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.

David Gregory Campaigning for 8-Figure Salary

I've never been impressed with David Gregory's reporting which says something about the times because I consider him one of the better big name reporters of this era. It's a pathetic era for journalism and most of the finest journalism in the last five years has been by reporters who are considerably less well-paid than network darlings like David Gregory. In other words, the finest reporting has often been by people who are not big names (feel free to list in the comments section some of the better known reporters who manage to do a fine job). One of the ironies about David Gregory is that he is not well-liked by the right or well-liked by the left. Somehow that seems to make him, what?, an even-handed reporter?

But the reality of network and cable news is that nobody watches you unless you're controversial. Perhaps David Gregory figures his chances for a good eight figure salary will come if he utters ridiculous points on the news.

Think Progress has a David Gregory gem from the Chris Matthews show:

On the Chris Matthews Show this morning, NBC White House correspondent David Gregory said that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) will need to have “her ‘Sister Souljah’ moment” and distance herself from the “hatred over Iraq” on “the left.”

“The left” needs to “think about how they’re going to engage the war on terror in a very serious and tough way,” said Gregory.

(snip)

...68 percent of Americans support withdrawal from Iraq within a year.

David Gregory's stereotypes about those who oppose Bush's fiasco in Iraq don't help the debate. In fact, it makes Gregory look rather uninformed. President Bush has, in fact, united rational conservatives, moderates (real moderates not the network faux brand), liberals and even people to the left of this blogger (I'm a liberal Democrat who traces his beliefs to FDR, Truman and Kennedy). A majority of Americans are disgusted with the fiasco in Iraq and Bush's arrogant, incompetent and stubborn behavior. That's really not too difficult to understand, not even for a reporter.

So many Washington reporters and pundits have made gaffes in the last five years that I usually leave it to other bloggers to cover them. It's a fulltime job to keep up with the nonsense coming out of Washington that tries to pass itself off as 'conventional wisdom.'

Our nation, however, is in constitutional crisis, and David Gregory is either in denial or too busy working on that eight figure salary. And it's not Gregory's only offense in the last month.

Last month, Gregory interviewed Elizabeth Edwards and made some bizarre assertions as he interviewed her; here's the story from Americablog:

... According to NBC's David Gregory we're all missing the very important points that Ann Coulter makes because we get caught up in her hate speech. He just said to Elizabeth Edwards "if you strip away some of the inflammatory rhetoric against your husband and other Democrats, the point she's trying to make about your husband, Senator Edwards, running for the White House is in effect that he's disingenuous..."

Okay, so much wrong with the way Gregory defends Coulter. Her hateful, inflammatory rhetoric can't be stripped away -- and let's be honest, that's why NBC and ABC put her on their t.v. shows. In typical fashion, he also tries to paint everyone with the same kind of hate speech. So, instead of putting Coulter on, NBC now has one of their top reporters defending her approach. Because, you know, if you strip away the fact that Coulter advocated the assassination of a leading presidential candidate, and mocked his dead son, there's really such an important message buried inside.

Huh? Says so much.

Elizabeth Edwards handled it well, pretty much laughing at him -- and made the key point -- this is not about stripping away hateful rhetoric. The hate speech is the issue. ...

Both Think Progress and Americablog have video of David Gregory making his ridiculous assertions. Click on the links and they'll take you to the videos. Seeing and hearing is believing. It's just a shame that the process of pointing out poor news reporting may help Gregory reach that eight figure salary. But these are, of course, absurd times.

Myths of the Ronald Reagan Presidency

Given what we know about George W. Bush and his disastrous presidency, the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush look relatively benign by comparison. Of course, both former presidents made mistakes and both pursued policies that most Democrats disagree with and both were lax on some ethical issues. Reagan, though, has an advantage over the senior Bush when it comes to memory and public relations.

Ken Silverstein of Harper's Magazine reminds us of some of the mythologies of the Reagan era:

Some years ago, I was talking to an older conservative woman about the Reagan era and she told me that whatever problems there were during that time, the president had been absolutely correct about one thing: “Something had to be done about the budget deficit.” Given that Reagan created what were then the biggest budget deficits in history, it was hard to imagine how she could say something so self-evidently ludicrous. Then Time magazine came along with a lengthy story on the supposed crisis of conservatism, with Reagan, weeping a single crystal tear, on the cover, and it becomes clear how such myths are born and flourish.

(snip)

... In addition to the Reagan deficits, which during his first two years in office alone soared from $80 billion to $200 billion (and which were even larger as a percentage of GDP than the Bush deficits), this supposed “Golden Age” of conservatism wasn’t known for law and order. As Sean Wilentz wrote in Rolling Stone last year, “The most scandal-ridden administration in the modern era, apart from Nixon's, was Ronald Reagan's, now widely remembered through a haze of nostalgia as a paragon of virtue. A total of twenty-nine Reagan officials . . . were convicted on charges stemming from the Iran-Contra affair, illegal lobbying, and a looting scandal inside the Department of Housing and Urban Development,” and three Cabinet members “left their posts under clouds of scandal.” ...

The senior Bush didn't do the American people any favors by granting pardons to officials who had worked for Reagan and were caught breaking the law. Currently, Bush Administration officials sometimes act as if they take for granted that the day will come when they are pardoned if they get into any trouble. That's a dangerous trend and invites more authoritarian, unlawful behavior.

The other thing about Reagan that shouldn't be forgotten is that things got seemingly easier during the 1980s as a result of the collapse of oil prices. The world wasn't finding enough oil to justify the prices, it was just producing enough oil to keep the oil prices low. In the long run, that will be seen by history as Reagan's biggest policy failure: doing nothing about the future of our energy independence. But then, Reagan had company: George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have wasted a total of 18 years also ignoring the need to ensure energy for our future. The media has seen to it that we look at the last 26 years with a degree of nostalgia that frankly isn't justified. The United States has been coasting on its past successes for a long time now. Unless we start taking the future of our country more seriously, we may end up paying a heavy price for almost three decades of neglect. If it isn't already too late.