So they hadn’t made a mistake. They intended me to be there. Wow.
Now I have to be honest with you guys. I’m just me. I don’t view myself as anything special. I’m just a guy with a laptop who has strong opinions on various subjects.
And they wanted me there surrounded by the Vice President, his chief of staff, Liz Cheney, Paul Gigot, Kate O’Beirne, Jay Nordlinger, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, and a few others. All of us sitting around the dining room table eating roasted chicken with asparagus and potatoes.
Me. I lead a weird life. This is neither something I expected nor something I view myself deserving, and yet there it was.
But this is not about me. This is about him — about Dick Cheney, the great, private conservative leader who whispers in the President’s ears. The untold story of this administration, and one that I asked him about with very little success at getting an answer (to be honest, my question was poorly formed as it is a difficult topic), is that Cheney has been the great conservative influence at the White House.
Solid, credible, dependable sources on Capitol Hill, both staff and elected leaders, tell me Cheney is the guy who they go to when they White House goes wobbly. It’s Cheney who calms the waters and straightens the spines.
“My job in its purest sense,” he explained, “is advisory. The nature of the job I have is that I’m not in charge of anything. . . . I advise the President. But I can’t talk about it.” He said if he did talk about it, he would no longer be asked for his advice. The private nature, however, causes suspicion, particularly in this political age. He said he believed that, after 9/11, the first obligation of the administration was to make sure we did not get hit again. “That meant making tough decisions.” A lot of those decisions, in order to be successful, had to be highly classified. Secrecy was important to have a successful policy, but it played right into the ‘Cheney is secretive’ image. None of that helped his image. But they saved this country.
And that’s just it. There are still people in this country who think we’re not fighting a war. They think we can just arrest and prosecute the bad guys. Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld thought otherwise. History will show they were right. They were.
For almost eight long years after 9/11/2001, we were not attacked at home. We were safe at home. Men, not boys, made tough decisions that they stood by. They did not back down. Many people don’t like that they did not back down. Many people on the wrong side of history don’t like their aggressive prosecution of the Global War on Terror. But they’ve kept us safe. “At the end of eight years, we don’t get a lot of credit for what didn’t happen,” Cheney said matter of factly. No one ever does.
Cheney pointed out that had we gone the judicial route many on the left wanted (and the prior administration had engaged in), we’d have never gotten the information we got from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. A prosecutor could not have made him squeal like a pig. But he was not arrested and prosecuted. KSM went through enhanced interrogation and still sits at Gitmo.
As an aside, people forget how little we knew about Al Qaeda before and immediately after 9/11. We had no freaking clue who they really were or what they were all about, other than some propaganda pieces that had all the directorial and cinematographic value of amateur porn.
So the men came up with enhanced interrogation. KSM went through it. And they broke him. He provided valuable and accurate information on Al Qaeda — who they were, where they came from, how they were funded, how they were weaponized, etc. He formed a “basic database”, as the Vice President calls it, of key knowledge needed to fight them.
And had those who opposed enhanced interrogation — Cheney says the word “torture” is thrown around with reckless abandon — had their way, it would have taken a hell of a lot longer with many more American lives lost to get to a position where we could effectively root out Al Qaeda in secret missions few of us to this day know about.
Cheney is unapologetic as he should be. It was a fascinating lunch.
I’ll have more tomorrow in Human Events and more here tomorrow too.
{ 25 comments }
Erick…sounds like you had several glasses of Kool-Aid today. Hopefully the effects will wear off soon.
Vice President who?
Erick,
Congrats on the day. I probably would have enjoyed a conversation with Gigot and Krauthammer most of all, but it is certainly one of those things you can one day tell the grandkids all about.
With this now out of the way, can you please begin processing the TMC’s approved name change requests?
It must really be awe inspiring. Look what happened to all the “conservative” talk show hosts when they got to go to the White House. Trillions of dollars un-accounted for, yet not a peep from our “conservatives” in high places. The “war” trumps everything, eh? Even the law and the Constitution. And of course the neocons don’t give a damn about domestic security. If they did, we’d have a handle on immigratioin. It’s all a big lie folks. Wake up.
Game Fan,
Those last two words come real close to infringing on a certain someone’s trademark. If you put them in ALL CAPS, you could be banned.
Consider yourself warned.
Is it too late to trademark “JACKASS®”
That one’s between you and Johnny Knoxville.
You’ll know when you’ve detoxified from all the Kool-Aid. You’ll reread this article and immediately erase it.
The Adventurous Vikings had Eric the Red.
We have Erick the RedState LAPDOG
Hey Erick, when Dick commanded “fetch”, how did his slippers taste?
When he said “roll over” how did…….uh, nevermind.
“Those last two words come real close to infringing on a certain someone’s trademark.”
Were you talking about her? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAnvXXz2rbU
Someone on PP, Taft.
“As an aside, people forget how little we knew about Al Qaeda before and immediately after 9/11. We had no freaking clue who they really were or what they were all about, other than some propaganda pieces that had all the directorial and cinematographic value of amateur porn.”
If “we” refers to the US government, THE ABOVE STATEMENT IS A COMPLETE FALSEHOOD AND DISTORTION OF THE FACTS. Bush, Cheney and Rice ignored warnings about the terrorist threat posed by al qaeda.
On January 25th 2001, five days after Bush took office, Richard Clarke sent Condi Rice a memo detailing the significant threat posed by al qaeda. He proposed that the anti-terrorist al qaeda efforts be stepped up. He attached the previous administration’s recently revised strategy for eliminating al qaeda threats which included military, covert, diplomatic, and economic actions. He was alerting the new administration, seeking stepped up resources and asking for further review of the problem by the new NSC andcabinet. He didn’t get that meeting until September 4th, 2001.
On July 10th 2001, two months before the September 11 attacks, George Tenet reviewed evidence of increased communication activities and other intelligence information. The evidence lead the CIA to the conclusion that an attack on the US was forthcoming from al Qaeda. Tennet called for an immediate meeting with Rice and then called for immediate action against Osama Bin Laden. Rice did not act.
For the entire month of August 2001, President Bush was on vacation at his ranch. The CIA director did not see him or talk to him for the entire month.
The Presidential Daily Brief is a written report prepared by the CIA. Usually it is 1 0r 2 paragaphs long. On August 6th, it was a page and a half. The title of the report was “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” The briefing included this statement: FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activites in this country that are consistent with preparations for hijackings or other kinds of attacks including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”
There are dozens of examples that prove that the Bush administration ignored warnings, not deliberately to cause harm, but never-the-less they failed to recognize the severity of the threat. There was an entire section in the CIA dedicated to tracking Osama Bin Laden prior to 2001. It was clear the Bin Laden was a threat and the US government knew it, but could not get the attention of Bush, Cheney and Rice.
I’ll buy your logic.
You say, because we had Hard Nose™ and Co. sitting in the Senate President’s chair, we didn’t get attacked. And only because of Them™ we were safe.
OK.
So that means there is no God. Because Revelations did not happened. The fact something has not happened is proof enough to prove any point.
Because they lied and tortured, we never got attacked.
That is his justification, after all of this.
It makes perfect sense. Terrorism is not about continuous minor attacks, randomly, on say..gas stations, or, dams, or power stations, or railroad tracks… terrorism is about one big grand statement, and magically sitting back and allowing that one attack to to the terror of 300.
[insert boogy man label here] didn’t have to do any more terror attacks to damage our country and its freedom. It had help from the inside.
What. A. Load.
Eric’s a Juke Box Hero™ because he’s got stars in his eyes.
Thank you, Rick Day.
The problem is that we are using an enthymeme while completely ignoring everything in the parentheses.
*We haven’t been attacked again.
( )
The parentheses imply all the unstated arguments and implications that must be true in order for us to now reach the conclusion:
*Therefore Bush clearly did what was right for our nation.
OK. That is just scary. Erick suffers from a major case of kiss-ass. Cheney is just evil.
For almost eight long years after 9/11/2001, we were not attacked at home.
What do you call the anthrax attacks? Why do you have to qualify your statement with “at home”? What about the thousands of American soldiers killed and the tens of thousands injured? What about the overall rise of terrorist attacks throughout the world since 9/11? The 9/11 attack served its purpose. It goaded us into two costly invasions in the middle east that bled our finances and encouraged radical Islam throughout the world. Cheney did exactly what Bin Laden wanted him to do.
Your defense of torture is just sick. Do you honestly think that by imitating the Russian gulags and the Japanese POW camps is a sane, rational way to behave? After WWII we executed Japanese and Germans for using these techniques on U.S. soldiers.
people forget how little we knew about Al Qaeda
Another false statement. Do you forget Clinton’s attacks in Sudan and Afghanistan? What about the security briefing right before 9/11? We helped create Al Qaeda to fight the Russians. We had excellent intel on Al Qaeda. Have you forgotten how we quickly targeted Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and shattered the Taliban? The information obtained from KSM does not seem to have been much use, since we didn’t capture Bin Laden, and we invaded a country that didn’t have Al Qaeda.
Erick this is your conservative hero?
Bush /Cheney had so many policy mistakes it is hard to list them all.
Education is a disaster with NCLB leaving students behind at tax payer expense
Energy is a disaster with Energy bill and Farm bill that pays farmers to create bio fuels that increase food prices and create no efficiencies.
Deficits based on financing tax cuts and out of control spending bills that created a 11 trillion dollar national debt
A banking policy that put tax payers on the hook for out of control lending policy
Trade policy that we pay farmers not to grow food and import products from slave labor countries like China that created out of control trade deficits
Immigration policy based on looking the other way that drove wages down and thrust social service cost on tax payers.
Heath care policy that made the problem worse via Drug Prescription bill and immigration policy that drove up social service cost on tax payers with no controls
Foreign policy based on going alone, policemen of the world, no end in sight spending with no controls and chasing our tail strategy.
Way to go Brownie or is it Cheney?
So did Erick ask how Dick’s portfolio is doing?
Halliburton Secretly Doing Business with Key Member of Iran’s Nuclear Team
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0806-21.htm
HE’S GOT A JUKE
BOX
HERO
(and a lollipop microphone)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjuuJ5HnKoc
Erick calling Dick Cheney the one who “calms the waters”, and saying that “history will prove he was right” makes my hair stand up.
Dick Cheney has destroyed America, the Constitution, and has been on a crusade to destroy everything that is good in America.
Skyler,
Just out of curiosity, name at least 4 things that were “good” in America before and are “not good” now can be tracked back to the Bush/Cheney Administration.
If history marches forward in such a way that the populace wakes up, wises up, and ACTS, then history will show Bush Presidency to be the important step between all the Presidents of the 1900’s who came before and the President we are about to get, in arranging the affairs of mankind so as to trample life and liberty to oblivion and ushering in a New World Order.
Are we such cowards that 9/11 justifies the insanity of all the years that have followed?
Fear is what dominates public opinion. Last year at the Cobb County Convention, some clear thinking person proposed that we banish all unConstitutional Departments and programs. Another person stood and said,” Then who will take care of those things? Who will take care of us?” and he was supported by the majority.
Big A to whomever thought to put fluoride in our water. It has completely knocked the umph out of this nation. (Another idea that started in Nazi Germany concentration camps…in addition to the first abortion clinic opening there). Or at least I’d like to blame the water. How else do you explain millions of Americans, the melting pot of the world, the survivors, the achievers, all of whom now seem to lack any sort of male anatomy attributed to an ability to be brave, make tough decisions and lead.
Flouride in water is a Nazi invention?
So was the concept of interstate highways, Jenny (See Autobahn). Make sure you AVOID driving on the interstate to navigate yourself around this city.
Don’t buy a VW Beetle either…another item developed as a result of the Nazi regime.
Erick I can empathize with you, I am often castigated for my opinions and the fact that I share them often may lead one to believe I like being at the business end of the punditry ‘hickory switch.’ Not so, but it is what it is.
What I do find remarkable is that so many GOP base members and PP regulars are as angry or angrier about the last eight years as are Dems. Mssrs. Konop and Day hit the highpoints as to why any thinking American ought to be outraged.
2009 will be a hugely challenging year economically. Every financial metric that should be going up is down and every metric that should be down is up, at historical levels. Top execs are talking about a 3Q09 early recovery, but nobody has any real idea, we are making economic history right now.
If the Cheney theory of ‘We must be doing OK, since nobody blew up anything in the last eight years’ holds true perhaps we may see an end to this cycle by 2009-10. Our enemies would love nothing more than to start a US civil war, spiralling our economic engines into chaos.
Personally, I think this recession is the ‘first wave’ resulting from the economic stressors we have heaped upon the system for decades. Once the SSI, and Medicare/caid entitlements, can I say that word(?), kick in (2012) I believe we will see the second wave.
Maybe Cheney, Wolfowitz, and the Merry Band of Neo-Cons, will have the last laugh, the theory of bringing the system down to rebuild it may indeed play out.
We can only do our best, speak our minds, and vote our conscience.
(Another idea that started in Nazi Germany concentration camps…in addition to the first abortion clinic opening there).
That’s false, the Nazi’s were techincally Pro-Life, especially if a woman were carrying an Aryan baby. Did they force Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, etc. to abort fetuses? Perhaps, but why bother when a bullet to the back of the head or some Zyclon B would be cheaper, quicker, and more efficient.
Bill, don’t forget about boycotting GM, which owns Opel, which in turn was manufacturing some pretty damned good tanks during WW2, except not for us
“Personally, I think this recession is the ‘first wave’ resulting from the economic stressors we have heaped upon the system for decades. Once the SSI, and Medicare/caid entitlements, can I say that word(?), kick in (2012) I believe we will see the second wave. ”
Lordy, TP, I thought you were the optimist here. If I can ever finish my treatise on Icaronomics, we might have to talk you of a ledge.
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