is incorrect. Hugo Chavez is from Venezuela, not Peru:
"We have refrained from making public pronouncements about Mr.Chavez – I think, for good and legitimate reasons," Cheney said todayduring an appearance before the World Affairs Council of Dallas. "He’sa – obviously, an individual with his own agenda. And he spends a greatdeal of his time worrying about us and criticizing the United States.
"My own personal view is that he does not represent the future ofLatin America. And the people of Peru, I think, deserve better in theirleadership. But that’s obviously a matter they’ve got to resolve forthemselves."
Though, Cheney is still better than Bush at geography.
Vice President Dick Cheney went hunting on Monday for eight hours just about 70 miles north of New York City. What caused a was not the fact that Cheney was hunting again. Instead, it was of a taken by the New York Daily News:
Although a heavy police presence kept the media and curious localresidents at a distance, Cheney's visit did stir up a bit ofcontroversy when a New York Daily News photographer snapped a pictureof a small Confederate flag hanging inside a garage on the hunt clubproperty.
The photo was shown to New York City civil rights activist, the Rev. Al Sharpton,who issued a statement demanding that the vice president "leaveimmediately, denounce the club and apologize for going to a club thatrepresents lynching, hate and murder to black people."
Your artificial compassion might cause you to be bored during a about all the families that lost their homes in California. But at least, if only for fifteen minutes, muster up enough energy to stay awake:
Someone should have said ',' and he would have gone flying out of his seat.
Recently, the Bush Administration changed its strategy of letting China control negotiations with North Korea to engaging with Kim Jong IL's regime directly. The State Department is to thank for persuading Bush to . Ironically, this is just a few years after Condoleezza Rice was that bilateral talks would not work. Now they are on the edge of a breakthrough.
This new approach is upsetting Dick Cheney. One of the Vice President's loyal soldiers, John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is to undercut any bilateral successes with the North:
Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton is urging GOP lawmakers tooppose the Bush administration’s recent agreement with North Korea toend its nuclear programs, according to House Republican sources.
WhileBolton’s skepticism of North Korea is well-known, this is believed tobe the first time a former top adviser to the president has taken theunusual step of lobbying against a pillar of the administration’scurrent foreign policy. It is particularly surprising given the valuethe administration has placed on loyalty.
If North Korea disarms, that would give the U.S. a reason to stop flexing its sticks as much in Southeast Asia. Cheney's allies do not want that.
Remember, it was John Bolton that Bush brought in by way of recess appointment because the Senate Foreign Relations Committee him. And it was this same John Bolton who was responsible for the with North Korea earlier this decade when he had a different job under Bush.
Bolton desperately wants to prevent any breakthrough with the North, and will go to great lengths to do that -- even if it goes against Bush. And as we have seen from , Bolton never does anything without Dick Cheney's approval.
Just think: a sitting Vice President trying to undercut a sitting President. Has this happened before?
A classic example of the difference between George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Bush cares what people think, while Cheney could not care less. What am I talking about? Think "":
There was, for instance, the Cheney hunting incident in south Texas,when he accidentally blasted a buddy in the face with birdshot. Yearsbefore, Bartlett had faced another bad-news hunting incident when Gov.George W. Bush was photographed shooting a bird, which upon closerexamination by the photographer, turned out to be a protected species.
As soon as he got that news, Bartlett sprang into action, and by thetime newspaper presses ran that night with the photo, the incident hadalready been officially reported to state authorities, a fine was paidand Bush had issued an apology. The result: a one-day story that you,in fact, probably never heard before reading this.
The way Bartlett describes the Cheney incident, it took forever toreach anyone with Cheney, and the White House aide discovered to hishorror that the hunting party had already been strategizing for 24hours. They planned to give the story to a Corpus Christi reporter,except that, it being the weekend, no one could find him.
Bartlett finally reached the vice president and urgently presentedanother option: getting him on the phone with a national press pool toexplain the entire incident in his own words ASAP. There was deadsilence. Then, the vice president intoned he would handle it his way.Which Cheney did.
And, not coincidentally, his hunting story is still the subject of talk show jokes.
I am almost to the point of believing that Dick Cheney wants people to have a negative view of him. History books tend to the remember the good and bad, but rarely those in between.
John Ashcroft, Tom Ridge, Scott McClellan, Harriet Miers, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Porter Goss, Karl Rove, and now Tony Snow. Surely I left a few out. These are the major faces that said 'no' to staying on for the remainder of Bush's second term. As most progressives would agree, these individuals were beyond a doubt corrupt, and helped dismantle a US political system that was supposed to be based on checks and balances.
Then again, who are we left with? All of those people were influential figures. Bush listened to them. Sometimes they helped off-set the influence of Dick Cheney -- which is really the key issue here. With all of them gone, the only person standing in the way of Dick Cheney is Condoleezza Rice. As inept as she is at understanding the complicated world we live in, she is at least calling for a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear standoff. This month, several worried Administration officials leaked to the press that Dick Cheney is pressing Bush to in Iran. I would not be surprised if the leakers came from inside Rice's State Department.
Really though, think cause and effect. If we strike Iran, other than making it harder for us in Iraq, Ahmadinejad will attack Israel. If Israel gets attacked, Bush will help them fight back. Middle Easterners will view it as a holy war, possibly forcing moderate governments like Jordan to pick a side, and then all bets are off.
Getting back to the larger point, this is the one and only downside of all the Bush loyalists leaving the Executive Branch. Bush is closer to Cheney than ever before. The only dissenting voice standing in the way is Condoleezza Rice and the US State Department. The actions we take against Iran will have huge foreign policy implications for the next generation. And I don't feel any better about things now that more cabinet members are resigning.
In politics, not just foreign affairs, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It's mentally exhausting to even think this -- but Condi, you go get 'em girl!
Evidence right here proves that Alberto Gonzales not only lied to Congress about the Ashcroft hospital visit, but that Gonzales and Andrew Card harassed Ashcroft to the point that he felt threatened and told his security detail to intervene.
Notes written by FBI Director Robert Mueller, recently turned over to Congressional investigators, indicate that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was pressured from his hospital bed by Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping program. That part we have known for quite sometime, even though last month Gonzales about it ever happening.
What is particularly interesting about these notes is they show that after the sneaky hospital visit took place, Attorney General Ashcroft ordered his security detail to not let anyone, except family, into his hospital room.
Here are FBI Director from that day:
Wednesday, 3/10/04:
@1920: Called by DAG while at restaurant with wife and daughter. He is at AG's hospital with Goldsmith and Philbin. Tells me Card and J. Gonzales are on the way to hospital to see AG, but that AG is in no condition to see them, much less make decision to authorize continuation of the program. Asks me to come to AG's hospital to witness condition of AG.
@1940: At hospital. Card and J. Gonzales have come and gone. Comey tells me that they saw the AG and were told by the AG that he was in no condition to decide issues, and that Comey was the Acting AG. All matters were to be taken to him, but that he supported the Acting AG's position. The AG then reviewed for them the legal concerns relating to the program. The AG also told them that he was barred from obtaining the advice he needed on the program by the strict compartmentalization rules of the WH. Comey asked me to meet briefly with the AG to see his condition. He also asked that I inform the detail that no visitors, other than family, were to be allowed to see the AG without my consent. (I so informed the detail.)
Let me paint this picture as best I can. There are three angles to this internal feud:
President Bush, who was uninformed about the inner struggle within his own Administration to install the warrantless wiretap program.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, Deputy Attorney General James Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller -- all of whom were against the program.
Vice President Dick Cheney, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card -- all of whom supported warrantless wiretaps.
The program needed to be authorized by Attorney General Ashcroft, who was in following a gallstone emergency. So and Card to pressure a sick Ashcroft from his hospital bed to authorize the program. When heard they were on their way to the hospital, he was furious:
"I was angry," Comey testified. "I thought I just witnessed an effortto take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers ofthe attorney general because they had been transferred to me."
So as we learned from Robert Mueller's notes above, Comey quickly called the FBI Director and told him to get down to the hospital and intervene immediately. It was too late. Although Gonzales and Card did not convince Ashcroft, they certainly did harass him to the point that he eventually decided to give new orders to his security detail.
Of course, following true to form, Alberto Gonzales went under oath last month and that he and Card pressured Ashcroft on that specific program that day. These notes prove otherwise. That is perjury.
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During his on Larry King Live, Dick Cheney contradicted himself in a matter of seconds. When asked whether the troop surge was working, the Vice President bragged that he had been on the right side from the very beginning, and then challenged Democrats to have an open mind. How modest of him:
Q You don't know what to expect, though, do you? Or do you?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think it's going to show that we will havemade significant progress. The reports I'm hearing from people whoseviews I respect indicate that indeed the Petraeus plan is in factproducing results.
Now, admittedly, I've been on one side of this argument from the verybeginning. I urge people to have an open mind, to listen to GeneralPetraeus when he comes back, but also look at what others have to say.
In other words, I was right, you were wrong. But please, if at all possible, have an open mind -- because if it were the other way around, you know I would do the same.
Alberto Gonzales is in it for the long haul unless it puts Cheney's job in jeopardy. A recent story revealed that Dick Cheney, not President Bush, sent Alberto Gonzales in 2004 to pressure heavily , bed-ridden Attorney General John Ashcroft to stop resisting the warrantless eavesdropping program. In other words, Gonzales is Cheney's man.
Then again, doesn't everyone answer to Cheney? As former vice president Walter Mondale wrote in yesterday's , Dick Cheney controls what the President hears, knows and decides:
Through his vast government experience, through the friends he hadbeen able to place in key positions and through his considerablepolitical skills, he has been increasingly able to determine theanswers to questions put to the president -- because he has been ableto determine the questions. It was Cheney who persuaded President Bushto sign an order that denied access to any court by foreign terrorismsuspects and Cheney who determined that the Geneva Conventions did notapply to enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ratherthan subject his views to an established (and rational) vettingprocess, his practice has been to trust only his immediate staff beforetaking ideas directly to the president. Many of the ideas that Bush hassubsequently bought into have proved offensive to the values of theConstitution and have been embarrassingly overturned by the courts.
So actually our current Vice President is really the man in charge. All decisions will be made in a way that benefits Cheney, not Bush. For example, President Bush is already slated to go down as probably the worst president since the Great Depression. Dick Cheney, on the other hand, will go down as the most powerful and politically influential vice president since Harry Truman. That is Cheney's legacy. He knows what he is doing -- even if the 'what' is hurting our country.
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