeded. Several, on the other hand, have rained death and terror on wedding ceremonies or family gatherings in Iraq, Afghanistan and the border area of Pakistan in cases of mistaken intelligence. America's 'good guy' image has been severely damaged by such incidents which have involved the killing of women, children and other innocent civilians.

Nuclear weapons, of course, are in an entirely different league and need to be tightly controlled but it is clear that rules regarding nuclear safeguards have broken down. What is not clear is why.

Americans need to think about these issues. Presidential candidate John McCain has talked about staying in Iraq for a hundred years. He has also talked about expanding America's wars (though it's unclear how he's going to pay for them or what advantage these wars offer the American people). McCain also gets confused about al Qaida and Iran. A president following in the footsteps of George W. Bush is not what our country needs.

Gerald Ford Dies at 93

Former President Gerald Ford is gone at 93; he's been in frail health for some years. MSNBC has the story.

Ford did a reasonably good job during a difficult time in the aftermath of Watergate, following the flawed presidency of Richard M. Nixon. In his last year in office, however, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld pulled something of a palace coup in the Ford Administration: Cheney became chief of staff and Rumsfeld became secretary of defense. It's ironic that Cheney and Rumsfeld worked for one president who resigned in disgrace, another president who was not elected and yet another president whose legitimacy was in doubt in the 2000 election. With the election of Jimmy Carter, we never found out how much Cheney and Rumsfeld really represented Ford's views. Maybe it's just as well we didn't find out. Congress passed many important reforms during Ford's short term but those reforms continued during the Carter Administration. Those reforms may be the slender thread by which our democracy currently survives.

It was an awkward moment some months back when President Bush trotted out the frail Ford in support of his policies in Iraq.

President Ford, nevertheless, will be fondly remembered.

Rumsfeld Ignores History, Continues Spin

Eight years have passed since Donald Rumsfeld first began advocating a war against Iraq; our optional war in Iraq has become the biggest strategic blunder in American history. And yet, it appears the rehabilitation of Donald Rumsfeld is well under way. I expect he'll receive his Medal of Freedom the next time Bush wishes to distract attention from his failures. MSNBC has an AP story on the outgoing Secretary of Defense:

With an eye on his legacy, Rumsfeld asked to be judged by the extraordinary nature of today's threat, like none that has come before.

"There's no road map, no guidebook," he said. "The hope has to be - not perfection - but that most decisions, with the perspective of time, will turn out to be the right ones and that the perspective of history will judge the overwhelming majority of those decisions favorably."

This is a ridiculous self-serving statement that ignores 90 years of American diplomacy as well as the specific lessons of Vietnam. It ignores the enormity of World War Two and it ignores the the difficult but informative debates about bipartisan foreign policy that existed during the Cold War. It also ignores many identifiable blunders that Rumsfeld made. On many occassions during Bush's first term, Donald Rumsfeld sat across from Colin Powell who had useful advice for the defense secretary: send enough troops, define your mission, and have an exit strategy. The arrogant incompetence of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld may indeed lead to the war of civilizations that neoconservatives and their right wing enablers blather about. We can only hope Democrats can find ways to limit the damage and that American voters remember cause and effect in the next election.

More on the Strange Rumsfeld Memo

First, a quick word about Bolton and Rumsfeld after they leave their jobs: they're not going away. There are any number of right wing billionaires and mini-naires who will fund their speeches and any think tank jobs they can have for the asking. In Washington, it's a revolving door for everyone, but the Republicans, in particular, tend to be well cared for. Even Scooter Libby is being cared for while he fights his indictment for obstructing justice in the outing of Valerie Wilson/Plame.

Juan Cole of Informed Comment had this to say about the Rumsfeld memo:

1. Rumsfeld doesn't understand the magnitude of the crisis or the tightrope the US is walking in the Gulf. His attitude is almost lackadaisical. Doing an all right job, but it isn't working fast enough or well enough. So maybe make some changes-- apparently any old changes will do because there are infinite lives to play with and infinite monies to spend.

2. Rumsfeld spends more time plotting out how to manipulate the American public than how to win the war. Everything is about spin, about giving the image of progress even in the face of a rapid downward spiral into the abyss. ...

(snip)

It is about how we talk, how we are perceived to set goals, what is made to look like progress. It isn't actually about getting progress. The point of going minimalist is to reduce expectations among the American public. If you tell them you can only move the ball a yard, you get a lot of points for moving it two yards.

Too many people in the Bush Administration cannot make the connection between policy that guides our actions towards a goal and their own actions which in any case have too often been ad hoc reactions to the flow of events (Oops, our missile missed the target in Pakistan; oops, we just got everybody mad at us for killing women and children). Words for these guys have no other purpose in government than to manipulate people, whether it's the public, those we do business with or are allied to, or those who work for the government. And yet, they are guided by an ideology that remains poorly developed and rarely challenged.

Here's another take on the Rumsfeld memo by Bruce W. Jentleson of TPM Cafe with a brief mention of the Hadley memo:

Here’s Rumsfeld privately telling the President that we need a major change of policy at the same time he, Bush, Cheney and others were publicly calling into question not just the policy savvy but the patriotism of many who were saying essentially the same thing. “It is time for a major adjustment”, Rumsfeld writes in his memo on the day before the same congressional elections in which one Democrat after another sounding the change course theme was attacked, reviled, smeared. “An accelerated draw-down of U.S. bases” from 55 to 10-15 by April to 5 by July: sounds liked a phased withdrawal to me and a more rapid one than even the Iraq Study Group may be proposing (“modest” he says in another paragraph, without defining the term).

(snip)

And then there’s the Hadley memo which shows more concern about telling the President what he wants to hear than what he needs to hear.

These guys truly have no shame. They leave us no basis to trust either their foreign policy capacity or their belief in our own democracy let alone an Iraqi one. Bad policy is bad enough. Breach of faith is even worse.

Nobody would ever run a business the way Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have run our government. At some point, a greater number of the TV media stars and even some of the major print journalists are going to have to stop boring us with stories about process and Republican-driven memes, and recognize that our nation is in crisis and the epicenter of that crisis is the White House.

Rumsfeld Memo Written Just Before Being Fired

The nation is still waiting for the president to step outside his bubble and face reality. Next week is the report from the Baker Iraq Study Group and we'll see how realistic their proposals are or whether they're just providing cover for the president. If James Baker and the others do their job, though, it will be a rough week for Bush. We may soon know if anyone can get through to junior.

Sometimes it's impossible to know what to make of all the figures in the Bush Administration. The gang that can't shoot straight continues with the same hubris and noise. You read about the arrogance, you read about the incompetence, you read about their ideological fixations and yet you wonder if it isn't all a game to them. People die and the spinners in the Bush Administration can do no better than smirk when they delude themselves into thinking they have won some minor technical point in a joust of words. But it's what they're paid for and will continue to be paid for after they leave the administration. In other words, maybe it really is just a money machine for them, and doing the right thing isn't possible because it would cut off the money machine being funded by rich billionaires on the right who could care less what the United States stands for.

If, however, the fiasco of the last four years comes down to nothing more than the gut instinct of George W. Bush, it's time to recognize that our nation has a problem—and we need to address it. And the word games are irrelevant, as they should be.

The New York Times has published a memo by Rumsfeld (hat tip to The Huffington Post) that is simply Rumsfeld covering his ass or else profoundly cynical evidence of flim flam over the last four years or, more likely, both. Here's an excerpt of the memo with an explanation by the Times:

Following is the text of a classified Nov. 6 memorandum that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sent to the White House suggesting new options in Iraq. The memorandum was sent one day before the midterm Congressional elections and two days before Mr. Rumsfeld resigned.

Above the Line: (Many of these options could and, in a number of cases, should be done in combination with others)

¶Publicly announce a set of benchmarks agreed to by the Iraqi Government and the U.S. — political, economic and security goals — to chart a path ahead for the Iraqi government and Iraqi people (to get them moving) and for the U.S. public (to reassure them that progress can and is being made).

¶Significantly increase U.S. trainers and embeds, and transfer more U.S. equipment to Iraqi Security forces (ISF), to further accelerate their capabilities by refocusing the assignment of some significant portion of the U.S. troops currently in Iraq.

(snip)

¶Initiate an approach where U.S. forces provide security only for those provinces or cities that openly request U.S. help and that actively cooperate, with the stipulation being that unless they cooperate fully, U.S. forces would leave their province.

¶Stop rewarding bad behavior, as was done in Fallujah when they pushed in reconstruction funds, and start rewarding good behavior. Put our reconstruction efforts in those parts of Iraq that are behaving, and invest and create havens of opportunity to reward them for their good behavior. As the old saying goes, “If you want more of something, reward it; if you want less of something, penalize it.” No more reconstruction assistance in areas where there is violence.

¶Position substantial U.S. forces near the Iranian and Syrian borders to reduce infiltration and, importantly, reduce Iranian influence on the Iraqi Government.

The memo goes on with some suggestions that have been floated around by others and some suggestions that are just stupid (see the point above about Fallujah). Many of the more sensible suggestions were offered more than three years ago and never implemented. I'm at a loss to know what the memo represents. Have we been watching a four year experiment by ultraconservatives to prove that they know what they're doing and, what, Rumsfeld is now admitting they don't know what they're doing? I'm at a loss to understand it.