Cheney Doesn't Shoot Straight

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is trying hard to salvage his legacy, so he is resorting to spin, distortion and lies. By why is the media paying attention to him? Not even Cheney himself could erase from history the devastating record he has amassed, especially working with President George W. Bush. 

A 2012 New York Times report revealed all of the warnings the Bush/Cheney administration received in the spring and summer of 2001 of a terrorist threat against the United States from within. On May 1, 2001, the CIA warned Bush a "group presently in the United States" was planning an attack. In July, the CIA warned that the attacks could be "imminent." On August 6, Bush received a classified document entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." None of the dots were connected by the White House, which dismissed criticism by saying they were not told when or where the attacks would occur. The attacks occurred on September 11, with devastating consequences. 

In response, The Bush/Cheney White House targeted Iraq and its ruthless leader, Saddam Hussein. They built their case around alleged links between al Qaeda and Hussein, as well as allegations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD's). While Hussein was a brutal dictator, his government held together Iraq's various religious factions and served as a balance against a restive Iran. 

Cheney was among those from the administration who were speaking out publicly about WMD's in Iraq. In August 2002, Cheney told a VFW convention, "Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons." Of course, there were no WMD's in Iraq. The administration had misled the American people. 

Just before the U.S. invaded Iraq, Cheney was asked on NBC's Meet the Press how long a U.S. invasion would take. He responded, "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators...I think it will go relatively quickly...weeks rather than months." The U.S. was not greeted as liberators, and the invasion proved to be poorly planned by the Pentagon and Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. 

In September 2003, six months after the invasion, Cheney said, "If we're successful in Iraq..we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11." But no link between Hussein and the terrorists was ever found, and Osama bin Laden was based in Afghanistan. The Bush/Cheney administration failed to focus on the war in Afghanistan.

Following the invasion, the administration implemented a policy of de-ba'athification, which rid the Iraqi government of Hussein's Ba'ath party supporters. As a result, an estimated 50,000 civil government employees were removed from their positions and the military's officer ranks were depleted. The Bush/Cheney operatives had failed to fully understand the possible implications of their policy, so the result in Iraq was chaos. Meanwhile, the Bush/Cheney White House backed a government supported by hard line Shiite religious organizations, which included now Prime Minister Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The Sunnis, who are about 20% of the population, were squeezed out, as were the Kurds. 

Today's civil war involving ISIS is largely a result of Bush/Cheney policies. The Iraq War has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $2 trillion dollars and 4,000 American lives. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed. And to what end?

In 2005, The Washington Post editorial page dubbed Cheney "The Vice President for Torture." Cheney initiated and defended the use of torture on terrorism suspects, a violation of human rights and the Geneva Convention. In 2011 he defended the policy in an appearance at the American Enterprise Institute. "The notion that somehow the United States was wildly torturing anybody is not true," he said. "One of the most controversial techniques is waterboarding ... Three people were waterboarded. Not dozens, not hundreds. Three. And the one who was subjected the most often to that was Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, and it produced phenomenal results for us." Of course, he lied about the "phenomenal results" too.

Cheney was also behind an NSA operation to monitor the phone calls and emails of U.S. citizens without warrant, which would later become known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program. After two years of going along with "the vice president's special program" the Justice Department decided that parts of it were illegal.

The Bush/Cheney team allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Georgia and take control of two of its regions. And the Bush/Cheney team is responsible for not reining in Iran early on. Ari Shavit, an Israeli author and columnist, wrote, "The Bush administration didn't initiate a political-economic siege on Iran when it was weak, and Mr. Bush weakened America by exhausting its economic power and military might in a futile war."

On domestic policy, the Bush/Cheney team led this country into the worst recession since the Great Depression, yet Cheney refuses to take any responsibility for the policies that nearly destroyed the world's economy. They added billions to the U.S. deficit, but Cheney once said, "deficits don't matter." 

Now Dick Cheney is defending his legacy and bitterly attacking President Barack Obama. For instance, Cheney took to CNN Wednesday to say that Obama is "the worst president of my lifetime." But President George W. Bush left office in January 2009 as one of the most unpopular presidents in history. According to a CBS News/New York Times poll at the time, 73 percent of Americans surveyed said they disapproved of the way Bush handled his presidency. 

Ever since Dick Cheney shot his friend in a 2006 duck hunting accident Americans have known that Cheney just doesn't shoot straight.

W's Iraq War

Ten years ago today the United States invaded Iraq with the goals of toppling its tyrannical ruler Saddam Hussein, destroying its weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and freeing its people to establish a democratic government.  Now, a decade later, Saddam Hussein is dead, but no WMDs were ever found, and the country has devolved into a de facto civil war.

In February 2003 polls showed Americans overwhelmingly favored an invasion of Iraq.  The Bush government had linked Hussein to al Qaeda, the terrorist group that launched a series of terrorists attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 Americans.   The administration had made the case to the world that Hussein was arming Iraq with WMDs, and that he was conspiring with al Qaeda to launch further attacks on the United States and the western world. 

In October 2002 the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002" easily passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support.   The resolution authorized President Bush to use the U.S. military to, "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq."

In February 2003 I traveled with a Telemundo news team to the White House to interview President Bush, one month before the Iraq invasion. War fever had built to a crescendo in Washington, and the White House wanted to make its case to Hispanic Americans.

President Bush entered our interview location, a room on the ground floor of the White House, with a swagger and a smile. He was imperious and proud. During the interview he went through his justifications for an invasion, but said that no final decision had been made.

Following the interview President Bush chatted with our group. I raised the issue of opposition to the pending war from the French, asking him, "What about President Jacques Chirac?" President Bush slapped me across my upper right arm with the back of his hand, cocked his head and said, "Don't worry, he'll come around." With that, he quickly said his goodbyes and confidently departed.

I turned to my team and said, "We're going to war!"

On March 20, 2003, American forces invaded Iraq and defeated Hussein's army.  But U.S. forces were not greeted as "liberators", as Vice President Dick Cheney had predicted on NBC's Meet The Press prior to the war.  The Bush administration failed to grasp how difficult, how complicated it would be to establish a unified government and a lasting peace in Iraq.  In 2007, former CIA Director George Tenet, the man who once called the evidence justifying an Iraq invasion a "slam dunk", told CBS's 60 Minutes, "We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period."

To date, nearly 4,500 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq, and more than 30,000 have been injured.  The Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated to be well over 100,000.  Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies estimates that the Iraq War has cost more than $1.7 trillion to date, not counting an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans.

The last U.S. combat troops left Iraq in December 2011. But thousands of veterans are struggling with the after effects of war, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.  Meanwhile, a recent Gallup poll shows that 52% of Americans think the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, while 42% still support the war. 

In Iraq, American influence is low, while violence continues daily, and tensions among the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds are at an all time high.  One day, maybe, they'll come around.    

Romney vs. Obama

"I'm for Mitt Romney," former President George W. Bush said to an ABC News reporter as the elevator doors closed.  It was the first time he had publicly said he endorsed the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.  

But don't look for the former president to campaign for Romney this year.  Why?  Two words: Bush recession.  Americans don't need to be reminded that when Bush entered office the U.S. government was operating at a surplus.  However, two costly wars, a series of unfunded tax cuts, and an unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit program turned a surplus into a burgeoning deficit.  Meanwhile, lax oversight of the mortgage and financial sectors resulted in increased personal debt.  And then the bubble burst in 2007.  This is not a record the Romney campaign wants to be associated with.

Instead, Romney wants to make November's election a referendum on President Barack Obama.  The U.S. economy has struggled to recover from the Great Recession, which was unprecedented in its severity.  Since the president was elected the economy has only added back about half of the jobs that were lost.  The problem has been compounded by the loss of nearly a half million government jobs at all levels due to budget cuts.     

The state of the U.S. economy will likely be the most important factor in the outcome of the presidential election.  And the American economy will continue to be affected by growing economic problems in Europe, and a slowdown in the growth of China's economy.  Uncertainty at home and abroad, and the unprecedented nature of the Great Recession have severely hampered recovery.

This has provided a huge opening for Romney, who has "Etch A Sketched" the Bush recession into the Obama failure.  “The people of Iowa and America have watched President Obama for nearly four years, much of that time with Congress controlled by his own party," Romney said to a couple hundred supporters in Iowa Tuesday.  "And rather than put out the spending fire, he has fed the fire. He has spent more and borrowed more.”  He concluded, “This is not just bad economics, this is morally wrong and we must stop it.” 

It remains unclear exactly what Romney will do to significantly reduce unemployment and the deficit.  Some of the proposals he has mentioned or embraced will in fact only add to the long-term deficit--for instance, more tax cuts.  He also wants less government regulation.  Sounds a lot like George W. Bush.

But Romney believes he does not have to be specific, he only has to attack his opponent--a tactic that worked time and again during the brutal Republican primary.  He managed to overcome his many flip-flops (i.e. abortion), his many distortions, his many flubs ("I like being able to fire people"), his inability to personally connect with voters, and his failure to win over many conservatives ("I'm severely conservative!").   The Obama campaign has begun to forcefully respond, first with an attack ad that painted Romney as "job destroyer" at Bain Capital.   They will also remind voters that Romney equals Bush. 

For the next six months Americans will experience the most expensive, thanks to Citizens United, and most negative presidential campaign ever waged in this country.  No doubt, many will think, to paraphrase Romney, this is not just bad politics, this is morally wrong.  But nothing will stop it. 

"W" on Facebook

Perhaps President George W. Bush now thinks it's safe to raise his profile again. He has allowed his team to create a Facebook page in his name. While it is not possible to "friend" him, it sure is possible for supporters to rave enthusiastically about how they miss him.

What's this all about? Perhaps it has something to do with the gushing oil leak that is likely to continue uncontrolled in the Gulf of Mexico until September? Perhaps it has something to do with the stubborn unemployment rate? Perhaps it has something to do with the midterm elections? I would guess it is part of a GOP strategy to tippy-toe "W" into the spotlight and allow him to help out where he remains popular. Especially since President Barack Obama's personal popularity is sliding because of the ceaseless problems popping up almost daily.

Take a look: http://www.facebook.com/georgewbush