Let's be clear: Dick Cheney did not serve UNDER George W Bush. Dick Cheney wasn't called "Bush's Brain" for nothing. Dick Cheney was charged with finding Bush a running mate and came up with himself! Dick Cheney ran the country while George "Dubya" Bush sat in the Oval Office and rode around on Air Force One.“Dick Cheney is an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter, who lost by the largest margin in the History of Congressional Races!” the former president wrote in a post on Truth Social, referring to former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who lost her 2022 midterm election to a Trump-backed challenger.
The criticism comes after Cheney, who served under former President George W. Bush, said Friday in a statement that he will support Vice President Harris in the fall.
The Hill
That is laughable. We don't know what Kamala Harris will do. And, he tried his best to start WWIII, calling Kim Jong Un names (before they wrote each other "love letters"), and attempting to destroy NATO. But he's right about Cheney being the king of endless wars. On the other hand, Trump didn't end the ones he inherited.“As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution,” Cheney said. “That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
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[Trump] noted in his Friday post that Cheney was unable to get his former adviser, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, pardoned.
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Trump issued a pardon to the former Bush official in 2018.
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The former president also argued that Cheney is the “King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars, wasting Lives and Trillions of Dollars, just like Comrade Kamala Harris.”
“I am the Peace President, and only I will stop World War III!” he claimed.
I didn't see it. Maybe he did write "must", but it's a bullshit claim. They didn't destroy any evidence, and Nancy Pelosi was not responsible for the lack of security on January 6.“[Liz Cheney] and her Unselects deleted and destroyed all evidence and information – IT’S GONE. Must of it proved that [former Speaker] Nancy Pelosi was responsible for J6 – DIDN’T PROVIDE SECURITY,” [Trump] wrote.
Prosecuted for holding an investigation. What does that tell you?The former president wrote in his post that those who sat on the Jan. 6 select committee “should be prosecuted for what they did.”
But, he added “Comrade Kamala is even worse!”
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.Up to half of the $14 trillion spent by the United States Department of Defense since the September 11, 2001 attacks went to for-profit defence contractors, a new report by Brown University’s Costs of War project and the Center for International Policy found.
And while much of that money went to weapons suppliers, Monday’s report is the latest to point to the US’s dependence on contractors for warzone duties as contributing to mission failures in Afghanistan, in particular. The paper is entitled, Profits of War: Corporate Beneficiaries of the Post-9/11 Pentagon Spending Surge.
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William Hartung, the paper’s author, and others said it is essential that Americans examine what role the reliance on private contractors played in the post-9/11 wars.
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After the September 11, 2001 attacks, American officials embraced private contractors as an essential part of the US’s military response.
It started with then-Vice President Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton received more than $30bn to help set up and run bases, feed troops and carry out other work in Iraq and Afghanistan by 2008, the study says.
Cheney and defence contractors argued that relying on private contractors for work that service members did in previous wars would allow for a trimmer US military, and be more efficient and cost-effective.
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US corporations contracted by the Defense Department not only handled warzone logistics like running fuel convoys and staffing chow lines but performed mission-crucial work like training and equipping Afghan security forces — security forces that collapsed last month as the Taliban swept through the country.
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In Afghanistan, that included contractors allegedly paying protection money to warlords and the Taliban themselves, and the Defense Department insisting on equipping the Afghan air force with complex Blackhawk helicopters and other aircraft that few other than US contractors knew how to maintain.
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Afghans preferred Russian helicopters, which were easier to fly, could be maintained by Afghans and were suited to rugged Afghanistan. So when US contractors pulled out with US troops this year, taking their knowledge of how to maintain US-provided aircraft with them, top Afghan leaders bitterly complained to the US that it had deprived them of one essential advantage over the Taliban.
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The Pentagon pumped out more contracts than it could oversee, lawmakers and government special investigators said.
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Relying less on private contractors, and more on the US military as in past wars, might have given the US better chances of victory in Afghanistan, [Jodi Vittori, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel and scholar of corruption and fragile states at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was not involved in the study,] noted.
She said that would have meant US presidents accepting the political risks of sending more American troops to Afghanistan, and getting more body bags of American troops back.
“Using contractors allowed America to fight a war that a lot of Americans forgot we were fighting,” Vittori said.
alJazeera
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.All 10 living former US defense secretaries declared that the US presidential election is over in a forceful public letter published in The Washington Post on Sunday as President Donald Trump continues to deny his election loss to Joe Biden.
The letter -- signed by Dick Cheney, James Mattis, Mark Esper, Leon Panetta, Donald Rumsfeld, William Cohen, Chuck Hagel, Robert Gates, William Perry and Ashton Carter -- amounts to a remarkable show of force against Trump's subversion efforts just days before Congress is set to count Electoral College votes. "Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted. The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived," the group wrote.
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The former Defense secretaries, who collectively represent decades of tenure in the position, wrote that presidential transitions "are a crucial part of the successful transfer of power. [...] They often occur at times of international uncertainty about U.S. national security policy and posture. They can be a moment when the nation is vulnerable to actions by adversaries seeking to take advantage of the situation."
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And while America's top military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, told Congress in August that the military won't help settle any election disputes, the group of former Defense secretaries reiterated in their letter that such an effort "would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory." "Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic," the letter states.
Cohen, a Republican who served as Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton, told CNN's Ana Cabrera on "Newsroom" shortly after the letter was published that the "highly unusual" step was warranted given the "unconstitutional path" Trump has taken the country.
"It was really our attempt to call out to the American people. We believe all of them are patriotic. They've been led down a path by President Trump, which is an unconstitutional path. And so we felt it was incumbent on us as having served in the Defense Department to say: Please all of you in the Defense Department, you've taken an oath to serve this country, this Constitution, not any given individual," he said.
The former Defense secretaries ended their letter urging the Defense Department to "refrain from any political actions" that could undermine the election results or harm the transition to a new administration. "We call upon them, in the strongest terms, to do as so many generations of Americans have done before them," the letter states.
"This final action is in keeping with the highest traditions and professionalism of the U.S. armed forces, and the history of democratic transition in our great country."
CNN
On today’s Bulwark podcast, Ambassador Eric Edelman joins Charlie Sykes to talk about how the open letter from all living Secretaries of Defense about involving the military in election disputes came to be.
You have to see it to believe it:In the latest episode of “Who Is America?,” [Sacha Baron Cohen] plays Israeli military expert Erran Morad, and enlists [Georgia] state Rep. Jason Spencer (R) to film an “anti-terrorism video.”
In the video, Spencer repeatedly shouts the “N-word” after Cohen tells him that using the “forbidden” word will help ward off terrorists.
In another clip, Spencer pulls down his pants and chases Cohen with his buttocks exposed, yelling “USA, Motherf—er!”
The Hill
Drain the swamp.Spencer also reportedly gives an offensive impression of a “Chinese tourist” in the episode, and stabs a knife into a mannequin wearing a hijab.
Spencer, who recently was defeated in the GOP primary after serving four terms, had threatened legal action against Showtime to prevent the network from airing the footage.
“They exploited my state of mind for profit and notoriety,” Spencer told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week. “This media company’s deceptive and fraudulent behavior is exactly why President Donald Trump was elected.”
I wonder how long the show will be allowed to run.Sunday’s episode also featured former Vice President Dick Cheney signing a “waterboard kit.”
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Cohen’s new undercover project has already featured a number of GOP figures, including several who were filmed purportedly endorsing a program to arm toddlers with guns.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.In a wide-ranging speech at the Economic Times' Global Business Summit, former US Vice President Dick Cheney spoke unequivocally about Russia's meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
Cheney cited a "rising number of threats" in the world that beyond national security, "even pose a threat to the globalization movements you're here to talk about today."
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"There's no question that there was a very serious effort made by Mr. Putin and his government, his organization, to interfere in major ways with our basic fundamental democratic processes," said Cheney. "In some quarters that could be considered an act of war."
Business Insider
Trump has hinted lots of things. Come right out and said some other things. Is any of it believable? Trump is an evil megalomaniac. And not a smart one. He'll be hard to manage, but if they keep him busy watching his own image on TV and striking out at people who have personally insulted him, they shouldn't have any trouble running the world behind his back.Let’s take a moment to savor what looks to be Henry Kissinger’s final act. The man is 93 years old. At that age, most people are lucky to have enough energy for “Wheel of Fortune” and a few Facebook posts. Not Kissinger. These days, he’s playing the influence game against insiders who hadn’t even been born when he was Richard Nixon’s secretary of state.
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When some Republicans questioned Tillerson’s closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kissinger defended the pick on “Face the Nation.” Kissinger helped soften the blow of Trump’s phone call with Taiwan’s president in December before the Committee of 100, which advocates for the U.S.-China relationship. Before that, Kissinger winged his way to Oslo to urge his fellow Nobel laureates to give the next president’s foreign policy a chance. It feels like 1975 all over again. I’m half-expecting to read something in the tabloids about a Kissinger affair with a Hollywood starlet.
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Officials with Donald Trump’s transition team tell me Kissinger has spent several hours since the election advising incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn and his team. He’s also putting his network in place. He recommended his former assistant, K.T. McFarland, to be Flynn’s deputy, and urged Trump to nominate Rex Tillerson, the chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil, as his secretary of state.
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It’s nonetheless strange that Kissinger would have Trump’s ear. To start, he is the author of many of the policies Trump is hinting he will undo.
Bloomberg
Of course he is. That would be the most important person to advise.“Kissinger is apparently willing to advise someone who has publicly questioned the essential building blocks of the international system that Kissinger himself helped create,” Tim Naftali, a former executive director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, told me.
Only Dick Cheney remains outside the swamp. Or else he's well hidden. Be watching for him.For all of his foreign-policy success, Kissinger is also an author of more dubious moments in Cold War history. He helped orchestrate the 1973 coup that toppled Chile’s elected president, Salvador Allende. Kissinger devised the strategy to bomb North Vietnamese Army positions in Cambodia, something he kept from Congress.
Former VP Dick Cheney's statement on Trump tapping Rex Tillerson as his Secretary of State nominee pic.twitter.com/MKtcpajjju— Dianne Gallagher (@DianneG) December 13, 2016
It won't shake his supporters, but it rings bells for the GOP Establishment."Donald Trump didn't say that the Twin Towers coming down was George Bush's fault," Pierson said. "He said George Bush didn't keep safe, and there are thousands of families that would agree with that. But I will have to define safe for you. Donald Trump's measure of safety is very different than the Bush's. Donald Trump wants a border wall. He wants to stop illegal immigration. He wants to deport illegal aliens. There are a number of things that Donald Trump would determine safe that the Bushes just didn't quite agree at that time."
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"We don't know for sure if [the 9/11 attack] could have been prevented, but what we do know is that the hijackers did come into this country on visas from hostile territories." [...] "We know that one was here on an expired visa and we know they trained in Florida under Jeb Bush's watch to take down those towers."
Real Clear Politics
Donald Trump - liberal Democrat. I don't think even that is going to work.Appearing [Monday evening] on Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier," [Dick] Cheney listened to the anchor read a list of [Trump's] recent comments about Bush and 9/11 earlier in the day and during Saturday night's debate, including Trump's assertion that Bush and Cheney "lied" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as an impetus to invade the country in 2003.
“He sounds like a liberal Democrat to me, Bret. He’s wrong, and he’s I think, deliberately promoting those views in order to advance his political interests," Cheney responded.
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"The other areas, for example, if you look at what we did in the aftermath of 9/11, we did in fact keep the nation safe for seven and a half years," Cheney said.
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Trump likened that argument on Monday to saying, "The team scored 19 runs [on us] in the first inning, but after that we played well."
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“I’ve said I’ll support the nominee of my party," Cheney said. "If he operates the way he’s operating, sounding like a liberal Democrat, I don’t think he’ll get the nomination.”
Politico
I'm not sure just what issue Dana-What-Cuban-Missile-Crisis?-Perino did know enough about.In a simmering dispute with the National Archives that heated up Thursday, [Vice President dick] Cheney has long maintained that he does not have to comply with an executive order on safeguarding classified information because, in fact, his office is part of the legislature.
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Cheney, whose single constitutional duty is to serve as president of the Senate, holds that the vice president's office is not an "entity within the executive branch" and therefore not subject to annual reporting or periodic on-site inspections under the 1995 executive order, which was updated four years ago by President Bush.
The vice president has been refusing to cooperate with the National Archives office assigned to oversee the handling of classified data since 2003.
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Constitutional experts were startled at the notion that the vice presidency isn't in the executive branch.
"The vice president is saying he doesn't have to follow the orders of the president," said Garrett Epps, a law professor at the University of Oregon. "That's a very interesting proposition."
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White House spokeswoman Dana Perino brushed off questions about what branch of the government the vice president resides in, saying she doesn't know enough about the issue.
Seattle PI
"I always thought that he was president of this administration."And this was pretty good, too:
Cheney being more than willing to turn over information to the archives. MORE than willing.After Congressional Democrats called his bluff by threatening to withhold funding from his office, the White House was forced to roll back their rhetoric, claiming “that the rationale had been the view of the vice president’s lawyers, not Cheney himself.”
Think Progress
For a brief period in our history, according to the Man Who Would Be King behind the Man Who Would Be King , our government had four branches. This will be on the quiz, folks.Now that the political tempest over Cheney’s exemption of his office has subsided a bit, the Vice President is back to claiming he is a branch of government all to himself — or as he says it, “a unique creature” in constitutional government.
I seem to recall that actually, it was his own son who loudly pouted that Saddam Hussein "tried to kill my dad!" as part of his rationale for invading Iraq. So, while Cheney and Rumsfeld certainly deserve a goodly portion, I don't think all the blame can be put on those two evil clowns.A new biography of the 41st president – Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey Of George Herbert Walker Bush – reveals that Bush Sr held Cheney and Rumsfeld responsible for the hawkish stance that “hurt” his son’s administration, Fox News reported on Wednesday.
Guardian
What? Dick Cheney knuckled under to "hard-charging guys"? He was a dove before that? Sure, Poppy. Sure.The book, by Jon Meacham, is based on audio diaries that Bush recorded during his time in the White House, as well as interviews with the former president and his wife, Barbara.
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“[Cheney's] reaction [to 9/11], what to do about the Middle East. Just iron-ass. His seeming knuckling under to the real hard-charging guys who want to fight about everything, use force to get our way in the Middle East,” Bush told Meacham in the book, which is due to be published next week.
Simple explains a lot of things about W, but “might be historically proved to be not benefiting anything” is quite a torturous dismissal of a world-changing moment.“I do worry about some of the rhetoric that was out there – some of it his [Bush Jr], maybe, and some of it the people around him. Hot rhetoric is pretty easy to get headlines, but it doesn’t necessarily solve the diplomatic problem.”
He added that George W Bush’s infamous state of the union address in 2002, in which the then president warned of an “axis of evil” of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, “might be historically proved to be not benefiting anything”.
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“He’s my son, he did his best and I’m for him. It’s that simple an equation.”
Who was just a simple man who did his best.Rumsfeld, who was Bush Jr’s secretary of defense for most of his two terms, has so far not commented on the criticisms directed at him by the 41st president, who in the book calls him “an arrogant fellow”, adding: “I don’t like what he did, and I think it hurt the president.
Deputy Chief of Staff Dick Cheney wrote this memo to Staff Secretary Jim Connor in October 1975, wanting to know why the coffee bill for Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld’s office had been so high the previous month. Connor’s handwritten note succinctly sums up why the bill was over $100: “They are drinking too much coffee and have too many people drinking it!”
Today's Document
And equally dysfunctional.●Cheney was a “powerful” vice president who had his own national security staff; “he had a very different relationship with President Bush,” Biden says
●Biden says he volunteered to cede most of that shadow team to Obama’s first national security adviser, didn’t want a satellite operation
●The relationship between Cheney and President George W. Bush was more “codependent”
Bloomberg
I would have to say that by this, Joe isn't actually considering a run for president. Surely praising Cheney wouldn't get him any party support. I WOULD say that, except for this:●Mondale disagrees with Biden’s compliments of Cheney, saying while the Republican was personally “kind to me,” “he said early on that he was going to take things to the dark side” and did.
●They were “bad days in the history of the vice president” and “I have a kind of harsh view” of Cheney, Mondale says.
Sounds like Joe's making a move toward a campaign against Hillary to me.Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday for the first time that he had privately urged President Obama to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — a new account contradicting his prior public claim to have opposed the audacious May 2011 operation.
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The vice president’s new account seems to put him at odds with Clinton’s version of the internal debate over the raid. In her 2014 memoir, “Hard Choices,” she wrote that Biden and Gates opposed the operation but she supported it.
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Clinton has also reportedly knocked Biden in private for opposing the raid.
Yahoo
●Biden says he agrees with much of [Mondale's assessment of Cheney]: “I have a harsh view of how the vice presidency, the office, was used”; at same time, “that could not have happened without President Bush permitting it to happen.”
Maybe Joe is just scared of the Big Dick. After all:
