From Reuters:

Some of President George Bush’s advisers, notably Vice President Dick Cheney, contended that a sitting president had the power to use the military on U.S. soil to sweep up the men, known as the Lackawanna Six, and brand them as enemy combatants, the newspaper said.

Bush eventually decided against the proposal, which was floated in 2002 without consulting senior military officials, the Times said.

And regarding the CIA and Al Qaeda (New York Times):

Mr. Panetta scuttled the program, which would have relied on paramilitary teams, shortly after the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center recently informed him of its existence. The next day, June 24, he told Congressional Intelligence Committees that the plan had been hidden from lawmakers, initially at the instruction of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

And, of course, his approach to due process in court:

After 9/11, the Bush regime scrapped due process rights for captured suspects. Cheney said his new legal approach “guarantees that we’ll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve”—an incredible prejudgment as only a tiny handful of suspects ever saw the inside of a courtroom.

I have one question for you, Mr. Cheney. Why do you HATE America so much? Are our laws not good enough for you to follow? Do you really feel our government is weak and too compliant with the rest of the world and every issue facing us needs to be dealt with in concrete terms?

Explain to me why you would put a CIA operative at risk - a woman who has worked for the government for years who’s identity was a well-kept secret - just to exact revenge on a bad article? Is your contempt for freedom of speech in this country that huge that the potential murder of a very vulnerable group of black ops are worth the threat from you?

How about this new revelation about the Buffalo sleeper cell (which has since proven to be false)? Do you really feel that some Americans have less right to privacy than others? How do you define this? Do you feel you’re BETTER than most people and can therefore decide who deserves the rights they are born under and who doesn’t? Hey, If someone wants to hurt this country I have no issue with strong-arming them. But how do you decide this fate? Aren’t there gray areas to consider, or do you just don’t care?

And this constant harping on the pardon for Scooter Libby. Let me remind you, this man LIED while under oath and obstructed an investigation based on a treasonous act. You feel he’s a good soldier for the country and deserves the benefit of the doubt? Well, Benedict Arnold served his country well in the Continental Army. In fact, he was promoted many times and fought in many honored battles along the way. Still, he defected to the British and betrayed his country. Isn’t that what Libby did in no uncertain terms when he lied about committing treason? I guess that’s of no consequence to you because our country’s legal system is simply a tool for you to manipulate.

Really, Mr. Cheney, most of these questions are simple ones, but I don’t expect you to give simple answers to them. Your rhetoric over the last 15 years has been so muddied with lies, large and small, that you wouldn’t know the truth if it shoved it’s fist up your ass, opened its hand and did spirit fingers inside your rectum.

As far as the country is concerned, you owe it an apology. As for me, I don’t want your apology. I don’t even want you to try to answer the questions I asked you because, sir, your actions against this country deserve nothing short of a prison sentence. You probably won’t get that but you will get a few choice words from me right here in this post that sum up my attitude about your attitude:

You’re a piece of shit. You’re a disgrace to your office. You deserve to live the rest of your life as an outcast and an example of the worst kind of scum this country has ever elected into office. And, by the way, your daughter doesn’t seem any better than you. Nice child-rearing, asshole.

Verbal Paintball Dick Cheney, George Bush, panetta

From Huffington Post regarding Obama’s birth certificate:

Asked directly by King if she actually thought Obama was born in Kenya, Cheney responded, “No, I’m not saying that.” But then she kept going. “I’m saying that people are fundamentally uncomfortable and fundamentally I think increasingly uncomfortable with an American president who seems to be afraid to defend America, stand up for what we believe in.”

Fellow guest James Carville seemed momentarily flabbergasted before responding, “These poor pathetic people are believing stuff just like Ms. Cheney tonight. She refuses to say this is lewd, ludicrous because she wants these people to believe this.

What an absolute trash bag this woman is. The Cheney’s, I’m sure, are very proud of themselves and their child-raising skills. They’ve sired a daughter that’s a chip off the old block.

This family really seems to get off on NEVER answering a question directly, insinuating falsehoods and, in no uncertain terms, allowing them to fester and grow. Dick Cheney did so very cleverly with the Al Qaeda/Iraq connection - wording his answers so carefully as to ensure that the not-so-sharp portion of society (a very large portion) concluded that there WAS direct connection to the two.

This practice is abhorrent. More than abhorrent. Thousands have died as a result of actions taken based on these kind of lies. Unfortunately, most of the news media doesn’t have the balls to call her on it so, like the Bush’s, the Cheney’s get a pass.

In Liz Cheney’s case, she’s attempting more than just question-raising about Obama’s birth home. She’s playing a not-so-subtle game of descrimination that she knows her far right constituents - those who still feel it’s unfair for a black man to have the same rights as they do - will lap it up.

These people are not worthy, nor responsibly capable, of holding any power in our society. They are bottom dwellers of the human experience and morally vacant, content to stir the pot of hatred for their own benefit, the rest of us be damned.

Verbal Paintball Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Liz Cheney

Many folks have huge issues with profanity on this site. I’ve witnessed comments - some on my posts, some on others - that discredit a post purely based on some of the language used. In fact, on Daily Kos I contemplated titling my post “Sarah Palin is a filthy, lying bitch” with that exact title (did it here). I thought the title, and my description of why I made that kind of statement, are part of the discussion. Didn’t do it because of the PC nature of that site. I felt bad about having to make that choice. I think the post explained in fairly clear terms why I would call her that. Most seemed to “get” that.

Here’s my feeling about all this. Cursing has it’s place. It has a raw emotion to it. It can sometimes wake up a reader at the very point they need it to. It’s not always used for lack of a better vocabulary or unnecessary shock value. Sometimes that shock value is absolutely necessary. While I appreciate the argument that cursing devalues your message - and I understand that many people cannot get past it when reading a post (and, as a consequence, disregards your post), I still feel it is a similar discussion as the one’s people had when debating whether showing simulated sex in movies or extreme violence enhanced or detracted from certain movies. I think it depends completely on the subject and the message - and the openness one has in giving it consideration.

Profanity, at least in my case, can denote a certain trust or lack thereof. I’ve lived in New York and Los Angeles. People in New York curse more. I trust the folks in LA less. When someone tells me to go fuck myself, I know where I stand with them. When they say “have a nice day” and tell others to fuck me over, I’ll give that less credence.

Words. William F. Buckley used words like “dithyrambic” and “tergiversation” to describe the actions of other writers or those debating him. I always thought to myself he could gain more ground by saying something more gutteral, such as “You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.” It’s not that I didn’t understand him, or felt that he was not expressing himself truthfully - I just felt that his arguments could have benefitted now and again by a display of raw emotion that curse words provide. It’s okay if some members of the audience are offended. Maybe they should be.

It really comes down to Freedom and Truth - the freedom for a writer to say whatever it is he wants to say, be it loving, hateful, smart or stupid - and the truth to not pussy-foot around what it is he’s trying to say with language that cloaks it. While I may not agree with a typical hate-filled rant, I am reminded of the value of freedom of speech and how recently we’ve had people in office who didn’t attach the same value I did to it. When I see a writer curse, I don’t ask whether the word offends me but whether it’s “supposed” to offend me and if it fits the discussion. A poster named The Eyewitness Muse had a recent article titled “f*ck, f*ck, F*ck.” Many posted about their distaste of the title. I read the article and found it to be completely justified. It was about the emotion and frustration he was feeling in firing an employee. Should he have censored himself and titled it something like “Oh, Beans!”? Don’t think so. Others might disagree. Doesn’t mean they’re right.

Sometimes it’s necessary to curse. When I refer to George Bush and Dick Cheney as “pieces of shit” it is justified. They are murderers. Someone needs to get angry about that and say something that resonates. Words have power. Curse words, used skillfully (and sometimes not so skillfully), have extraordinary power.

John Boehner, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are “scumbags.” Sarah Palin is “gutter trash”. Those who spew racism are “human garbage.” Michelle Bachmann is a “bitch” and Richard Shelby is a “prick.” Granted, some of these people give speeches and rants that might not use profanity (well, with the exception of Boehner), but their rhetoric is hurtful, divisive, ugly, and many times racist - hidden under the cloak of a smile and a few “kind” words.

Personally, I’d rather they tell me to go fuck myself. At least I’d know where I stand.

Verbal Paintball Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, profanity, rush limbaugh, Sean Hannity

John McQuaid from Huffington Post makes a few good points about Cheney’s re-emergence and how pathetically self-serving it is:

Besides embellishing a legacy, the current Cheney campaign seems aimed at one thing: setting up Obama for the stab-in-the-back treatment in the event of another terror attack. Please. Terrorism is a serious problem. It requires real strategic thinking. Such posturing may be catnip to the press, but it’s virtually irrelevant to the world we live in, and unhelpful to the hard work of protecting us.

I live next door to a 62 year old man who doesn’t speak to me because I told him not to throw his beer cans on my property. His age is important because it illustrates that even at a point in his life when he should have learned a few things about politeness, the treatment of others and common sense, he’s obviously failed to take anything from these lessons.

Dick Cheney is the same type of person. He’s ALWAYS right. Anyone who disagrees is either naive or not as committed as he is. Anyone who wants to have a real discussion of complex issues doesn’t deserve to be in the same room with him.

This prick spent 8 years acting like a scared child, reacting to difficult circumstances with a concrete mindset and dividing this nation not out of belief but aggressive necessity. It was his way or the highway and, I’m sorry, that’s not acceptable in this country. When you show as much disregard for the people who elected you - and even the one’s who didn’t - you have no invitation to speak to us again. Most of the country HATES you and rightly so.

What Dick Cheney needs is not a soapbox that the media happily gives him but a strong, hard punch in the mouth. Maybe a few. His actions have resulted in countless unecessary deaths and pain for more families than can be counted. What this elderly child needs is to feel a bit of pain himself and a few good punches would do that. It won’t immediately force him to keep his beer cans on his side of the property but, over time, it might deter him from throwing them in the first place.

Current News, Politics Dick Cheney, Obama, terrorism

From CNN:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney defended the Bush administration’s national security record Thursday, and argued that President Barack Obama is responsible for weakening the country’s ability to combat al Qaeda and other extremists.

Cheney argued that the Bush administration “didn’t invent” the authority exercised in the war against al Qaeda and others. He said it was clearly granted by the Constitution and legislation passed by Congress after the September 11 attacks.

He also said the use of controversial “enhanced interrogation techniques” was a success that saved thousands of lives.

At the same time, Cheney argued that Obama’s decision to release Bush-era interrogation memos was a reckless and unfair distraction in the fight against extremists.

Fuck this lousy, arrogant treasonous piece of shit. Dick Cheney is no longer our Vice President and thank God for that. His efforts to insert himself into a conversation he has long since proven unskilled at is nothing more than annoying. Furthermore, this misleading bullshit about the congress giving them the authority to do anything they please is getting tired. You lied to us and them about the nature of this war so their votes are uninformed and your argument false.

Here’s a few things to chew on, Dick: Where were when our country was attacked? Are you not aware that 9/11 happened on YOUR watch? Of course not. This prick wants to sour everything and hobble our current President because he’s a belligerent, angry man.

We don’t care what your opinion is on Obama and the majority of us simply want you to go back to Wyoming or Ohio or wherever it is you claim you represent.

Asshole.

Current News, Politics Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, Gitmo

The most consistent problem we face from the outgoing republican administration is their long-held belief that repeating a lie and attacking the messenger is acceptable as the truth. It’s not becoming of people who are supposed to represent us, unless we like being represented by vengeful high school girls who enjoy cruel whispering campaigns. From CNN:

…Liz Cheney, who served in the State Department during the Bush administration, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that “Nobody who is talking about this in the press has any knowledge of specific detainee treatment.”

“The people that claimed to have been waterboarded in these articles are not any of those people,” she said.

Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, was former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff during the Bush administration’s first term. Since leaving office, he has become an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq.

In an online essay Thursday, he wrote that al Qaeda captive Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was “waterboarded” by Egyptian intelligence until he told interrogators that Baghdad trained terrorists to use chemical and biological weapons — a key element in the Bush administration’s case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But Liz Cheney told ABC that Wilkerson “has made a cottage industry of out of fantasies about the vice president,” and pointed out that al-Libi was not among the three al Qaeda figures the United States has admitted to subjecting to waterboarding.

And she said the former vice president — who has been publicly defending the interrogation program in recent weeks — “would not substitute his own judgment for the professionals at the CIA.”

What Liz Cheney has done in a few sentences is call everyone who isn’t following the Cheney line a calculated liar, from those tortured to the public servants who’ve been intimately involved in the details of these events.

Now, anyone will concur that there might be liars in the midst, but this pattern is particularly Bush-like. Manipulate intelligence, lie about the path to it while covering up the “ugly” then, when a REAL American decides to step forward and tell the truth about what really happened - or was happening - skewer him (her), call them names, infer that it’s ALL about them making money on this information, or suggest they have mental issues.

Some of the people who suffered through this name calling are people like Scott Ritter, Coleen Crowley, Richard Clarke, Lawrence Wilkerson, Hans Blix, Teresa Chambers, Paul O’Neill, Scott McClellan and others of whom time and truth has been kind to. In the real world, the liars are usually the one’s who are trying to cover up information, not expose it. While there are always exceptions to the rule, take a look at this group and ask yourself: why risk a potential backlash as a traitor or liar on a national level - where your business is Washington and your connections will inevitably suffer or you will be outcast completely if you’re exposed as a fraud - for a few dollars? Here’s another question: Why not go on record with a book saying the opposite - and then be embraced by those who can help you most and get even more money as a shill on Fox News (i.e. Ari Fletcher)?

The other argument from the asshole right is that you have a bone to pick and want revenge against those who did you wrong in the Bush government. Okay. HOW would you get satisfaction if your information is completely fabricated - and, once again, you could be found out and exposed as the bigger fraud? Wouldn’t that justify everything bad they had to say about you? Why take that risk unless you’re telling the truth?

There’s no logic to any of this - and what defies logic further is the extravagant list of “liars” that have exited the Bush inner circle. Can ALL these people be liars? Lets say ONE is telling the truth. What then? The fact of the matter is they are ALL telling the truth and Dick, Liz and George are filthy, miserable liars - some with blood on their hands.

This way of dealing with people has been a Bush trait for quite some time. We remember reading this about his college years (Salon):

Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi (one of his college professors) said. “In class, he couldn’t challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that’s how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy.

And the event doesn’t have to be as big as a yellowcake reference to set them off. If it was internal and could effect Bush “business”, these brave people were uniformly silenced in other ways (Huffington Post - July 7, 2008):

Ever wonder why more patriotic whistleblowers weren’t blowing the roof off the Bush White House with truths that needed to be told? Now we know that the DOJ rejected or bottled up thousands of whistleblower complaints and reports, and even the ones they accepted, they kept unprocessed for years.

Former Attorney General Gonzales, already proven to be corrupted by partisan operators, inverted the purpose of the DOJ. Instead of rooting out corruption, the Gonzales DOJ intentionally intercepted and silenced thousands more whistleblowers. Unfortunately, this policy apparently continues even today.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that federal officials refuse to investigate corporate corruption cases. More than 900 cases regarding billions of dollars of government contractors and drugmakers have defrauded taxpayers out of billions of dollars have been shelved. It appears that the Bush administration has put a kind of moratorium on fraud investigations.

The simple truth is that people like Bush, Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney are the dregs of society - vengeful, angry, cruel pricks who have never had a moral backbone and look at others as cattle to devour. While the rest of us help our kids and act as good friends and neighbors in this life they see everything, including a soldier’s life, as expendible fodder to make a buck and speak poorly about us all.

What I hope for but never expect to see is a response like the one Joseph McCarthy received from lawyer Joseph Welch, defending his client Fred Fisher, who told him in no uncertain terms what everyone was thinking by that time:

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you …You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

The problem with this hope is that none of these three people have an ounce of decency in them, so all we can truly hope is that when they need help, we can tell them to go fuck themselves.

Verbal Paintball Dick Cheney, Fred Fisher, George Bush, Joseph Welch, Liz Cheney, republican liars, whistleblowers

From Dick Cheney, courtesy CNN Politics:

“This is about fundamental beliefs and values and ideas … what the role of government should be in our society, and our commitment to the Constitution and constitutional principles.

You know, when you add all those things up, the idea that we ought to moderate basically means we ought to fundamentally change our philosophy,” Cheney also said. “I for one am not prepared to do that, and I think most of us aren’t. Most Republicans have a pretty good idea of values, and aren’t eager to have someone come along and say, ‘Well, the only way you can win is if you start to act more like a Democrat.’”

And here’s a reiteration of what some of these values are:

• Invasion of privacy when it pleases us

• Constant campaigns of fear to keep the masses controllable

• Free enterprise that benefits the top 1% at the detriment of everyone else

• Religious fringe/narrow minded philosophies (climate change a myth, creationism not)

• Wars based primarily on corporate interests and fed to us as patriotic necessity

It hardly ends with this small sampling. The point, however, is not lost. Cheney’s statement is a false representation of our country and the former republican party for that matter. In fact, it’s the kind of things a potential dictator might offer.

Our government is built on checks and balances not because the country believes in an extreme philosophy but due to the opposite; we are a moderate nation. Take a few people who think black and a few who think white and mix them together. What do you get?

The comforting thing about democrats (and also the most frustrating thing in terms of passing policy into law) is that they understand this inherently. In fact, democratic politicians can very rare agree on issues that are part of their party’s platform because there is no herd mentality in the party. Many consider themselves individual thinkers, others as conservatives (blue dogs) and some as radicals. In the end, we have ONE party that represents America.

The republicans, on the other hand, have veered off into Gattaca-ville. They believe their platform promotes freedom and individuality but their too blind to see the truth - situations like Teri Schaivo, phone-tapping, torture approval methods and pre-emptive wars have, until the last 10 years, been a fringe mentality. Thanks to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their Nazi-like followers this kind of thinking about what a democracy is has been pushed into the mainstream. Granted, much of it was pushed through the gauze of fear (mushroom clouds, alert levels, enemies within), but thank God America finally came to their senses.

And that brings us to Cheney. More than anything said before, this statement above proves beyond a doubt that these people never had any intention of working with the rest of us. They maintained their fringe mentality and always intended to shove it down our throats whether we liked it or not. Lets face it, if we DIDN’T like it, we were branded as traitors. As long as we did, we would cheer for the team and become blindly complacent to corruption (Halliburton), laziness (Katrina) and a lack of oversight and enforcement of laws (mortgage industry) that has undone our reputation and the world’s economy.

Current News, Politics Bush administration, democracy, Dick Cheney, Gattaca, Halliburton, Katrina, moderate republicans

From CNN:

Cheney told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the Bush administration’s “alternative” interrogation techniques were “absolutely essential” to preventing further assaults like the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Critics said those techniques amounted to the torture of prisoners in American custody.

“President Obama campaigned against it all across the country, and now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack,” Cheney said.

“Stuff happens, and an administration has to be able to respond to that and we did,” Cheney told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Stuff does happen. But how you respond to it as a moral country is what’s important. Can we get actionable intelligence from prisoners who are not brought close to death? Some interrogation officials say yes. For me, the issue wasn’t that this country was torturing prisoners (this happens in every war), but that it was a government policy to do so. The second Bush approved waterboarding and other interrogation actions that were considered unlawful by the Geneva Convention, he took us down a road that would actually make us LESS SAFE.

Smartest thing to do would be to use it when absolutely necessary. In our current situation, it was the rule instead of the exception.

And that immoral, bald headed fuck is the last person who should give any advice at all.

Current News Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, terrorist attacks, torture