Hoffmania!

Cheney's a Jackass

Plain and simple. The man is a soulless, retched, vomitous pig. Hell's too good for this douchebag who made a surprise appearance at CPAC.

"I think 2010 will be a phenomenal year for the conservative cause and I think Barack Obama is a one-term president," Cheney said to a standing ovation.

I take back the "pig" comment. Pigs are more respectful than this bastard, who I think is a two-term clusterfuck. Breathtakingly idiotic.

Joe Biden couldn't say it. We did.

Biden Cracks Down on Cheney

Bravo.

Gather 'Round! It's Forehead Slappin' Time!

Hey, look at the great idea the Heritage Foundation has.

The U.S. government response should be bold and decisive. It must mobilize U.S. civilian and military capabilities for short-term rescue and relief and long-term recovery and reform. President Obama should tap high-level, bipartisan leadership. Clearly former President Clinton, who was already named as the U.N. envoy on Haiti, is a logical choice. President Obama should also reach out to a senior Republican figure, perhaps former President George W. Bush, to lead the bipartisan effort for the Republicans.

(SLAP!) Yup. Mr. Katrina himself. (SLAP!) That'd be a bi-intelligent effort, you dipshits.

This is a three-slapper. (SLAP!)

WaPo to Cheney, et al: Back Off the Obama Slams

Yeah. Tough to believe that headline, but it's true. Dick must be grabbing his pills right now.

Dick Cheney Complains: "2010 Happened Under Obama's Watch"

You were ready to believe that. Admit it.

Happy New Year, everyone.

14

The number of times Dick Cheney says "war" in his latest crankfest against Obama.

Bush's Homeland Security Laws Had Big Influence on Olympics

Isn't this special?

A New York Times article points out:

In the official question-and-answer session following the Chicago presentation, Syed Shahid Ali, an I.O.C. member from Pakistan, asked the toughest question. He wondered how smooth it would be for foreigners to enter the United States for the Games because doing so can sometimes, he said, be “a rather harrowing experience.”

A “harrowing experience” may be an understatement. Immediately after 9/11, the Bush Administration began requiring fingerprints and photographs of tourists from all but 28 countries entering the US. President Bush required that all foreigners register online within three days of travel. Thirty-five (mostly European) countries now participate in the US Visa Waiver program, however tourists from the rest of the world still have to jump through the following hurdles:

• Pay hefty visa processing and issuance fees.
• Undergo an interview by a visa officer at the US Embassy.
• Provide evidence which shows the purpose of the trip, intent to depart the United States, and arrangements made to cover the costs of the trip may be provided.
• Present convincing evidence that an interested person will provide financial support if the applicant does not have sufficient funds to support him or herself.

The average wait for a US visa has risen to about three months. Brazil, which will host the 2016 Olympic summer games in Rio de Janeiro, has a reciprocal visa policy with all countries. US tourists are required to have a $130 advance visa before entry into the country and are fingerprinted and photographed upon arrival — matching US requirements for Brazilians.

What We're Up Against

A reader to Sullivan:

Millions marched against the war. They were ignored.
70,000 marched against Obama. They got wall-to-wall coverage.

People showed up with t-shirts at a Bush speech and got arrested.
People showed up with guns to an Obama speech and got interviewed.

Whispers of criticism against Bush's policies were shut down and branded as America-hating.
Republican leaders and media giants openly pray for Obama's failure and they're asked to elaborate.

Bush was given eight years and earned the hatred against him
"Obama has not had that luxury."

Can I get an Amen?

Quote THIS

"Some politicians are seriously suggesting that Dick Cheney should run for president. These politicians are called 'Democrats'."

-Craig Ferguson

The Waahmbulance is On The Way, Dick

Cheney accuses Obama of being partisan (!) and the torture investigation "offended the hell out of me."

Aw. Dick Cheney is offended. If I had a violin...I'd smash it over your head, you assclown.

McClatchy: Cheney Lied

One news organization decided to try this "journalism" thing. What they came up with was a stunning laundry list of historical rewrites in Cheney's speech yesterday. So much so that the average Republican mind might not be able to comprehend all of it.

The rest of us can only marvel at the man's ability to lie his ass off to stay out of jail. It may backfire.

From here, it appears that Dick Cheney seriously perjured himself at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday.

Cheney's speech ignored some inconvenient truths

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.

In his address to the American Enterprise Institute , a conservative policy organization in Washington , Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."

He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair , as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."

In a statement April 21 , however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.

FBI Director Mueller Robert Muller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn't think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.

— Cheney said that President Barack Obama's decision to release the four top-secret Bush administration memos on the interrogation techniques was "flatly contrary" to U.S. national security, and would help al Qaida train terrorists in how to resist U.S. interrogations.

However, Blair, who oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, said in his statement that he recommended the release of the memos, "strongly supported" Obama's decision to prohibit using the controversial methods and that "we do not need these techniques to keep America safe."

— Cheney said that the Bush administration "moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks."

The former vice president didn't point out that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri , remain at large nearly eight years after 9-11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and money to planning an invasion of Iraq before it finished the war in Afghanistan against al Qaida and the Taliban .

There are now 49,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan fighting to contain the bloodiest surge in Taliban violence since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, and Islamic extremists also have launched their most concerted attack yet on neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan...

Don't stop there. There's more. MUCH more. Big kudos to McClatchy's Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel for doing their jobs.

Cheney Crosses Over Into Delusional

Hoo boy. He thinks he's still in charge and that Europe - which is kind of in the general area of Iran - is conspiring against us to declare war there. Bellevue, we'd like to make a reservation...

The former Vice President characterized the Iranian goal in negotiations on ending that country's nuclear program as mere stalling for time, and the Europeans as trying to "restrain the U.S." from military action.

"Everybody's in a giant conspiracy to achieve a different objective than the one we want to achieve," Cheney said.

The negotiations are "bound to fail unless we are perceived as very credible" in threatening military action against Iran, he said.

Clinton to Cheney: Stick a Fork In Yourself, Old Man

Condi Was First to Approve Waterboarding

The first Bush White House superstar emerges.

As national security adviser to former President George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice verbally approved the CIA's request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, the earliest known decision by a Bush administration official to OK use of the simulated drowning technique.

Rice's role was detailed in a narrative released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It provides the most detailed timeline yet for how the CIA's harsh interrogation program was conceived and approved at the highest levels in the Bush White House.

The new timeline shows that Rice played a greater role than she admitted last fall in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The narrative also shows that dissenting legal views about the severe interrogation methods were brushed aside repeatedly.

Cheney "Full Of Crap"

Dump on Cheney Day continues. The NY Daily News:

U.S. counterterrorism officials are reacting angrily to ex-Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that waterboarding 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183 times was a "success" that produced actionable intelligence.

"Cheney is full of crap," one intelligence source with decades of experience said Tuesday.

It's Dump on Cheney Day. Everyone's Celebrating!

Press Sec'y Robert Gibbs on Cheney:

"We've had a at least two-year policy disagreement with the Vice President of the United States of America. That policy disagreement is whether or not you can uphold the values in which this country was founded at the same time that you protect the citizens that live in that country," said Gibbs.  "The President of the United States and this administration believes that you can. The Vice President has come to, in our opinion, a different conclusion."

Popcorn's popping. Enjoy the show.

SNAP!

Right in the jowls.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took aim on Wednesday at former Vice President Dick Cheney, telling lawmakers she did not view him as a "particularly reliable source" on issues of torture.

Asked about Cheney's request this week to declassify documents showing the "success" of some widely condemned, harsh interrogation techniques launched by ex-President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, Clinton had a caustic reply.

"It won't surprise you that I don't consider him (Cheney) a particularly reliable source," Clinton told the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee.

Why Bush and Cheney Must Be Brought to Justice

Andrew Sullivan:

Looked at from a distance, the Bush administration wanted to do two things at once: to declare to the world that freedom is on the march, and human rights are coming to the world with American help, while simultaneously declaring to captives that the US has no interest in the law, human rights, accountability, transparency or humanity. They wanted to give hope to all the oppressed of the planet, while surgically banishing all hope from the prisoners they captured and tortured. And the only way they could pull this off is by the total secrecy they constructed and defended. So we had a public government respectful of the rule of law, and a secret government whose main goal was persuading terror suspects that there was no rule of law at all. It is hard to convey just how dangerous this was and is.

Moreover, this was done by the professional classes in this society. It was not done by Lynndie England or some night-shift sadists at Abu Ghraib. According to these documents, almost nothing that was done at Abu Ghraib was outside the limits agreed to by Bush - and much of what was done at Abu Ghraib was mild in comparison. So when the president acted "shocked" at what we all saw, and said it was not America, he was also authorizing far worse in secret - and systematizing it long after Abu Ghraib was over. He was either therefore a fantastic liar on one of the gravest matters imaginable or so psychologically compartmentalized and prone to rigid denial of reality and so unversed in history, law and morality that he had no reason being president.

If you want to know how democracies die, read these memos.

[...] My view is that those who pay the legal price should be, first and foremost, those who authorized this at the highest levels. My view is also that it is a travesty that the Abu Ghraib reservists were prosecuted, and yet far, far more culpable people are claiming it would be too divisive to prosecute them. My view is that no one is above the law, and that when a society ased on law prosecutes the powerless and excuses the powerful, it is corroding its own soul.

Sullivan does categorically praise Obama's decision not to prosecute right now ("As president in wartime, he knows how wounding it would be to engage in this kind of activity right now."). I'd love to agree, but thanks to the toxicity of the political divide which is overtly being widened by the huge remnants of Bush/Cheney's Republican party and its more dangerous offshoots, it won't matter. The wounds are there now. Not pursuing and prosecuting this is essentially giving permission to do more of it.

Just for perspective, however, he notes in another post that there was some ambiguity in Obama's decision that leaves the door open.

The president's statement that he does not seek to prosecute CIA staffers who tortured suspects believing in good faith that they had legal authority to do what they did is not quite as blanket as it sounds. If evidence emerges of bad faith in torture sessions, then those staffers may well face legal consequences. Ditto if the legal advice was given in bad faith, along Nuremberg lines, Yoo and Bybee should start sweating. That's why the internal OPR report on the legal professionalism of the torture lawyers is so crucial and why it is being fought over so fiercely. If Yoo and Bybee's memos were so below legal standards that they can be objectively shown to be a means to get away with torture rather than good faith effort to apply the law to proposed torture techniques, then they too acted in bad faith. And they too are war criminals.

I do not believe that the focus should be on CIA staffers. I never have. These war crimes should be traced directly to those responsible: the men who made the decision to deploy torture as a routine part of American government, and to turn America into an international symbol that democracies, as well as autocracies and dictatorships, can allow torture to be integrated into their identity and legal system. This Bush and Cheney did.

Let's hope we get to find out in an actual trial. Go to Sullivan's blog. He's devoting a LOT of space to this issue. And if you still have issues with him, he offers this:

I certainly think we have to remember the climate of terror and fear of the unknown that followed the 9/11 attacks, a climate that dragged all of us, including this blogger, to places we now wish we hadn't gone.

The International Red Cross Torture Report

Andrew Sullivan frighteningly displays all you need to know about BushCheney's foreign policy. The entire torture report can be found here.

And remember, Frank Gaffney's in the fan club.

Absence Makes The Heart...

...more certain. Gallup:

Neither George W. Bush's deliberate silence about the Obama administration nor Dick Cheney's ready criticism of it appear to have altered U.S. public perceptions about either man. The former president and former vice president are each viewed unfavorably by 63% of Americans, very similar to where they stood with the public in their final White House years.

HA HA

George Bush!

Dick

There's no other way to describe him.

According to the former senior intelligence official, who has access to sensitive information, “Cheney began getting messages from the Israelis about pressure from Obama” when he was President-elect. Cheney, who worked closely with the Israeli leadership in the lead-up to the Gaza war, portrayed Obama to the Israelis as a “pro-Palestinian,” who would not support their efforts (and, in private, disparaged Obama, referring to him at one point as someone who would “never make it in the major leagues”).

Cheney and Torture and Wishing for Another Terror Strike

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's Chief of Staff, calls Cheney out on torture and his continuing challenge for al Qaeda to strike again. This is great. When do we prosecute? Here's a snippet:

Recently, in an attempt to mask some of these failings and to exacerbate and make even more difficult the challenge to the new Obama administration, former Vice President Cheney gave an interview from his home in McLean, Virginia. The interview was almost mystifying in its twisted logic and terrifying in its fear-mongering.

As to twisted logic: "Cheney said at least 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo (sic) during the Bush administration...have gone back into the business of being terrorists." So, the fact that the Bush administration was so incompetent that it released 61 terrorists, is a valid criticism of the Obama administration? Or was this supposed to be an indication of what percentage of the still-detained men would likely turn to terrorism if released in future? Or was this a revelation that men kept in detention such as those at GITMO--even innocent men--would become terrorists if released because of the harsh treatment meted out to them at GITMO? Seven years in jail as an innocent man might do that for me. Hard to tell.

As for the fear-mongering: "When we get people who are more interested in reading the rights to an Al Qaeda (sic) terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry," Cheney said. Who in the Obama administration has insisted on reading any al-Qa'ida terrorist his rights? More to the point, who in that administration is not interested in protecting the United States--a clear implication of Cheney's remarks.

But far worse is the unmistakable stoking of the 20 million listeners of Rush Limbaugh, half of whom we could label, judiciously, as half-baked nuts. Such remarks as those of the former vice president's are like waving a red flag in front of an incensed bull. And Cheney of course knows that.

Cheney went on to say in his McLean interview that "Protecting the country's security is a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business. These are evil people and we are not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek." I have to agree but the other way around. Cheney and his like are the evil people and we certainly are not going to prevail in the struggle with radical religion if we listen to people such as he.

When--and if--the truths about the detainees at Guantanamo Bay will be revealed in the way they should be, or Congress will step up and shoulder some of the blame, or the new Obama administration will have the courage to follow through substantially on its campaign promises with respect to GITMO, torture and the like, remains indeed to be seen.

Axelrod to Rove and Cheney: Sit Back and STFU

Jon Stewart on Cheney: "F@%& Him"

Blunt yet spot on. The Daily Show has had enough of this horse's ass.

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