The venerable Dick Cheney has said so many memorable things in his long career that have been long digested and discussed, but my most unforgettable quote was regarding the Vietnam War, that Southeast Asian conflict that he unflinchingly supported.

When asked why as a young man he did not serve in what he constantly described as a noble conflict and used every college deferment he could muster to stay out of it until that approach dried up, after which he impregnated his wife to bring the issue of potential service to a close, his answer was short and to the point:

“I had other priorities.”

Cheney’s history on Vietnam is a textbook paradigm for the master plan of the chicken hawk:

1) Take a strong pro-war posture accented by tough rhetoric;

2) Delegate the action to others to carry out.

           Read more... 

Dick Cheney’s recent comments are reflective of the adage, “The best defense is a good offense.” In addition, visibility is important, many political insiders say, because he continues working on that book he hopes will be finished and released soon.

As for Dick Cheney’s view of the world, it is dark, it is foreboding, and it operates in lockstep with the neoconservative Project for the New American Century and the New World Order.

Cheney along with PNAC insiders such as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and William Kristol lobbied mightily then President Bill Clinton to launch a war against Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Once that George W. Bush was installed in the Oval Office by a United States Supreme Court one vote majority, Cheney as spokesperson for the neocons approached Assignment Iraq War with speedy relish.

           Read more... 

Dear President Obama;

I wanted to take the occasion of Presidents Day to write to you. Today is the day we celebrate the birthdays of two of our all time great presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

It is fitting that we celebrate the first of our presidents and the president who held the Union together and ended the precious practice of human slavery. These men stand as examples of what America can be and should be.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

It is with regret that I can not add your name to the list of great presidents. There is no doubt your election and presidency are historic, but where Washington and Lincoln are both famous for standing for the rule of law and the Constitution, your administration seems to sadly lacking in that regard.

Mr. President, there is an issue that you have consciously ignored, the issue of the Bush Administration’s torture program. As someone involved in politics and activism I completely grasp the level of acrimony you would experience from the Republicans and the conservatives of this nation if you fully investigate the ordering and carrying out of torture.

           Read more... 

A month before Valerie Plame Wilson's covert status as a CIA operative was revealed, Vice President Dick Cheney told his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and his press secretary, Cathie Martin, that Plame Wilson worked at the CIA.

But according to a 28-page summary of Cheney’s May 8, 2004 interview with the special prosecutor probing the leak, Cheney did not recall having that conversation.

"Cheney has no recollection of Cathie Martin entering his office at some point while Scooter Libby was present and advising both of them that [Plame Wilson] was employed by the CIA," states the interview summary, released late Friday by the FBI after a lengthy court battle between the Bush and Obama administrations and the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

The "Plame-gate" affair dates back to 2003, when Valerie Plame Wilson’s husband, former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly disclosed that he had undertaken a fact-finding trip to Niger which had disproved President Bush’s claim that Iraq was seeking to buy yellowcake uranium from the African nation.

           Read more... 

A federal court judge ordered the Justice Department Thursday to release portions of an interview transcript between former Vice President Dick Cheney and the special prosecutor assigned to investigate the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and the role Bush administration officials played in her outing six years ago.

US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected arguments by Obama Justice Department appointees that releasing the transcript would discourage future vice presidents from cooperating with criminal investigations because their words could become "fodder for The Daily Show."

At a federal court hearing in July, Jeffrey Smith, an attorney in the Justice Department's Civil Division, argued that the transcript of Cheney's 2004 interview with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about the CIA leak should remain secret for as long as ten more years to protect Cheney from any political embarrassment that would result from the transcript being released.

           Read more... 

On 9/15/09, a few good men, actual Marines, told chickenhawks Ex VP Cheney and his Brat Daughter, who have never served in the military, to STFU.

Former Marine commandant Charles Krulak and former Marine general Joseph Hoar, who succeeded Schwarzkopf at Central Command, dress(es) down former VP Cheney on the issue of torture.

"... we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics."

~snip~

"What leaders say matters. So when it comes to light, as it did recently, that U.S. interrogators staged mock executions and held a whirling electric drill close to the body of a naked, hooded detainee, and the former vice president winks and nods, it matters."

ricks.foreignpolicy.com

Bold added by the diarist

           Read more... 

Originally published at Asia Times

It's September 11 all over again - eight years on. The George W Bush administration is out. The "global war on terror" is still on, renamed "overseas contingency operations" by the Barack Obama administration. Obama's "new strategy" - a war escalation - is in play in AfPak. Osama bin Laden may be dead or not. "Al-Qaeda" remains a catch-all ghost entity. September 11 - the neo-cons' "new Pearl Harbor" - remains the darkest jigsaw puzzle of the young 21st century.

It's useless to expect US corporate media and the ruling elites' political operatives to call for a true, in-depth investigation into the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. Whitewash has been the norm. But even establishment highlight Dr Zbig "Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski, a former national security advisor, has admitted to the US Senate that the post-9/11 "war on terror" is a "mythical historical narrative".

           Read more... 

From After Downing Street

Compiled below, in hopes that it may be of some assistance to Eric Holder, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, active citizens, foreign courts, the International Criminal Court, law firms preparing civil suits, and local or state prosecutors with decency and nerve is a list of 50 top living U.S. war criminals. These are men and women who helped to launch wars of aggression or who have been complicit in lesser war crimes. These are not the lowest-ranking employees or troops who managed to stray from official criminal policies. These are the makers of those policies.

The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have seen the United States target civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, use antipersonnel weapons including cluster bombs in densely settled urban areas, use white phosphorous as a weapon, use depleted uranium weapons, employ a new version of napalm found in Mark 77 firebombs, engage in collective punishment of Iraqi civilian populations -- including by blocking roads, cutting electricity and water, destroying fuel stations, planting bombs in farm fields, demolishing houses, and plowing down orchards -- detain people without charge or legal process without the rights of prisoners of war, imprison children, torture, and murder.

           Read more... 

If we prosecute Bush/Cheney what will the GOP do? Stop working with us? Call us Nazi's?

Because, that is happening right now. Kinda takes the threat away, huh?

The people who tortured children

The people who covered up mass graves

The people who began a domestic spying program and began an ilegal war of aggression

They and their supporters are calling the left Nazi's?!?

           Read more... 

Originally posted at TomDispatch.com

Don't Turn the Page on History: Facing the American World We Created

We've just passed through the CIA assassination flap, already fading from the news after less than two weeks of media attention. Broken in several major newspapers, here's how the story goes: the Agency, evidently under Vice President Dick Cheney's orders, didn't inform Congress that, to assassinate al-Qaeda leaders, it was trying to develop and deploy global death squads. (Of course, just about no one is going to call them that, but the description fits.) Congress is now in high dudgeon. The CIA didn't keep that body's "Gang of Eight" informed. A House investigation is now underway.

We're told that the CIA -- being the president's private army and part of the executive branch of our government -- has committed a heinous dereliction of duty. In fact, not keeping key congressional figures up to date on the developing program could even "be illegal," according to Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin. (Not that Congress, when informed of Bush administration extreme acts, ever did much of anything anyway.)

This story, however, has a largely unexplored strangeness to it that has only been discussed on the fringes of the mainstream media (or in the press of other countries). After all, during the eight years this CIA assassination program was supposedly in formation, U.S. military special ops death squads were, as far as we can tell, freely roaming the planet conducting (or botching) assassination missions, and the CIA's own robot assassins, airborne death squads, were also launching operations -- sometimes wiping out innocent civilians -- from Yemen and Somalia to Pakistan. They continue to run such operations in the skies over the Pakistani tribal borderlands near Afghanistan. So we still await an explanation of just why the CIA spent close to eight years, under Vice Presidential oversight, getting its death squads almost operational, but never -- we're told -- off the ground.

           Read more...