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.

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.

Deadly Price of Kicking the Can Down the Road

Remember the Iraq Study Group? James Baker and others had good advice for George W. Bush. Bush, who hasn't learned a thing in six years, chose to ignore the advice. In Iraq, he's just kicking the can down the road so that Iraq becomes the next president's problem. He's not even trying very hard to do diplomacy despite calls from many people, including some Republicans, to do so. Dick Cheney, of course, is no better.

Mark Thompson of Time has an article on the price the military is paying for Bush's fiasco:

For most Americans, the Iraq war is both distant and never ending. For Private Matthew Zeimer, it was neither. Shortly after midnight on Feb. 2, Zeimer had his first taste of combat as he scrambled to the roof of the 3rd Infantry Division's Combat Outpost Grant in central Ramadi. Under cover of darkness, Sunni insurgents were attacking his new post from nearby buildings. Amid the smoke, noise and confusion, a blast suddenly ripped through the 3-ft. concrete wall shielding Zeimer and a fellow soldier, killing them both. Zeimer had been in Iraq for a week. He had been at his first combat post for two hours.

If Zeimer's combat career was brief, so was his training. He enlisted last June at age 17, three weeks after graduating from Dawson County High School in eastern Montana. After finishing nine weeks of basic training and additional preparation in infantry tactics in Oklahoma, he arrived at Fort Stewart, Ga., in early December. But Zeimer had missed the intense four-week pre-Iraq training—a taste of what troops will face in combat—that his 1st Brigade comrades got at their home post in October. Instead, Zeimer and about 140 other members of the 4,000-strong brigade got a cut-rate, 10-day course on weapon use, first aid and Iraqi culture. That's the same length as the course that teaches soldiers assigned to generals' household staffs the finer points of table service.

(snip)

The truncated training—the rush to get underprepared troops to the war zone—"is absolutely unacceptable," says Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and opponent of the war who chairs the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. A decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam, Murtha is experiencing a sense of déjà vu. "The readiness of the Army's ground forces is as bad as it was right after Vietnam," Murtha tells TIME. Even Colin Powell—a retired Army general, onetime Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Bush's first Secretary of State—acknowledges that after spending nearly six years fighting a small war in Afghanistan and four years waging a medium-size war in Iraq, the service whose uniform he wore for 35 years is on the ropes. "The active Army," Powell said in December, "is about broken."

Our soldiers are not the president's political servants. They are to be used wisely, trained well, and supported in all ways reasonably possible and certainly long before cronies, political hacks and those looking for no-bid contracts or lucrative privatization deals. Politics should always take a back seat to our national security. Foreign policy and certainly military intervention should not be used to satisfy campaign contributors and a deluded political base. Dealing with global issues requires professionalism, not political fear-mongering.

In other venues, I first called Bush's actions in Iraq impeachable back in June 2003 because of the manner in which he lied his way into a war our nation did not need and neglected his responsibililty to finish the job in Afghanistan. I have backed away several times from calling for Bush's impeachment largely because of practical issues, one being that Cheney would succeed Bush and be just as bad. But if Bush refuses to do his duty, if he refuses to act as a responsible president, if he stubbornly asserts things he knows aren't true, if he continues to insists on dishonorable behavior, if he continues to put political pandering before country, Congress needs to remove him from office. Yes, it will require removing Cheney first. The impeachment of Cheney, in fact, might be the thing that finally brings Bush to his senses. But I wouldn't bank on it. But it's clear that we cannot afford two more years of Bush's petulant behavior.

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.

Zbigniew Brzezinski Renews Call for Change

It seems impossible at times to write about the critical issues of the day without repeating oneself. I've been complaining about that but I seem to have very good company. Zbigniew Brzezinski is once again calling for change in the Bush Administration's policy towards Iraq and Iran; here's an excerpt from his article in the Los Angeles Times:

THE WAR IN IRAQ is a historic strategic and moral calamity undertaken under false assumptions. It is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties, as well as some abuses, are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.

Yet major strategic decisions in the Bush administration continue to be made within a very narrow circle of individuals — perhaps not more than the fingers on one hand. With the exception of the new Defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, these are the same individuals who have been involved from the start of this misadventure, who made the original decision to go to war in Iraq and who used the original false justifications for going to war. It is human nature to be reluctant to undertake actions that would imply a significant reversal of policy.

From the standpoint of U.S. national interest, this is particularly ominous. If the United States continues to be bogged down in protracted, bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and much of the Islamic world.

Perhaps the one new element is that Brzezinski emphasizes that staying in Iraq, particularly with the current policies and foreign policy team, has enormous potential to do even more damage to the United States than it already has. I suspect Brzezinski has the same concern as many other Americans do: getting to January 2009 with our country reasonably in good shape for the next president. If there are signs that Bush is deliberately trying to tie the hands of the next president by digging a deeper hole and doing more damage to our nation, even Republicans better start thinking about impeachment.

A Problem with Bush's Photo Op

It's important for the president to visit the troops. It's also important to be real. Ron Martz of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution explains what happened on a visit to George:

The day after President Bush outlined his new plan for Iraq to a national television audience, he came to this Army training base in southwest Georgia to pitch it to the soldiers who will have to implement it on the battlefield and to their families.

"Everywhere that warriors from this base serve, you leave your mark, and I believe it will be a legacy of hope and freedom and peace," Bush told an audience of 210 soldiers and 90 civilian family members Thursday in his first visit here as president.

Bush spoke to the handpicked group after a lunch of turkey club sandwiches in a makeshift cafeteria set up in the reception area of Lawson Army Airfield, where troops leave for and return from Iraq.

About 4,000 soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division based here are scheduled to go to Iraq soon. For some, it will be their third tour in the war zone.

(snip)

No 3rd Brigade soldiers were in attendance for the lunch or the speech, base officials said, because they are preparing to leave this weekend for a month of desert training at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif.

It's bad enough that Bush's people insist on a hand-picked audience. Bush might have waited to make his speech in Fort Irwin, however, where the soldiers will be that are going to Iraq. Come to think of it, perhaps Bush can also go to Afghanistan and explain to the troops there why he's sending some of them to Iraq instead of allowing them to finish a job that should have been finished five years ago if Bush hadn't started his war in Iraq, a war that was not necessary and that was based on a fraudelent case of deliberately distorted intelligence.

Bush has never apologized for deceiving the American people. We now know that Iraq was not even close to being an imminent threat. Both Bush and Cheney need to be held accountable. There may not be enough votes in the Senate to convict Bush and Cheney but there is no doubt in my mind that they committed impeachable offenses. And their reckless disregard for the law may not be finished. These are troubled times.

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).