Cheney Exposed Obama’s Hypocrisy
Don’t look now, but Dick Cheney — a recently retired, highly unpopular figure — is in the midst of winning a battle for the ages by successfully challenging President Obama on perhaps the most consequential issue of the last decade. Cheney, who remained relatively silent during his eight years in power, cannot keep quiet now. And while his constant presence on television might be hurting the Republican Party politically, Cheney’s substantive criticism of Obama is doing the country an immense service.
Dick Cheney, with help from his daughter Liz, has crystallized the insane nature of our national debate regarding detainee policy. He has called President Obama’s bluff on numerous issues related to terrorist detention and interrogation; Obama, to the chagrin of his supporters, has blinked.
Charles Krauthammer labels this “the Obama three-step,” whereby Barack will first “excoriate the Bush policy,” then “ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes,” only to finally “adopt the Bush policy.” President Obama likes to talk about the “false choice” between our values and our security, but the disparity between his words and actions is gargantuan.
Since his inauguration, Obama has either reversed or triangulated himself on nearly every Bush-created national security program that he once lambasted as a candidate. Whether it is the Patriot Act, FISA, surveillance programs, wiretappings, email intercepts, rendition of terrorist detainees, indefinite detention of terrorists, withholding the writ of habeas corpus to terrorists, or employing military tribunals for al-Qaeda prisoners, Obama no longer hyperbolizes these programs as fascistic and contrary to our ideals. You see, he’s in charge now — so they can’t possibly be lawless anymore. On all of these issues, Obama has adopted the very same Bush approach he once castigated as reckless and pointless to our security.
Obama claims to have put an end to waterboarding — which really ended in 2002-03 — but has since asked CIA Director Leon Panetta to devise harsher interrogative practices reserved exclusively for dire circumstances (apparently the immediate aftermath of 9/11, a time in which we knew next to nothing of al-Qaeda’s subsequent plans, was not “dire” enough).
Obama also promised to close Guantanamo Bay, but has not explained where he will transfer the remaining Gitmo detainees. As a result, the Senate voted 90-6 denying the requisite funds the administration needs to close the prison facility. As it turns out, the Democrats in Congress, who hammered President Bush for years to close the supposedly gulag-like detention center, do not exactly want the most dangerous men in the world to be imprisoned in their local districts.
How does Obama get away with such phony pretense? How is he able to say, with a straight face, that affording foreign aliens — indeed, wartime enemy combatants — the right to civilian court jurisprudence is “the essence of who we are,” and then, in the next breath, do just the opposite? Jack Goldsmith correctly concludes, “The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric.”
That’s just it: packaging. Through the tempo of his oratory, the cadence of his vernacular, the smoothness of his surroundings, and the occasional mimicking of Martin Luther King Jr.’s drawl and downwards voice-box tremble, Barack Obama channels and packages George Bush better than George Bush ever could. This is not change and hope. It’s continuity — and more significantly, it’s theater.
“The lesson?”
Liberal Democrats are scum.
Also good on this topic:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124328987165752237.html#mod=rss_opinion_main
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124329131991652291.html#mod=rss_opinion_main
“packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric”
26 May 2009
“That’s just it: packaging. Through the tempo of his oratory, the cadence of his vernacular, the smoothness of his surroundings, and the occasional mimicking of Martin Luther King Jr.’s drawl and downwards voice-box tremble, Barack Obama channels and packages George Bush better than George Bush ever could. This is not change and hope. It’s continuity — and more significantly, it’s theater.”
For a neocomrade of the Big Management Party to sneer at packagin’ like this can mean only one thing: the particular specimen must not be very far up the totem pole. It is still more a mark and a dupe than a certified GOP genius in its own right.
No doubt it is a tribute to the Agitprop Arm that Republican Party marks and dupes like “N[icholas] Guariglia” can actually be brought to believe that *their* crew’s ideoproducts come completely natural and unpackaged, that America’s Otherparty would never so much as *dream* “at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric.”
At what level do neocomrades of the featherweight N. Guariglia class fantasize that Party dreadnoughts such as Neocomrade Karl, Lord Rove, and Neocomrade Viceroy R. B. Cheney were proceedin’ under the ægis of George XLIII Bush through all those years of bliss for Hooverville and Wingnut City? Their K. Rove is taken to be that great Otherparty theoretical sage who announced to Mr. Suskind that henceforth the Busheviki would make up reality to suit themselves with the rest of the human race reduced to kibitzin’ from the sidelines. [1] On the practical front, their R. B. Cheney was the most prominent tip-off that the nominal presidin’ of Master Dubya was itself more sizzle than steak.
Card-carryin’ militant extremists may well admire and applaud both the speculative Rove Package and the manipulative Cheney Package. To pretend that such extremely typical WC tripe and baloney were fruits fresh-picked from the tree, however, is rather to insult one’s own intelligence than anybody else’s. “If you believe that, sir, you would believe anything.” [2]
“N. Guaraglia” may become a danger to its chosen faction’s enemies when it grows up, but of this there is no immediate danger. Should it ever graduate from passive dupedom to proäctive dupery, it would be obliged to put away such infantile notions as the present insinuation that “packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric” are bad things to be disapproved of.
There is no need to fall off the horse on the other side, though: militant extremism bein’ what it is, I dare say no apprentice Party dupatrix or dupator should start announcin’ in public that P & A & S & R are four ancient and noble arts that she has every intention of becomin’ proficient in herself. It’s perfectly true, of course, yet not all perfect truths are usefully flaunted in the Naked Public Square™, and especially not flaunted to the advantage of the neocomradely community.
America’s Otherparty has never been big-managed on the basis of any such naïve ‘transparency’ as that, not even in its one brief spell of comparative lucidity under Ronald XL Reagan. [3] It is good and proper–and thoughly big-managerial!–that rank-and-file Party base-’n’-vile should cherish various dotty ideas, but should the GOP geniuses ever start actually believin’ their own sales patter, why, then the America’s Otherparty racket in its ‘Republican’ form will go the way of its ‘Whig’ form and go quickly.
Naturally the same racket will come back in some other repackagin’ still afterwards, for the cravin’ to let dollars vote too and not persons alone is as American as _peccatum originale_. Presumably few neocomrades devoted to Otherpartisanship in its present package will care to see five or ten years wasted in the political wilderness gettin’ the next release (“Newtware Inc. announces NeoRea¢tion 2015!”) debugged and shrinkwrapped and market-niched. The dogs of Wingnut City are bound to recur to their Hoovervillainous vomit eventually and start recyclin’ it. Hence it would be pointless in the long run, as well as courage-challenged in any time frame, for liberals and democrats and Democrats and Americans to hope that the Party of Grant and Hardin’ and Goldwater and Atwater, as presently packaged, will collapse like the deacon’s one-hoss shay sometime next week or next month or next year.
No point in us good guys dodging the real issue, ladies and gentlemen, not even temporarily! Let us leave that sort of thing to the sweet puppies of Endarkenment, shall we? [5]
Happy days.
____
[1] “‘That is not the way the world really works anymore. WE are an Empire now, and when WE act, WE create OUR OWN reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — WE will act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. WE are history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what WE do.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html
I don’t recall any decent political grown-up calling that nifty exuberance ‘mad’ or ‘insane’, but one can see how somebody might.
[2] Thus the Duke of Wellington to a stranger who addressed him as “Mr. Smith, I believe?”
[3] Mr. Reagan had repackaged himself politically, of course, which may have some remote connection with the partial and temporary clearin’ in the Otherparty’s traditional fog and posion gas.
Come to think of it, the man’s day job may have been pertinent as well: an actor who sincerely damns and denigrates packagin’ may not be entirely inconceivable, but he would certainly be the sort of thing that Miss Alice was told to practice on six times daily before breakfast. [AW, _cap_. V , p. 93 _chez Google_]
[4] If, perchance, such a collapse does occur, let the record show that the present keyboard did not promise not to enjoy it. If the militant extremists decide _sua sponte_ to reduce themselves to a sort of merger of AIPAC and the Daughters of the American Revolution and then do not win many elections outside the former C.S.A. for years or decades, that is fine with me. As long as they jump without bein’ pushed any harder that America’s party has always poked and prodded at the ever-self-servicin’ Otherparty.
Neocomrade “N. Guariglia” drops the word ‘insane’, which opens the way for me to observe that y my lights, Dr. Krugman went a bridge or three too far Monday morning
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/opinion/25krugman.html
with “To be blunt: recent events suggest that the Republican Party has been driven mad by lack of power.”
In fact, the GOP geniuses are doin’ the best they can for their OnePercenter clients in a difficult situation. It is certainly no *political* insanity on their part to fall back on JUST-SAY-NO, when J-S-N is the only way they have of exertin’ any detectable power at all at the Fedguv level.
Krugman evidently thinks that J-S-N from the Party of Grant and Hoover is capable of wreckin’ our holy Homeland™ economically. Maybe so, but one would have to be an economist to evaluate such a claim usefully. If the claim is sound, nevertheless even the witch doctors of Chicagonomics would not be ‘mad’– clinically insane–unless they sincerely believed that a smash-up was comin’ and then ran all those red lights anyway.
(( But God knows best about sound economics and morbid psychology! ))
Thanks for the great article.
I agree that Mr. Cheney is doing a great service to our country. I do not believe he is hurting the Republican party at all, this unmasking of Obama’s policies goes hand in hand with a Republican revival.
As per Obama’s autobiographies, they were and remain political tools to remake himself, to build up a non-existing resume and fill up an empty suit. There are full of half-truths, fallacies, wrong inferences, omissions, and finally it is probable that he did not write them himself, much as JFK did not write his Pulitzer-winning book (but Sorensen did). Ann Coulter’s claim that they belong in a dime bookstore on a shelf next to Mein Kampft is not far fetched.
Like many people, I was not particularly a fan of Cheney the VP. He was too secretive, too dismissive, and too remote. Whatever has stirred this lion to life, he is calling BHO on his bullsh!t as as the author says, “winning this debate, and winning badly”.
BHO acts like he is on the world stage and he says his lines pretty well. But I worry there is nothing there there (as the saying goes). It’s like he stays in the shallow end of the kiddie pool because he’s convinced himself he can walk on water. Or maintain the appearance.
Liz Cheney will be a player in the 2012 election, she is substantive and well-versed on the issues. What may have brought Dick back in vogue is that whether you like him or not, he is not vague. You know who he is, where’s he has been, what he thinks, and what he’ll fight for. He thinks issues through and he will take a stand.
Or, perhaps this is a family feud on the world stage, cousin vs. cousin. And maybe that is the role of family, when everyone else tells you how wonderful you are, it takes a family member to remind you there is a better way.
“How does Obama get away with such phony pretense?”
Because Chairman Maobama’s propaganda machine (the MSM) shamelessly worships him and will not question the Beloved Leader on anything. Remember the tingling legs and all?
Best article I’ve read on Pajamas in several days. I appreciate the serious, respectable tone and the legitimacy of topic.
– “The former VP is doing the country a service by crystallizing the insane nature of the debate over detainee policy.”
No if someone would do the same for what Obama is doing to the economy and the future of America.
God bless Dick Cheney.
May 26, 2009 – by Nicholas Guariglia:
Partisan writing on a man who thinks he’s the King of the World, but acts more like Darth Vader. “Barack, I’m your father”.
See Star Wars for plot development and ending.
Shrinkwrap, like most libs you descend to personal insults for the author of the piece when it really hits home. We are laughing at you. Your president is an empty suit.
Dick Cheney is demonstrating what damage a man armed with the facts can do to one armed with a teleprompter and a highly elastic set of principles and facts.
He’s cutting Obama to pieces. The fact that Nancy Pelosi has been proven a liar now also – doesn’t help the case for “The One” – the house is burning.
I don’t expect the charlatans in the media to really pull back the skin on this one – being so heavily in the tank for Obama.
However – the “Dick and Liz Show” will definately be one more factor in the downfall of the Democrats next year. What the Cheney’s are doing is definately going over the heads of the propaganda ministry and straight to the voters.
I’d like to especially recognize Liz Cheney in her efforts. She has been articulate, and focused in her arguements on this and has represented the case extremely well when going against the quacks in the main stream media. In fact – she’s been “ginsu-like” in her cutting arguments.
The Iranians, North Koreans, Russians, Syrians, Hamas, and Hezbollah are all celebrating the fact that Cheney no longer holds real power.
makes me nervous.
Cheney is adept at covering his posterior, but all this focus on torture still may bite him in the end. If you think Dick is winning, just wait…
Peace.
DS
Barack Obama is a great US president – for nearly every country in the world APART from the United States of America that is.
Make no mistake folks, he makes your country look weak-assed. His faithful followers may not be able to see through the rhetorical clap-trap he comes out with (all words with absolutely no actions to back them up) but rest assured all the other world leaders see it. See it and love it.
Say what you will about Bush and Cheney but while they had the helm not too many of your enemies wanted to f*ck with you. Since you installed your novelty president its a free-for-all. Do yourself and everyone else in the civilised world a favour and make this a 4-year tenure and not an 8-year one.
Please.
nor has he ever stood up to shady associates with questionable views and motives.
Stood up? Please. He choose these people as mentors. Obama is completely unvetted. His life is a mystery. Less is known about him than any other major public figure.
The personal history of no one on the public stage ia as shrouded in secrecy as Obama’s. Before you accept that Obama wrote Dreams From My Father, you ought to read the articles on ths topic by Professor Cashin.
I’m glad Cheney’s exhortation to use common sense is triumphing over the dubious talking points of the Obama Democrats, however we got to this point because Bush and Cheney failed to respond to these stupid talking points throughout the Bush Presidency.
Everytime Democrats advance an argument that this or that policy will create more terrorists it would be helpful to remind them that nothing would have created more terrorists than conceding Iraq to al Qaeda. When it comes to what motivates terrorists I prefer the opinions of Osama bin Laden to the opinions of the son of Stanley Ann Dunham.
The chickens of the policies of weak horse Obama are coming home to roost. But not to worry, he’s going to the U.N. for help.
Unapologetic writing – keep at it!
FAR LEFT LOON PICKS FAR LEFT LOON FOR SCOTUS
It’s Sotomayor.
Shrinkwrap, personally insulting the ‘right-on’ author doesn’t take away from the facts. Nice try…
In his latest column, Michael Barone states that there are two explanations for The One’s flip-flopping on releasing the photos and memos, one cynical, the other not.
The Cynical; The One happily exploited the issue when rallying the support of the extremists in our own country who wanted us to lose in Iraq, and in the war vs. Islamist extremism as a whole. This explanation holds that now that he is in power, The One is trying to appeal to the larger group of Americans who want us to win, because they recognize the threat that the enemy really is, both to us and the world as a whole (including the Muslim world, which they could easily destroy in their quest for power and “purity”).
The Non-Cynical; Now that he is Commander in Chief, The One realizes that his orders could lead to the deaths of American personnel. Like FDR on D-Day, he could be faced with the terrible necessity of ordering our forces “unto the breach”, in the certain knowledge that there would be casualties. And that this knowledge has caused him to become less ideological, and more mature in his judgments.
Either one is possible, but based on his previous performance, there is a third.
The Third; The One may simply be a totally clueless idiot, who believes that he can say or do nearly anything and get away with it, relying on the American peoples’ “short memory” to shield him from the consequences, aided and abetted by his sycophants in the media.
I’m inclined to the third.
As for The One, he should consider what happened to his idol, Jimmy Carter, in 1980. And then reconsider his estimate of our gullibility.
clear ether
eon
JHM:
Is Soros paying you trolls by the word instead of a flat rate now?
boobama needs to be challenged. The MSM won’t do it so I’m glad Cheney and Rove will. We have Newt challenging Al but that seems to have faded away. Meanwhile the cap and trade scam is being snuck through. If congress can see that this administration is being challenged often enough and quickly enough with the people getting to see the facts instead of the BS maybe they will be more careful how they vote. 2010 will be here soon. The dems might think they have slayed the conservative opposition but I don’t think they will sacrifice their seats over this administrations agenda if it’s properly exposed. People will wise up, let’s just hope it’s sooner than later.
So in essence JHM dba “Shrinkwrap”, two wrongs make a right?
#3 JHM dba “Shrinkwrap”
You know, chum, for someone who uses so many words, you really don’t have that much to say.
6. Byron Dickens:
“How does Obama get away with such phony pretense?”
Because Chairman Maobama’s propaganda machine (the MSM) shamelessly worships him and will not question the Beloved Leader on anything. Remember the tingling legs and all?
May 26, 2009 – 4:00 am
He be Da Man.
Obama is a legend in his own mind.
Obama is stupid enough to believe he has more information and a better handle on what happened when he was out of town then the people that were in the whitehouse had access to.
Everytime a Cheney opens its mouth, an angel loses its wings.
Just think of Cheney and Rove and Powell all in the same bar fight . . . Cheney hiding in the walk-in refrigerator . . . Rove disguising himself as a waitress . . . and Powell knocking out punks two at a time while Obama runs the table in the pool room. As for Rush, he’s out in the parking lot with Newt cruising for dirty leg.
Uh-oh, time to kick out another one . . . the guy who over the weekend said this crap:
“I think, on balance, that (closing Gitmo and ending torture) help us . . . In fact, I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention . . . we put out guidance very early on to make sure that our soldiers, in fact, knew that we needed to stay within those guidelines . . . With respect to Guantanamo, I think that the closure in a responsible manner . . . I think, sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees.”
Some a-hole named Petraeus – who needs him anyway? More Dick! More Dick! More Dick! (That sounds like a Hula Popper.)
Guriglia’s description of this situation is perfectly true.
I’d add something though – you lose an election, you win an election, this is part of the misery that is called politics.
However, last year’s election loss came from a phenomenal, perfect storm & cultural implosion and not from some particular merits of the Democrat Party or of its membership (idea so dear to media).
As far as the current tug of war over the R. Party’s direction & future we’re assisting at, is that after the 2008 election closed, the media kept continuing the liberals’ electoral agenda at full bore, trying to discourage the conservative/ republican electorate, and change/alter the philosophical underpinning of their political views, effort which continues in any possible way or manner on TV or printed press on the lines:
* see, you Reps, won’t be back until you won’t be more inclusive;
* see, you are so radical, people fear radicals, they want moderates like us;
* who would support you if you take your marching orders from types like Limbaugh;
* align with history, guys, gay marriage is here, and will be forever, so quit oposing it, this will make popular;
* can’t you see how fanatic Christians, evangelicals, catholics and mormons, hurt your prospects?
* try to be like America, diverse, open-minded, non-judgmental and multicultural, include, include, include;
* don’t resist dba Obama, he’s doing fine, and everything he’s doing is in America’s best interests;
* you are so divisive, people don’t want division, want the commoness which we are good at providing;
* stop trying to revive cultural wars of other times; there simply are no causes that can inflame people nowdays;
* you’re becoming an irrelevant minority; the only way to reverse this situation is to become an Obama follower;
* maintain your views, but change them somehow (!?), try to be like us, and you will at a certain point, win, etc. etc. etc.
The only answer to this pshychological warfare is to circle the wagons, praise the lord and pass the ammonition; this situation will pass, the liberals’ agenda will fail (there are already many signs of alarm amongst them about having been left at the helm knowing nothing about compass, maps, trade winds and so on), Obama’s luster is going away, and so on -
The objective reality is rapidly coming back, both as home situation and foreign affairs, despite liberals’ effort to maintain this nation corraled in a perpetual teleprompter/ Truman Show – and this makes the republicans/conservative have a nice hand in the next political cycles.
Cheney, Limbaugh and Rove are right and Powell’s ratiocinating and justifications are a sorry act – and Sotomayor’s nomination for SCOTUS (a minimally, if at all, qualified candidate for the job) shows how the Democrats are self-destructing by trying to please their, alas! many constituencies -
Unlike most of you people, I like Dick Cheney. I always thought of him as the backbone of the Bush administration. His speech on security put him way above Obama.I sincerely hope he keeps the presure on Obama.
RE #3/JHM dba ‘Shrinkwrap”: [...] “packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric” [...]
I’m totally smashed – since the good old days of the Cold War when I used to listen on a short-wave Grundig device Radio Tirana and Radio Bejing ranting about the “crones from Moscow” and the “murderers from Washington” etc., I never heard such an impressive rant like Shrinkwrap’s. My!
I think PJM should launch a contest of comments/ interpretations for Shrinkwrap’s momentous piece – hoot or howl, it sure deserves some recognition.
Sheesh–and I guess that makes Obama the street hustler servicing gangsters and slumlords in the alley for $5?
On a more serious note, these actions that Cheney is taking right now might actually be the only things worth thanking him for. I guess that’s the upside of being the least popular guy at the dance, you can just walk up and take the popular kids down a peg or two just by forcing them to engage you. That said, we can’t fail to remember that we really have the Bush/Cheney admin’s failure to contain spending for the rhetorical position that the dems are allowed to take right now. When the new republican party emerges, Im hoping that fiscal conservatism in terms of spending is actually an agenda item–but Im not optimistic.
To Sheesh: Are you talking about the Colin Powell that talked Bush 41 into stopping the first Iraq war before it was a victory. Bush 43 had to go back for a second shot. I don’t think that’s the kind of guy I want on my side.
Glad Cheney’s on board with most of us.
Great article. Clear, to the point, calling it like it is. Thanks.
Your point:
“Curiously enough, only some sincere liberals are openly dismayed. Most others are silent about these developments, proving their hatred of Cheney and loyalty to Obama outweigh their devotion to their principles.”
Devotion to principles…interesting concept. Does anyone really expect to see any of that in this administration?
Come to think of it, what would describe the “principles” underlying what we’ve seen so far from the O-team?
It’s ALL NEGATIVES!
DISmantling what’s been done before, DISarming our military and national security, DEconstructing capitalism and our economic structure, DEspiriting the country with gloom and doom and punishment for our “sins”, putting DOWN and BACKpedaliing and apologizing for everything America has ever done here and overseas; RESTRICTING and LIMITING free trade, entrepreneurship, and economic initiative; “CAPPING” and TAXING out the wazoo, including for so called “evil emissions” by increasing COSTS and RESTRICTIONS on vehicles and nonsensical CO2 emissions; LIMITING fossil fuel exploration and production; etc. etc. It goes on–ANTI-life programs, ANTI-wealth programs and rhetoric, never mind his continual drone of downright ANTI-liberty and ANTI-American rhetoric! He’s the UNraveller, the Punisher-with nothing good to put in its place. What empty, self-righteous, self-serving hypocrisy.
We know him for what he’s AGAINST. What’s he for? “Social justice?” That’s a frikking Marxist cover term for tear it down and take over!
And he says “yes we can”? Can what? Hope and change? What a crock of stinking nothing–and that’s his job. Keep the poisonous gas of deceit pumping while they dismantle our country.
They say there’s three ways to have the tallest building in town. You can build it, tear down all the others that are higher, or move to another town.
Take option 3 Barry. Leave us alone. Quit tearing down anything you think is bigger than wonderful yOu. Go back to school–in another country–until you learn some respect and appreciation for this one. You’re an arrogant out of touch little punk and you’re wrecking our home and we (true to our founding principles Americans) don’t want you, or your type.
You said Obummer=theatre. Exactly. And it’s a very bad, insidious play.
I’m sorry, what are we talking about again? Oh, that’s right, hypocrisy . . .
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/26/former-interrogator-rebuk_n_207483.html
#29 misanthropicus:
Very well put. A nice round-up describing exactly what is going on.
The Democrats are aware of what a fluke ’08 was, and how soon the citizenry will take away their car keys, that’s why they’re joyriding as fast as they can.
The signs of how ephemeral their day in the sun is going to be are all around us…Prop 8, the defeat of the tax propositions in California, the widespread “buyer’s remorse” among the people who supported the Alleged Hawaiian,the tragicomic farce that is Nancy Pelosi and the CIA, and the ongoing rehabilitation of Dick Cheney’s reputation.
The only way that they can hang on to power is if they can somehow befuddle the GOP leadership into repudiating and disassociating itself from it’s base. Their allies in the media, old and new, are striving mightily to make this happen.
Any GOP politician who takes counsel from his enemies is going to be defeated.
If the Democrats had their way, they’d have the GOP run John McCain forever.
Even the starry eyed Obama fans have nothing of substance to say because they know Cheney is right. Obama told them what they wanted to hear then proceeded to keep the Bush policies. Sheesh, I hope the cap and trade hits you where it counts. Maybe then you can type something that makes sense.
Cheney is the one who knew when to be discreet as an official, and knows when to talk, as a citizen. BHO has systematically hidden things of public interest, like his academic record, and uses the bully pulpit to brag incessantly about his superior judgment and morality.
Interesting contrast. Before the election, there is room for a popularity contest. After the election, deeds matter.
Truthfully…I don’t think Cheney or Powell are doing the republican party or the cause of conservatism any favors right now–and Im not sure they ever really did, They were simply embraced because they were popular and won things.
…the insane nature of our national debate regarding detainee policy…thoughtless pledge to release photos depicting prisoner abuse from six years ago, an action that would have almost certainly and immediately resulted in more dead American soldiers.
Insane is a good word for this so called debate, from the getgo. Here is an interesting article on the “source” of Obama’s repeated claim that “Guantanamo” increases terrorist recruitment. (whereas we know how Islamists might use pictures, e.g. Danish cartoons)
The anonymous accuser of Guantanamo
Obama’s subtle encouragement of and flirtation with show trials for his predecessors which is truly the unprecedented and egregious act.
All around disgusting, Obama’s yielding to pressure placed on from his Leftist base. Also, a gigantic distraction from the nation’s business.
Listening to Dick Cheney speak last week was like a badly needed breath of fresh air.
I don’t blame President Obama for his inept handling of National Security to date. Dishonor and support for Tyrants is in the very DNA of a Democrat.
In the early days of the Republic, the Democrats, then known variously as the anti-Federalists or Republicans, attacked President Adams for his strong response to Revolutionary France’s depredations on American shipping. After the French insults to American in what is known as the XYZ Affair, Adams chose Peace through Strength while the Democrats, led by Thomas Jefferson, chose dishonor. The Federalist naval build up resorted in a settling of the dispute in America’s favor and peace reigned a little longer.
Ten years later Jefferson was President and once again a foreign power preyed on Americans at sea. Once again Jefferson chose dishonor and got war to boot. There is lesson for our little Obamista trolls who show up with their ridicule. Jefferson and company heaped as much abuse on John Adams as our modern dishonorable citizens heaped on President Bush. Both Adams and Bush made the hard choices necessary to secure the nation from foreign enemies while their Democratic opponents sought to undermine their Commander-in-Chief in the support of America’s enemies.
Dick Cheney: butt-kicking with gravitas.
Note to the RNC: stay away from him.
I just hate it when the “leaders” notice something that’s working or someone who is effective–something or someone they had overlooked or discredited…..and then…
when they notice (think Tea Parties) then they suddenly get very interested and begin to edge in to the picture.
Do NOT let this happen with Mr. Cheney. Please.
Misanth 28–well put.
Prof 39: Rt, now deeds matter. Question is when do they start keeping score? So far it’s been all gimme’s, muligans, atta boy’s and “keep tryin’s”.
That’s the nice thing about this Gitmo standoff with Cheney is there’s consequences to O’s decisions–he can’t say it’s Bush’s fault. In fact, it’s indicating the exact opposite–BIG subliminal message for the judges–this one sticks!
Like when snow finally starts to stick and it quickly builds, it could be a sign we’re gonna be able to get some traction soon on his taking perceived responsibility for other actions as well, just by the nature of it.
Let’s hope so. This “wonderboy gets out of jail free” credit card account was overspent before he was even elected.
Sheesh–I hate to say it, but that guy is probably not really who he says he is. He clearly has access to some knowledge of this but it seems like this guy might just be another case of an opportunist (see Steven Glass/Baghdad Diarist) simply following the formula of telling people that which makes them feel good…like the Tent Revival Con Man, the Obamessiah.
And while his constant presence on television might be hurting the Republican Party politically, Cheney’s substantive criticism of Obama is doing the country an immense service.
HURTING? What editorial buffoonery. Cheney is finally, at long last, articulating clear positions regarding directions the country should consider. The Republican party ran out of gas on that front years ago, and is quivering in fear lest the Democrats outbid it in bribing constituencies – which of course the Democrats will.
Until the Republicans figure out some principles they might support and rally around, they should remain in the wilderness. Such principles aren’t so hard to come by, and by contrast with the current authoritarian redistributionist regime would be preferable to the disastrous course the Chicago gang has taken. Economic liberty, strong national security, ridicule of political correctness, rule of law over Presidential diktat, for starters. You try it, you like it.
Cheney is a voice in the wilderness, and I’m only surprised that so many learned pundits are surprised that people respond well to his straightforward delivery of ideas. I hope it starts a trend.
Post #3 “Shrinkydink”
I never read so much jibberish in my life.
I have a habit of preparing posts that go on and on but mercifully I delete them before posting. Do us all a favor and delete such tripe before posting.
47 Harry–I’ll bet shrinky has tenure at one of our Incubators for the Insane.
Good call, Nicholas. It has bothered me since last summer that Obama can be rumbled so easily… or as you wrote, “easy to get inside Obama’s head.”
And it has to be easy for the Russians and the terror mullahs in Oran to see this same weakness. Bad situation.
I’v been waiting for Chaney to wake up. This IS what the GOP needed. Welcome back Mr. V.P. Go kick some a&&.
I humbly posit that we’ve done enough reflecting and cheering on the Cheney/Obama debate. All I want to focus on now is ACTION. Release the memos, Obama. You promised transparency. You say “the record is clear” that Gitmo has created more terrorists than it ever detained. Your supporters enthusiastically express their faith that Cheney is bluffing, that the memos will actually DISprove his claims. You yourself have offered no reason for your refusal to declassify them.
So let’s see them. SHOW US THE MEMOS.
Chaney = Cheney. Ooops. Got too excited about the so-called republicans I’ve read not backing up the only one speaking out.
Shrinkwrap
you made such an ad hominem rant that whatever you were trying to say was lost in your gibberish. Try again in English. Or else I will go on thinking your wrap is unshrunk and your shrink is unwrapped. Think before rant. Translate into intelligent-speak. If you are going to impress people on a conservative blog,you have to come into the arena of ideas. Leftist placard and slogan thinking won’t cut it.
Miama Man
I agree with you about Cheney not hurting the Republican party. You can’t hurt a corpse.
The hate people have for Cheney in this country and around the world is ridiculous. I can’t honestly think of a single thing he’s done or said that would warrant a negative opinion of him. He’s just not very warm and likable but so what? I don’t vote for people based on superficial nonsense but on their substance and opinions. There’s been lots of great and influential leaders in our history who weren’t the warmest people in the world. But they knew what was right and they got the job done and we should all be thankful for it. Like the military commanders in WWII that decided to nuke Japan and bomb their cities into submission. Nice? No. Necessary? Yes. Cheney is the same way. He does and says things that are often ugly and cold but guess what. We need people like that in order to take care of the cold and dirty work. And if that means torturing islamist jihadists who want to kill millions of Americans then so be it. National security and war isn’t a game.
RE: #44/D-Wah & #37/Bilgeman, updating #28 misanthropicus’ list of techniques used by liberals to neutralize the republicans & conservatives:
* Divide et Impera/ Sotomayor’s nomination – time and again, liberals show that they simply have no concern for America’s interests, by appointing a professionally unqualified figure in a top civil servant position in order to satisfy that or that segment of the crumbling pizza we call American nation.
Bellow is a good illustration of this coming from a HuffPo fawning headline & article:
————————*——————-
“The Politics of Sotomayor/Dylan Loewe, 05.26.2009
As the Republican leadership gears up for the confirmation, they may be walking squarely into another political trap, carefully designed by the president. [...]”
——— *
Be like us – cynical, grossly manipulative…
“It’s continuity — and more significantly, it’s theater.”
It’s always difficult to completely separate politics from theater. I suppose the prevailing belief is that elected Presidents have already been vetted through the election process and in their prior public endeavors, and that the term ‘theatrical’ therefore applies to delivery as opposed to substance.
Intentional or not, Obama has made delivery much more important than the substance of his policies and speeches. How would he be perceived if one day, he delivers a poor speech without the soaring rhetoric, and without the calm demeanor? Would that be a good day for Obama, even if the underlying substance was good and sound?
The MSM has argued that Obama understands nuance and tone, and that he is using these as tools of persuasion. But the reality is that when Obama takes a position, he undermines the opposition to reinforce his position. For example, he could have taken a nuanced position on Gitmo explaining its benefits and problems. However, he chose to portray Gitmo in purely polarizing terms, a conflict between justice and injustice. He tried to use his ‘dueling’ speech as a vehicle to destroy the opposition, rather than debate it. (I know I was alienated by the content of his speech.)
The US can suffer greatly from a President who likes to talk convincingly about policies, despite questions about substance. The world will force Obama to answer the question: Can failures be reconciled with words?
Now that Gen Petraeus has weighed in on the side of clsoing Gitmo and agaisnt the use of torture, I guess the morons here will start calling him a marxist
President Obama and Dick Cheney conspired on Thursday to propagate a myth. The myth is that we lived through an eight-year period of Bush-Cheney anti-terror policy and now we have entered a very different period called the Obama-Biden anti-terror policy. As both Obama and Cheney understand, this is a completely bogus distortion of history.
The reality is that after Sept. 11, we entered a two- or three-year period of what you might call Bush-Cheney policy. The country was blindsided. Intelligence officials knew next to nothing about the threats arrayed against them. The Bush administration tried just about everything to discover and prevent threats. The Bush people believed they were operating within the law but they did things most of us now find morally offensive and counterproductive.
The Bush-Cheney period lasted maybe three years. For Dick Cheney those might be the golden years. For Democrats, it is surely the period they want to forever hang around the necks of the Republican Party. But that period ended long ago.
By 2005, what you might call the Bush-Rice-Hadley era had begun. Gradually, in fits and starts, a series of Bush administration officials — including Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Jack Goldsmith and John Bellinger — tried to rein in the excesses of the Bush-Cheney period. They didn’t win every fight, and they were prodded by court decisions and public outrage, but the gradual evolution of policy was clear.
From 2003 onward, people like Bellinger and Goldsmith were fighting against legal judgments that allowed enhanced interrogation techniques. By 2006, Rice and Hadley brought Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in from a secret foreign prison to regularize detainee procedures. In 2007, Rice refused to support an executive order reviving the interrogation program. Throughout the second Bush term, officials were trying to close Guantánamo, pleading with foreign governments to take some prisoners, begging senators to allow the transfer of prisoners onto American soil. (It didn’t occur to them that they could announce the closure of Gitmo first, then figure out what to do with prisoners.)
Cheney and Obama might pretend otherwise, but it wasn’t the Obama administration that halted the practice of waterboarding. It was a succession of C.I.A. directors starting in March 2003, even before a devastating report by the C.I.A. inspector general in 2004.
When Cheney lambastes the change in security policy, he’s not really attacking the Obama administration. He’s attacking the Bush administration. In his speech on Thursday, he repeated in public a lot of the same arguments he had been making within the Bush White House as the policy decisions went more and more the other way.
The inauguration of Barack Obama has simply not marked a dramatic shift in the substance of American anti-terror policy. It has marked a shift in the public credibility of that policy.
In the first place, it is absurd to say this administration doesn’t take terrorism seriously. Obama has embraced the Afghan surge, a strategy that was brewing at the end of the Bush years. He has stepped up drone activity in Pakistan. He has promoted aggressive counterinsurgency fighters and racked up domestic anti-terror accomplishments.
As for the treatment of terror suspects, Jack Goldsmith has a definitive piece called “The Cheney Fallacy” online at The New Republic. He lists a broad range of policies — Guantánamo, habeas corpus, military commissions, rendition, interrogation and so on. He shows how, in most cases, the Obama policy represents a continuation of or a gradual evolution from the final Bush policy.
What Obama gets, and what President Bush never got, is that other people’s opinions matter. Goldsmith puts it well: “The main difference between the Obama and Bush administrations concerns not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging. The Bush administration shot itself in the foot time and time again, to the detriment of the legitimacy and efficacy of its policies, by indifference to process and presentation. The Obama administration, by contrast, is intensely focused on these issues.”
Obama has taken many of the same policies Bush ended up with, and he has made them credible to the country and the world. In his speech, Obama explained his decisions in a subtle and coherent way. He admitted that some problems are tough and allow no easy solution. He treated Americans as adults, and will have won their respect.
Do I wish he had been more gracious with and honest about the Bush administration officials whose policies he is benefiting from? Yes. But the bottom line is that Obama has taken a series of moderate and time-tested policy compromises. He has preserved and reformed them intelligently. He has fit them into a persuasive framework. By doing that, he has not made us less safe. He has made us more secure. — DAVID BROOKS
————–
Learn to use your brains. Quit repeating stupid stuff. If not, YOU rather than terrorists will stop the heart of America.
“Learn to use your brains. Quit repeating stupid stuff”
..that was your statement AFTER quoting david brooks?
here’s a pearl of wisdom…”Obama has taken many of the same policies Bush ended up with, and he has made them credible to the country and the world. In his speech, Obama explained his decisions in a subtle and coherent way.”
[translated from davidian to english]“obama trashed bush endlessly to get elected and then….simply continued his policies while tweaking the langauge and that’s..uh…. cool because america and the most of the world is largely comprised of idiots”
david brooks is a posterboy RINO.
SHEESH
#25,26,27
SIR, YOUR POSTS ARE UTTERLY SENSELESS, AND TOTALLY WITHOUT MERIT.
S.M.
#59 Reality Education:
“What Obama gets, and what President Bush never got, is that other people’s opinions matter. Goldsmith puts it well: “The main difference between the Obama and Bush administrations concerns not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging. The Bush administration shot itself in the foot time and time again, to the detriment of the legitimacy and efficacy of its policies, by indifference to process and presentation. The Obama administration, by contrast, is intensely focused on these issues.””
Yeah, we got that when the article was posted here earlier this week. Obama’s “sales pitch” is better than Bush’s.
There’s one benefit and two problems with that.
The benefit is that he IS largely doing the exact same things that Bush was doing, and which manifestly gave us the desired result.
The problems are that:
1) How long can he keep suckering the rubes into believing that they have not bought the same old used car with a blue, rather than a red paint job?
Once they wake up to the fact, (and the Far Lefties are well aware of this already), there’s going to be a hell of a backlash.
and
2) When that backlash comes,Obama might find that he is then trapped within the nets of his own rhetoric, and then must either end policies that have,(at the least), served adequately, or more ominously, fail to enact new and more stringent policies that may be needed.
“Quit repeating stupid stuff. If not, YOU rather than terrorists will stop the heart of America.”
Stop looking backwards at eight years of Bush, and worry instead about the remaining 3.5 years of Obama.
The “packaging” he is so concerned with today might very well prove to be the very thing that leads to be our undoing tomorrow.
We’ve been here before, chum.
Throughout the mid and late 90′s, the FBI and the US Attorneys were off chasing “militias” that Bill Clinton had strongly insinuated were “domestic terrorists”, and this may very well be why no-one who should have in Federal Law Enforcement gave a damn when the reports filtered in from Arizona and Minnesota about the activities at the flight schools of the 9/11 terrorists.
Seems like Obama is easily distracted by private citizens…Rush, Cheney, etc.
President Bush and VP Cheney ended waterboarding in 2003. It was used 3 times and produced information vital for the security of our country.
I can’t wait to read Bush’s book. It will outsell all of Obama’s ghostwritten books combined.
As long as there is any substance, the Democraps have something to tear down. They have not yet given anything of substance of their own that can be confronted. Thank God I’m not stuck in the perennial puberty they are. It’s like dealing with adult children that don’t want to move out and live on their own. Accomplished parasites!
Ohhhhh Shrinky…..are you OK? Do you need some Xanax? You need to calm yourself Shrinky babe before you pop a vessel. I read your blog twice…even passed it on to others. So far no one I know actually comprehends your jibberish in what the heck are you trying to say. “There is no need to fall off the horse on the other side, though: militant extremism bein’ what it is, I dare say no apprentice Party dupatrix or dupator should start announcin’ in public that P & A & S & R are four ancient and noble arts that she has every intention of becomin’ proficient in herself. It’s perfectly true, of course, yet not all perfect truths are usefully flaunted in the Naked Public Square™, and especially not flaunted to the advantage of the neocomradely community”. ??? So, just because others in the past have done what Obama is doing as far as “packaging”…..it is all accpetable in your mind? Personal attacks on Mr. Guariglia obvioulsy haven’t won over the hearts of PJ readers (read above). I have read almost every article on PJ media and love reading the comments almost as much as the articles themselves. I especially enjoy it when someone like you gets so angry for seeing the truth exposed that they lash out with personal insults. Just shows me who has the true intelligence and moral clarity. “when IT grows up?” Doesn’t it hurt to realize the truth? Laughable! Do you blog for Huff Po? Move On?
Reality:
Here is a little reality for you. President Obama is held in contempt by almost every world leader from Kim Jong Il to Benjamin Netanahyu to Nickolas Sarkozy. His teleprompter eloquence only convinces obamtrons like you and suck up conservative columnists like David Brooks.
The Bush people believed they were operating within the law but they did things most of us now find morally offensive and counterproductive.
Nonsense. Only soft headed idiots believe that lawful procedures should not be used to protect the country. Polls indicate that even now after all years of this lying, vicious anti-Bush propaganda the majority favors waterboarding top level terrorists.
The Bush-Cheney period lasted maybe three years. For Dick Cheney those might be the golden years. For Democrats, it is surely the period they want to forever hang around the necks of the Republican Party. But that period ended long ago.
It ended because they had already cultivated what intelligence was to be had.
By 2005, what you might call the Bush-Rice-Hadley era had begun. Gradually, in fits and starts, a series of Bush administration officials — including Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Jack Goldsmith and John Bellinger — tried to rein in the excesses of the Bush-Cheney period. They didn’t win every fight, and they were prodded by court decisions and public outrage, but the gradual evolution of policy was clear.
Public outrage created by media lies and hysteria. I had the impression they were waterboarding everybody but then I learned last year they waterboarded only the top 3 al Qaeda leaders in their possession.
Throughout the second Bush term, officials were trying to close Guantánamo, pleading with foreign governments to take some prisoners, begging senators to allow the transfer of prisoners onto American soil. (It didn’t occur to them that they could announce the closure of Gitmo first, then figure out what to do with prisoners.)
Sure, announce the closing with no clue what you are going to do with the prisoners. Only an idiot, more interested in making fleeting partisan political points than solving the problem, would do that.
Cheney and Obama might pretend otherwise, but it wasn’t the Obama administration that halted the practice of waterboarding. It was a succession of C.I.A. directors starting in March 2003, even before a devastating report by the C.I.A. inspector general in 2004.
How did Cheney pretend otherwise? The practice ended because it was no longer necessary. What Cheney objected to, and what Brooks obviously supports, is the dishonest politicization of the issue by the very people who had covertly approved of it.
When Cheney lambastes the change in security policy, he’s not really attacking the Obama administration. He’s attacking the Bush administration. In his speech on Thursday, he repeated in public a lot of the same arguments he had been making within the Bush White House as the policy decisions went more and more the other way.
Cheney is attacking the putrid dishonesty of the Obama administration, which with the assistance of its handmaidens in the media like Brooks, has attacked the very Bush policies and practices it now quietly adopts.
The inauguration of Barack Obama has simply not marked a dramatic shift in the substance of American anti-terror policy. It has marked a shift in the public credibility of that policy.
Not true, but even if it were, what a damning indictment of the professionalism of Mr. Brooks and his colleagues.
In the first place, it is absurd to say this
administration doesn’t take terrorism seriously. Obama has embraced the Afghan surge, a strategy that was brewing at the end of the Bush years. He has stepped up drone activity in Pakistan. He has promoted aggressive counterinsurgency fighters and racked up domestic anti-terror accomplishments.
They could hardly back off these policies without setting the table. There would be a firestorm Racked up domestic anti-terror accomplishments. What on earth is Brooks talking about?
As for the treatment of terror suspects, Jack Goldsmith has a definitive piece called “The Cheney Fallacy” online at The New Republic. He lists a broad range of policies — Guantánamo, habeas corpus, military commissions, rendition, interrogation and so on. He shows how, in most cases, the Obama policy represents a continuation of or a gradual evolution from the final Bush policy.
What Obama gets, and what President Bush never got, is that other people’s opinions matter. Goldsmith puts it well: “The main difference between the Obama and Bush administrations concerns not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging. The Bush administration shot itself in the foot time and time again, to the detriment of the legitimacy and efficacy of its policies, by indifference to process and presentation. The Obama administration, by contrast, is intensely focused on these issues.”
What Obama gets and what Bush never got is a fair press. (Actually Obama’s press isn’t fair, it’s in the tank). What I get is how much easier it is to govern when the media covers for you and carries your water. Please stop insulting our intelligence. Policies that the media ranted and railed against when Bush was in charge are now praised as necessary or even enlightened now that your boy is in charge.
Obama has taken many of the same policies Bush ended up with, and he has made them credible to the country and the world. In his speech, Obama explained his decisions in a subtle and coherent way. He admitted that some problems are tough and allow no easy solution. He treated Americans as adults, and will have won their respect.
The same policies for which Brooks and company viciously criticized Bush are now credible. No kidding. Obama has explained these policies in a way even Brooks can understand. Irony has no place in this man’s thinking.
Do I wish he had been more gracious with and honest about the Bush administration officials whose policies he is benefiting from? Yes. But the bottom line is that Obama has taken a series of moderate and time-tested policy compromises. He has preserved and reformed them intelligently. He has fit them into a persuasive framework. By doing that, he has not made us less safe. He has made us more secure. — DAVID BROOKS
More gracious? How about no graciousness at all? How about pathetic? And I would apply that to both Obama and Brooks. The bottom line is that when Obama follows the same policies as Bush he receives praise from the same self-indulgent partisan incompetents who criticized Bush incessantly. He’s made people like Brooks more secure alright. More secure in their hopeless lack of self awareness,
————–
Learn to use your brains. Quit repeating stupid stuff. If not, YOU rather than terrorists will stop the heart of America.
———
Apply this to yourself. Fool.
Robert–loved it! Rock on! Truth is fun! (Notice how they’re always on a bummer. Always.)
27, Sheesh: We love the military, the CIA etc. But we don’t mindlessly defer to them when they say close Gitmo, “we can handle it,” “not to worry.”. Remember all the jets in the air on 9-11 that could have stopped United Flight 93 from hitting the White House? The air buzzing with interceptors when Pearl Harbor was being bombed? The 9-11 hijackers nabbed by the omnipotent CIA? Or the Twin Towers bombers that were nabbed by the FBI in 1992? Me neither. Civilias get to decide how we are protected. Right?
69 Blackwell . . . I’m not arguing about who defers to whom. I’m pointing out the wholesale appropriation of the military and its personalities by the right when it serves their political purpose only to throw those same “heroes” off the train as soon as they stray from the way-too straight and narrow. We saw this most recently with Colin Powell (or as one here put it, Colon Bowel). I merely pointed out the opportunity for the right to remain consistently inconsistent in its commitment to loyalty.
Cheney needs to do the world a favor and f*** off and die.
#58 The Shadow
“Now that Gen. Petraeus has weighed in on the side of closing Gitmo and against the use of torture, I guess the morons here will start calling him a marxist.”
You’re here. Thanks for pointing out that you’re a moron. And what a nice touch. You’re spelling the General’s name correctly now. You know, without the capital B.
It has been a hard Tuesday, and has felt like a Monday all day long, but I cannot go off to dream land without cheering for Dick Cheney. He deserves our respect, and he has it here with us.
I love you Dick Cheney and not in some weird kind of way, but in a way that has my respect and love for what you are doing for our country. Now that I have explained my love, I want to say THANK YOU.
I use the word love, because by all that is good and true you are a breath of fresh air when we catch you on the news.
Thank You Dick Cheney, Thank You and God Bless you and your daughter Liz.
You deserve a whole lot of respect.
God Bless Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz and sweet dreams knowing you are on our side.
Obama better pray that he doesn’t have to go to to toe with Dick Cheney in a debate. For that matter, he better hope he doesn’t have to debate Liz Cheney.
It would be an unfair fight. Cheney (fill in your family member) can think on their feet … Obama? Not so much.
It would be more bloody than when Dick Cheney dismembered John Edwards in the Vice-Presidential debate back in 2004.
JHM dba ”Shrinkwrap” – Whoa. Your rant.. whoa.
Sheesh – Your ‘ace in the hole’ so to speak is a HuffPo article? hahahaha
DavidS – Love your, ‘Wait and see’ adage. You can’t admit, accept the lucidity of this article (well written BTW).
The blind, unabashed loyalty to this empty suit is astonishing and frankly quite sad..
i say look at their track record. looney whatever they are types with conspiracy files in their cupboards for meals to ingest for strengthening their angry viewpoints are always vilifying gwb and dick cheney. look they are not perfect men but i can see from an honest examination of the track record by many witnesses that there is reason to conclude that they did serve and protect which is what is to be expected as the basics of the position they signed on for. it is not a perfect world and they did the job. now mr. cheney is going the extra mile which only reinforces the reality of his character and motives.
now to my belief that the present admin. with the powers gathered and with the potential for the abuse of those powers, we are now going rapidly down a path or track where fascism will become a reality and this against a once free people. we have become compromised, and corrupted.
I know Cheney rates about an “11″ on liberals’ disgust-o-meter. I used to wonder why they go into screaming fits whenver he pops up on the news, but now I know the source of the power he has. In many respects he is the antithesis of what many modern democrats seek out in a political leader. He is taciturn; definitely NOT cuddly and speaks in a dispassionately grim voice usually reserved for movie roles calling for a “heartless and aloof” CEO of some mega-corporation.
He doesn’t speak in platitudes, he doesn’t mince words or engage in puffery or flattery. He doesn’t tell you what you want to hear. He is the guy who fired you when you failed to live up to the responsibilities of your last job. He’s the well-to-do but distant uncle who wouldn’t loan you any money for your brilliant new business idea. He seems like a mix of Judge Wapner and Auric Goldfinger (“No Mr. Bond, I expect your to die!”).
For those reasons alone he’s just the kind of person you want thinking about national security policy.
GITMO SPEECH REVEALS MUCH ABOUT OBAMA
Most all of it is not good.
http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-his-gitmo-speech-reveals-about.html
75. paul_unalaska . . . “Sheesh – Your ‘ace in the hole’ so to speak is a HuffPo article? hahahaha”
Do your best to refute it. Go ahead, we’ll wait . . .
I wish to refute it sheesh, but the facts, success of implementing the enhanced techniques released by the Obama administration have been blacked/ blotted out.
Ahhh, the, ‘most transparent administration in history’ is truly doing just that.
Glad to see the interrogator doing the t.v. circuit, book deal, et al. Yep, he has his ‘ethics’ and ‘America’s interest’ at heart in all of this.
It’s taken this guy 30 + years to ‘Speak up’? Riiiight.
sheesh, I hope you’ll be on his case now he’s earning coin in the capitalist-type manner..
Well, of course Gen’l Petraeus supports Gitmo’s closing — his Chain of Command (for libs, that’s TOTUS Obama and SecDef Gates) supports it. Duh.
And, no, we don’t turn on our commanders/troops like the Frag-the-Officers crowd.
Re: getting up all inside Obama’s head — VP Cheney is either a good lawyer (knows the answer to the question he’s asking) or a good poker player (knows the cards his opponent holds) or both. He’s playing TOTUS like a banjo.
80. paul_unalaska . . . You can’t refute it. That’s fine.
Refute what? A G man’s words?
It’s funny. Upon realizing the military lifestyle wasn’t for them, many of my friends discovered the military wasn’t for them. They’d gotten out upon fulfilling their required enlistment. I too did this, applying the G.I. Bill to my studies in the process.
I’d also befriended people in the military who’d chastised the military. Though kept mum and some may retire after 20 or so years of service. I’m sure they’ll really let it fly upon their retirement.
sheesh, why didn’t this person raise a fuss years and years ago? I’m thinking he wanted to get to retirement and then let fly the ‘inhumanity’.
If these techniques, methods disturbed his psyche, he should’ve spoken with his supervisor, Chain of Command and going about matters in an upfront fashion. Instead this person was on the Government dole for 3 + decades, is now collecting retirement and is NOW badmouthing the same program he performed under? Yeah, what a guy..
This method can be applied to the professional baseball player who’d played for the Oakland A’s, used steroids during his career and is now badmouthing the drug on a radio program he D.J.’s. I take it he’s a ‘hero’ too?
Again sheesh, I can’t ‘refute’ a subject when the facts are highlighted out or not disclosed in its entirety. For the conclusion may be devoid of certainty due to information being fragmented.
Cheney had a puppet, Bush. All of his actions were done in secrecy. Now he’s scared to death that this admin will reveal his doings. So he starts a smear campaign, as he learned from Rove.
He’s living Hell on Earth and feels powerless. The Repugs are not helping either. You reap what you sow . . .
The GITMO Dog and Pony Show: A Day in Obamaland
This is an incomplete and un-edited transcript of a conversation recorded in the Oval Office. It cannot be termed an official transcript since the recording device was somehow secreted under the carpet in the wee hours of January 19th, 2009 by a person who shall remain unidentified. As can best be determined, the participants were President Obama, (BHO), Attorney General Eric Holder, (EH), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, (NP), and DHS Secretary, Janet Napolitano, (JN). A staff member suggested it be called, “A Day in Obamaland.” We report, you decide.
BHO: So, what do we do now, bro?
EH: I dunno, man. I told ya this was gonna cause problems. We could send them out to Murtha’s district or maybe San Quentin, Sing Sing? I just dunno. If . . .
NP: I want to say again, I was never told about that waterboarding and I refuse to discuss it any further.
BHO: Umm, Madame Speaker, that’s old news and we weren’t talking about waterboarding, anyway.
NP: Oh, we weren’t? I thought since the topic was that despicable place, Guantanamera, that . .
EH: Nancy, it’s Guantanamo, but can we just get on with this?
NP: Oh, well, if that’s how I’m to be treated, I won’t say another word!
BHO/EH/JN (in unison): Good!
JN: Mr. President, I simply don’t understand the problem. We’re only talking about people the Bushies said were bad guys but none of them have ever been convicted in a court of law. For all we know, they could be fine upstanding citizens of their various countries. Legally, we have no right to be holding them at all . . .
EH: I handle legalities, remember, Jan?
JN: Now there’s no need to be snotty, Mister Attorney General! I just thought I could interject my two cents and besides, those Right-to-Lifers and those returning vets pose a much greater threat than some alleged terrorists. I’ll have you know, those vets know quite a good bit about guns and some have actually shot and killed people.
BHO: It’s called a war, Madame Secretary.
JN: I know, but still . . .
(Knock on the Oval Office door; unknown female voice is heard.)
Unknown: I’m very sorry to interrupt, Mr. President, but Vice President Biden is still waiting. He’s been here all morning. He asked if he could come in.
BHO: Tell him, umm, ah, tell him I’m trying to fix my teleprompter.
Unknown: Sir?
BHO: He’ll get the point.
Unknown: Yes, sir, I’ll tell him.
(Muffled voice, apparently saying “I’ll be good,” then sound of door closing, gently)
BHO: Ok, people, time’s a wastin’. And, Eric, we all know Murtha shoots his mouth off and if we dumped terrorists, (sorry, Janet, suspected terrorists), on his doorstep, he’ll scream bloody murder that his district is being dumped on. He’s gonna have a hard enough time fooling those people again and getting re-elected.
EH: Good point, Barry, oops, Mr. President. And we prefer to call them “detainees.” Did you hear Mueller said it would be risky if we shipped, er, relocated any of them stateside? . . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)
“President Obama released the memos that described the methods of interrogation used against certain al-Qaeda detainees, but simultaneously blacked out the pages that described the efficiency of those interrogation techniques. Cheney, having read the blacked-out pages while in power, swears that these memos prove coercive interrogation prevented future terrorist attacks (in Los Angeles, amongst other places) and saved thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — of American lives.”
Is the author saying here that “the end justifies the means?” If so, it is the one statement in this article that discredits it, and the author as a shill. For there is no proof whatsoever that torture works, and his suggesting it saved lives is disingenuous at best.
To start this whole phony “war on terror” is just that, phony. As phony as this debate. This whole phony debate was put on to make Obama’s radical stance look good.
If I were to place two bowls of food in front of you, one putrid, full of maggots, moldy, covered with flies, and one putrid, full of maggots, moldy, less the flies, the latter would look good.
SEPARATION OF RAUNCH AND STATE
(It’s still legal – and always God-honoring – to air messages like the following. See Ezekiel 3:18-19. In light of government backing of raunchy behavior (such offenders were even executed in early America!), maybe the separation we really need is the “separation of raunch and state”!)
In Luke 17 in the New Testament, Jesus said that one of the big “signs” that will happen shortly before His return to earth as Judge will be a repeat of the “days of Lot” (see Genesis 19 for details). So gays are actually helping to fulfill this same worldwide “sign” (and making the Bible even more believable!) and thus hurrying up the return of the Judge! They are accomplishing what many preachers haven’t accomplished! Gays couldn’t have accomplished this by just coming out of closets into bedrooms. Instead, they invented new architecture – you know, closets opening on to Main Streets where little kids would be able to watch naked men having sex with each other at festivals in places like San Francisco (where their underground saint – San Andreas – may soon get a big jolt out of what’s going on over his head!). Thanks, gays, for figuring out how to bring back our resurrected Saviour even quicker!
[If you would care to learn about the depraved human "pigpen" that regularly occurs in Nancy Pelosi's district in California, Google "Zombietime" and click on "Up Your Alley Fair" in the left column. And to think - horrors - that she is only two levels away from being President!]
Rumor has it Panetta is developing new interogation techniques which include;
(requiring detainees to comb their hair on the wrong side)
(requiring bald detainees to use anti glare applications)
(requiring detainees to wear mismatched socks)
(requiring detainees to wear belts one notch too loose)
for serious cases, require detainees to watch ABC,CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC in rotating intervals of fifteen minutes each. This method has produced substantial results quickly because detainees vomit profusely and near gag.
Final results are to be evaluated by a bipartisan committee. If fully successful, these techniques will be applied to member of the House and Senate.