It’s hard to even imagine a time before I believed that Dick Chney was evil incarnate, but such a time did exist. Prior to Cheney being named as Bush’s running mate, I just didn’t have many strong feelings about him. I knew him almost exclusively from a few appearances I saw him make on CNN as Defense Secretary during the Persian Gulf War. I knew that he had been a congressman from Wyoming and that he was pretty conservative, but I was unfamiliar with the particulars of his record. I had no clue that he had served as Gerald Ford’s chief of staff.
When Bush picked him as his running mate, I did think that he would add some substance to his administration. I thought the same about Colin Powell. I basically saw those picks as a way for Poppy Bush to assure that his son had some experienced guidance on foreign policy because it was quite obvious that Dubya had little knowledge of and even less curiosity about international affairs.
On the morning of 9/11, I returned to my desk at the Sarnoff Corporation and found a small hoard of people waiting for me because they knew I was a political junkie and they wanted to know what it all meant and what was going to happen. I wanted to be comforting. So, I told them the truth as I saw it. I said that it was incredibly unfortunate that this attack had occurred while Texas oilmen were in control of our government. But, I said, they were the only government we had, and we would have to hope that they would act with wisdom. If I had had a clearer picture at that time of Dick Cheney’s true nature, I never would have offered any hope at all.
The current Showtime biography of Cheney is really good. It details what can happen when someone comes to power who has absolutely no scruples but has great manipulative bureaucratic skills. He completely outsmarted the opposition at every turn. He is still convinced of his own blamelessness. He is a monster who looks like your favorite uncle.
He actually looks like Satan, just like the old pope. He doesn’t look like my favorite uncle. That’s the new pope.
When Cheney picked himself as Bush’s VP, I thought to myself that I could never trust a leader who would allow that.
No kidding. That raised an eyebrow for me.
And when Bush DIDN’T raise an eyebrow that told me was probably a poor choice of character and a lousy leader.
And if I was some other team member I would drop my opinion of Bush a lot of notches
While we allowed 9/11 to overshadow everything else that year, Cheney was showing his spots far earlier that year. The CA economy was wracked by the manipulation of energy while Cheney was holed up with his energy buds concocting new schemes to rip off the people. But the whole houses of cards began unraveling in August as Enron began to implode and was officially in bankruptcy by December. Sometime in late summer or early fall 2001 for professional reasons I took a look at Halliburton’s financial statements and concluded that Cheney was so inept that a war response to 9/11 in Afghanistan would be a folly. (Also walked out of a meeting on a business proposal based on Cheney’s half-assed energy plan.)
Halliburton’s stock price:
8/1/00 – $22.15
8/1/01 – $11.77
8/1/02 – $ 6.59
Iraq was very good for Halliburton and Dick Cheney.
8/1/05 – $28.53
Then there was that serendipitous day when US airspace was confused because Cheney was running a war game exercise and Bush was safely ensconced in a FL second-grade classroom.
“Iraq was very good for Halliburton and Dick Cheney.”
OK, so that explains Dick Cheney.
What explains Tony Blair, who also knew the WMD story was just a lying sales pitch for John Q?
When has an American president not seized on an opportunity like that to go to war?
My first clue came when the entire Village said “Oh, how interesting that he picked himself.” and “So what if the Constitution says they can’t both be from the same state – Dick says he is really not from Texas.”
It is truly painful if you pay attention – that’s why ignorance is bliss.
I hope the country has learned its lesson by now.
You hope the country has learned its lesson by now?
Don’t bet on it.
Oh.
Barack Obama says he won’t use this law?
Oh.
Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell.
Give him the benefit of the doubt?
Oh.
OK. Maybe there won’t be any more “emergencies” during his tenure.
But…who’s next?
Hmmmmm….
AG
Missed this event on Nov. 4, 1975?
“Halloween Massacre” at the White House
Paths to Power
While at Halliburton as CEO, Cheney was involved in a huge bribery scheme in Nigeria (Bonney Island):
In February 2009, Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root LLC, and KBR Inc. agreed to pay $579 million in combined DOJ/SEC FCPA enforcement action to resolve charges related to Bonny Island. According to the DOJ, the improper conduct took place between 1994 and 2004. The case remains the largest ever FCPA enforcement action against a U.S. company. http://fcpaprofessor.blogspot.com/2010/12/cheney-reportedly-to-be-charged-by.html
It actually resulted in this: “Nigeria Files Charges Against Cheney in Halliburton Bribery Scheme.” http://archive.truthout.org/nigeria-files-charges-against-cheney-halliburton-bribery-scheme65748
Of course the criminal claims not to have known about these events occurring when he was CEO of the Company. (Right!)
So, he’s a business criminal in addition to being a war criminal.
I’m not sure why everyone forgets that Cheney was trying to gin up a war with Iraq long before 9/11. As I recall, he went on a tour of the Mid-East in the late spring/early summer of 2001 to try to get Arab leaders to sign off on an invasion of Iraq. He was uniformly rebuffed – I recall the Saudis saying something like, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Because it wasn’t just Cheney. We were still bombing Iraq under Clinton, and Clinton was trying to gin up a war with Iraq as well. So if we are going to focus on “Cheney wanted to invade Iraq before 9/11”, well yeah, no shit. But so did Clinton and so did Gore. Everyone did. Because the sanctions, no-fly, and containment strategy was failing to get rid of Saddam, costing too much, killing normal Iraqis, and hurting our international standing.
Everybody wanted to invade and we were going to invade no matter what. It was a matter of sitting around waiting for an excuse to do it. It wouldn’t have mattered if Gore was in the WH, as soon as that excuse came we would have still been in there.
So when we focus on who was trying to start a war, both parties look fucking horrible.
Not “everyone.” More than half the House Democratic caucus and almost half the Senate Democratic caucus voted against the AUMF. As for Gore, we can’t know what he would have done if he’d been inaugurated. However, he did publicly take a strong stand against the action. On the Republican side, iirc, only the former Republican Lincoln Chaffee stood on the sane side. Playing the odds and absent overwhelming sanity among the public, an invasion of Iraq was guaranteed with Bush/Cheney in the WH as soon as they could concoct an excuse. With Gore in the WH, the odds dropped significantly regardless of Gore’s inclination. Republicans in Congress and the Pentagon would have resisted.
So your theory is the President of the United States wanted a war, and everyone wanted a war, but for some reason he couldn’t manage to make it happen.
Sure, that’s how it works.
It wouldn’t have mattered if Gore was in the WH
You mean the Al Gore who came out against the war early and loudly?
While everyone is focused on reliving 30 years ago, an event regarding Syria makes it look like some policymakers are going down the same path. The preferred opposition coalition of US/NATO has just picked a Syrian exile as its leader. The guy has not lived in Syria for 30 years and is from Texas. Looks like Ahmed Chalabi all over again. Question is, is he an Iranian or a Saudi agent?
We have institutional stupidity that goes beyond the personal evil of some of the actors: Kissinger comes to mind as well as Cheney.
A Texan named as future PM by Qatar to block US influence after Assad falls<
It is strange to me how everything being done in Syria by the Gulf states, even things that run directly contrary to American policy and are being done partly to compete with American influence, ends up being attributed to the United States.
Remember that NYT story about how the CIA was in Turkey, trying to steer the arms shipments from the Gulf away from the jihadist groups and towards the more liberal groups? The version that made most liberal blogs was “OMG THE UNITED STATES IS ARMING AL QAEDA!”
I’m not a religious person, so I don’t believe in “evil” or “Hell”.
That being said, Dick Cheney is evil and he deserves to go to Hell.
Cheney has always been a coward in my estimation. A friend remembers that when Cheney and my friend were in college, during the Vietnam War, and the protests were going on in Madison, WI., Cheney neither came out for or against the war. He’s a coward.
Reminds me of the Rumsfeld statement You go to war with the army you have. Sadly, it wasn’t the government we needed.
thanks for the humility to admit when you were wrong.
Apparently, there are a lot of people in Washington who think that one of Cheney’s heart attacks caused a dramatic change in his personality and thought process.
he was always the Evil One.