Blog: Dick Cheney Please Go Away
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| Wed, 02-04-2009 - 2:44pm |
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/02/04/please-go-away/?iid=tsmodule
Let's leave aside the fact that if Dick Cheney and his alleged boss had been more vigilant--if they had listened to the Clinton appointees like Sandy Berger who warned about Al Qaeda, if they had paid attention to their own intelligence reports (notably the one on August 6, 2001)--the September 11 attacks might never have happened. Actually, I can't leave that aside...but in any case, it is sleazy in the extreme for Cheney to predict another terrorist attack. For several reasons:
1. Some sort of terrorist attack is likely, eventually, no matter who is President.
2. Cheney has done here what the Bush Administration did throughout: he has politicized terror. If another attack happens, it's Obama's fault. Disgraceful... and ungrateful, since it's only Obama's mercy that stands between Cheney and a really serious war crimes investigation. Which leads to...
3. The means that Cheney has supported to combat terror in the past, especially "enhanced" interogation techniques, are quite probably illegal. He is criticizing the Obama administration for not be willing to defy international law.
4. Cheney's track record of mismanagement in Iraq and Afghanistan--his sponsorship of Donald Rumsfeld, the worst Secretary of Defense in US history-- disqualifies him from having any credible say on the security policies of his successor.
This is a man who should either be (a) scorned or (b) ignored.




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It's laughable that he should condemn Obama, Obama hasn't been in office that long for any of his policies to be judged.
Cheney has already admitted that he is for torture.
"This is a man who should either be (a) scorned or (b) ignored."
How about BOTH?
On Cheney, from my favourite libertarian conservative writer, Andrew Sullivan:
He hunkers down to play the Dolchstoss card, preparing to blame the next terror attack on the Obama administration's disavowal of his torture program. It seems to me that regardless of the merits or demerits of his view, it's a remarkable violation of civil norms for a vice-president just out of power to assault his successors and all-but declare them indifferent to public safety. It's deeply divisive, deeply partisan and utterly self-serving. In other words: as cheap as one would expect. And part of what ails conservatism. Yes, they seem to be rooting for failure at home and abroad, because it would help vindicate their own appalling record on both fronts.
Think of Cheney and Limbaugh as the two centers of gravity for the current GOP. A deeply unserious and deeply disturbing pincer movement against the democratic mandate of the new president.
Sullivan decribes Cheney's actions & motives to a tee.
What I find ironic is we rarely heard from him when he was VP. He had a reputation for hiding away in some 'dark place'. Now him & puppet boy are out of office he wont keep quiet.
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