The Cowering of Babylon the Great According To Cheney

Dangers Rise as America Retreats

By Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney
Sept. 9, 2016 6:45 p.m. ET

September 11, 2001, in New York.

Fifteen years ago this Sunday, nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in the deadliest attack on the U.S. homeland in our history. A decade and a half later, we remain at war with Islamic terrorists. Winning this war will require an effort of greater scale and commitment than anything we have seen since World War II, calling on every element of our national power.

Defeating our enemies has been made significantly more difficult by the policies of Barack Obama. No American president has done more to weaken the U.S., hobble our defenses or aid our adversaries.

President Obama has been more dedicated to reducing America’s power than to defeating our enemies. He has enhanced the abilities, reach and finances of our adversaries, including the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, at the expense of our allies and our own national security. He has overseen a decline of our own military capabilities as our adversaries’ strength has grown.

Our Air Force today is the oldest and smallest it has ever been. In January 2015, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno testified that the Army was as unready as it had been at any other time in its history. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert testified similarly that, “Navy readiness is at its lowest point in many years.”

Nearly half of the Marine Corps’ non-deployed units—the ones that respond to unforeseen contingencies—are suffering shortfalls, according to the commandant of the Corps, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. For the first time in decades, American supremacy in key areas can no longer be assured.

The president who came into office promising to end wars has made war more likely by diminishing America’s strength and deterrence ability. He doesn’t seem to understand that the credible threat of military force gives substance and meaning to our diplomacy. By reducing the size and strength of our forces, he has ensured that future wars will be longer, and put more American lives at risk.

Meanwhile, the threat from global terrorist organizations has grown. Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the House Homeland Security Committee in July that, “As we approach 15 years since 9/11, the array of terrorist actors around the globe is broader, wider and deeper than it has been at any time since that day.” Despite Mr. Obama’s claim that ISIS has been diminished, John Brennan, Mr. Obama’s CIA director, told the Senate Intelligence Committee in June that, “Our efforts have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability or global reach.”

The president’s policies have contributed to our enemies’ advance. In his first days in office, Mr. Obama moved to take the nation off a war footing and return to the failed policies of the 1990s when terrorism was treated as a law-enforcement matter. It didn’t matter that the Enhanced Interrogation Program produced information that prevented attacks, saved American lives and, we now know, contributed to the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden. Mr. Obama ended the program, publicly revealed its techniques, and failed to put any effective terrorist-interrogation program in its place.

We are no longer interrogating terrorists in part because we are no longer capturing terrorists. Since taking office, the president has recklessly pursued his objective of closing the detention facility at Guantanamo by releasing current detainees—regardless of the likelihood they will return to the field of battle against us. Until recently, the head of recruitment for ISIS in Afghanistan and Pakistan was a former Guantanamo detainee, as is one of al Qaeda’s most senior leaders in the Arabian Peninsula.

As he released terrorists to return to the field of battle, Mr. Obama was simultaneously withdrawing American forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. He calls this policy “ending wars.” Most reasonable people recognize this approach as losing wars.

When Mr. Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, Iraq was stable. Following the surge ordered by President Bush, al Qaeda in Iraq had largely been defeated, as had the Shiite militias. The situation was so good that Vice President Joe Biden predicted, “Iraq will be one of the great achievements of this administration.”

Today, Iraq’s border with Syria has been erased by the most successful and dangerous terrorist organization in history. ISIS has established its “caliphate” across a large swath of territory in the heart of Syria and Iraq, from which it trains, recruits, plots and launches attacks.

On Aug. 20, 2012, Mr. Obama drew a red line making clear he would take military action if Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons. A year later, Mr. Assad launched a sarin-gas attack on his own people in the suburbs of Damascus. Mr. Obama did nothing—a failure that destroyed America’s credibility and strengthened the hand of our adversaries.

We now know that the president’s refusal to act came as the Iranians and the U.S. were engaged in secret talks about Iran’s nuclear program. In his new book, “The Iran Wars,” Wall Street Journal correspondent Jay Solomon writes that according to Iranian sources, “Tehran made it clear to the American delegation that the nuclear negotiations would be halted if the U.S. went ahead with its attack on Assad.” The Iranians were now in the driver’s seat, not just regarding their own policy in the Middle East, but in determining America’s.

President Obama and Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were so concerned with pleasing Iran’s ruling mullahs that they were willing to overlook the American blood on Iranian hands and decades of Iran’s activities as the world’s leading state sponsor of terror. In pursuit of the nuclear deal, they made concession after dangerous concession.

Every promise made to the American people about the Obama nuclear agreement has been broken. We were promised a “world-class” verification process. Instead, the Iranians are allowed in key instances to verify themselves.

We were promised the agreement would “block every pathway” to an Iranian nuclear weapon. Instead, the Obama-Clinton agreement virtually guarantees an Iranian nuclear weapon, gives them access to the latest in centrifuge technology and will likely usher in a nuclear arms race across the Middle East.

We were promised that non-nuclear sanctions, including those that block Iran’s access to hard currency and our financial systems, would remain in place. Instead, the Obama administration has paid the mullahs at least $1.7 billion in cash, which includes at least $1.3 billion in U.S. taxpayer money, the first installment of which was ransom for the release of American hostages.

In case there is any doubt that the regime will use these funds to support terror, Iran’s parliament recently passed Article 22 of its 2016-2017 budget, mandating that all such funds be transferred directly to the Iranian military. Fifteen years after 3,000 Americans were killed by Islamic terrorists, America’s commander in chief has become the money launderer in chief for the world’s leading state sponsor of terror.

Iran isn’t the only adversary benefiting from the age of Obama. Russia is threatening NATO, invading sovereign territory, selling air-defense systems to the Iranians, using its military to defend the Assad regime, bombing American-backed rebels in Syria, and playing a larger role in the Middle East than at any time since Anwar Sadat expelled his Soviet advisers from Egypt in 1972.

Across the region, nations that previously were strong American allies are making different calculations. Russia is seen as a reliable ally standing with Mr. Assad, while the U.S. walks away from its friends. The steady stream of visitors from the Middle East to Moscow, including most recently Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is evidence of Moscow’s growing role in the region. Neither Russia nor Vladmir Putin shares America’s interests.

China is also ascendant—threatening freedom of navigation through the South China Sea and developing weapons systems that directly threaten American military superiority. North Korea represents a growing nuclear threat to the U.S. homeland. Mr. Obama’s announced pivot to Asia turned out to be hollow, further alienating our allies and emboldening our enemies in the region.

Undoing this damage will require an effort of historic proportions. Our next president must abandon Mr. Obama’s fantasy that unilaterally disarming, retreating and abandoning our allies will bring peace and security. We must begin at once to rebuild our military. This means ending sequestration and returning to a Defense Department budget built around defeating the threats to our nation. We must remedy readiness shortfalls, modernize and upgrade our nuclear arsenal, develop and build a robust missile-defense system, and invest in technologies necessary to maintain our military superiority, particularly against advances by adversaries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

Among the most important lessons of 9/11 was that terrorists must be denied safe havens from which to plan and launch attacks against us. On President Obama’s watch, terrorist safe havens have expanded around the globe.

Our next president must recognize that Islamic terrorists pose an existential threat to the U.S., and must instruct the military to provide plans necessary to defeat them and deny them safe havens. These should include expanding the pace of our air campaign against ISIS, removing the onerous rules of engagement, and dedicating additional special operators and other American forces as necessary to defeat our enemies.

Winning the war against Islamic terrorists will also require that we rebuild our intelligence capabilities. Our next president should reinstate the Enhanced Interrogation Program, ensure that Guantanamo remains open so we have a facility to hold enemy combatants, and increase our intelligence activities so we can identify and disrupt plots before they are carried out.

We must make clear that we will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon or become nuclear capable. Our next president should renounce the Obama-Clinton nuclear agreement, develop a strategy in consultation with our allies in the region to address Iran’s state sponsorship of terror, and make clear that all options are on the table where Iran’s nuclear program is concerned.

We must also rebuild our relationships with allies across the globe so that we can build the coalitions necessary to defeat Islamic terrorism and restore our strength and power. This includes reinvigorating NATO and affirming America’s unshakable commitment to the most effective military alliance in history.

Generations before have met and defeated grave threats to our nation. American strength, leadership and ideals were crucial to the Allied victory in World War II and the defeat of Soviet Communism during the Cold War. It will be up to today’s generation to restore American pre-eminence so that we can defend our freedom and defeat Islamic terror.

Since World War II, America has been freedom’s defender—for ourselves and for millions around the world. We do this because our security depends upon it and because there is no other nation that can.

As Americans calculate the costs of leadership, we must remember that the costs of failing to lead—or of inaction—are much higher. Imagine a world where Russia, Iran, China and North Korea set the rules; where militant Islam spreads its evil ideology unchallenged across the globe; where parts of Europe are once again enslaved by Russia, our NATO alliance impotent; and where China achieves military superiority over the U.S. and dominates Asia and beyond.

Finally, imagine a world where the terrorists and their leading state sponsor have nuclear weapons. Fifteen years after 9/11, we can say with certainty that this is the world that will be created by withdrawal and retreat—by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s policies—if we don’t reverse course.

Mr. Cheney was U.S. vice president from 2001-09. Ms. Cheney is the Republican nominee for Wyoming’s at-large seat in the House.

The Beast From The Sea (Revelation 13:1-10)

Were There Norms Dick Cheney Wasn’t Prepared to Transgress?

George H.W. Bush tells his biographer that his secretary of defense considered using tactical nuclear weapons against Iraqi forces in the First Gulf War.

National Archives
Conor Friedersdorf Nov 5, 2015

When Dick Cheney left the vice presidency his approval rating stood at a dismal 13 percent. As it turns out, even George H.W. Bush thought that he did a bad job.

“After years of holding back, former President George Bush has finally broken his public silence about some of the key figures in his son’s administration, issuing scathing critiques of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld,” the New York Times reported, cribbing from a Jon Meacham biography of the 41st president that will be in book stores beginning next week.
Said the newspaper:

In his interviews with Mr. Meacham, the former president returned several times to the topic of Mr. Cheney, who handled the role of vice president very differently from the way the first Mr. Bush did under Ronald Reagan. “He had his own empire there and marched to his own drummer… He just became very hard-line and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with,” Mr. Bush said. He attributed that to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Just iron-ass. His seeming knuckling under to the real hard-charging guys who want to fight about everything...”

He speculated that Mr. Cheney was influenced by his wife, Lynne, and his daughter Liz, both strong conservatives. “I’ve concluded that Lynne Cheney is a lot of the eminence grise here – iron-ass, tough as nails, driving,” he said. Still, he called Mr. Cheney “a good man” who pushed boundaries too far. “The big mistake that was made was letting Cheney bring in kind of his own State Department,” Mr. Bush said. “I think they overdid that. But it’s not Cheney’s fault. It’s the president’s fault.” By that, he meant his son. “The buck stops there,” the elder Mr. Bush said.

That critique of Dick Cheney is consistent with how the former vice president has been rendered by journalists like Jane Mayer and Barton Gellman, who’ve cast him as a master bureaucrat who used his insider knowledge of how the executive branch works to shape policy, sometimes without the president’s knowledge.

It is newsworthy that Bush 41 made that critique of his former secretary of defense and his son, and I’ve relayed his comments much as the New York Times journalists did, having not yet seen Jon Meacham’s biography myself. But I was most struck by something that the newspaper mentioned only in passing:

The book includes diary entries…

It reports that as defense secretary for the elder Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney commissioned a study of how many tactical nuclear weapons would be needed to take out an Iraqi Republican Guard division, if necessary.

(The answer: 17.)

Cheney’s interest in tactical nukes has been reported before, but garnered little attention, and escaped my notice.

Like Bush 41, my understanding had been that 9/11 radicalized Dick Cheney. But I’m tempted to change my view of the torture advocate if, prior to 1993, he was contemplating a first-strike use of nuclear weapons against the Iraqi army.

Did Cheney ever see a norm that he didn’t consider transgressing against?

Fool Me Once Shame On You, Fool Me Twice Shame On Me

  
Dick Cheney tries to fool the public again
 
Early signs indicate Dick Cheney is leaning against the Iran nuclear deal.

“It is madness,” the former vice president announced Tuesday.

The results may be catastrophic,” he inveighed.

“This deal gives Tehran the means to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland.”

“The Obama-Iran deal aids the efforts of America’s enemies.”
The deal “strengthens our adversaries, threatens our allies and puts our own security at risk.”

Cheney hyperbolized, hyperventilated and gave rein to hyperactive imagination — “desperation . . . cave . . . neutered” — and the audience at the normally sedate American Enterprise Institute was riled. When Michaela Anang, a student from Boston with the liberal group Code Pink attempted to heckle the “war criminal” Cheney, Marc Thiessen, the moderator (and online columnist for The Post), leaped up to block her, audience members shouted “get out of here!” at her, and one man, in jacket and tie, engaged her in a violent tug of war to confiscate her banner.

“Thank you very much,” Cheney said with a wry grin.

Supporters of the Iran deal are probably saying the same to Cheney. They are probably more grateful still that applauding Cheney from the front row were Paul D. Wolfowitz, a principal architect of the Iraq war, and Sen. Tom Cotton, (Ark.), author of the Senate Republicans’ letter to the ayatollahs attempting to kill the deal during negotiations. In the second row were former congresswoman Michele Bachmann and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the Cheney aide whose tenure led to a prison sentence.

Surely, those who would like to see Congress undo the nuclear agreement can’t expect that rolling out Cheney is going to save the cause. When it comes to dire predictions based on scary intelligence, the former vice president wouldn’t seem to have the best track record.

Moments after Cheney’s speech came reports that the number of Senate Democrats supporting the Iran deal had climbed to 41 — more than enough to sustain a presidential veto of any congressional disapproval of the deal, and possibly enough to block such a disapproval resolution from clearing Congress. This came despite an all-out campaign by the once-feared American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its affiliates, which spent tens of millions of dollars to rally opposition; The Post called it the largest defeat for AIPAC in more than two decades. The deal’s survival also suggests Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extraordinary meddling in American politics backfired.
And now, as if to hammer nail into coffin, comes Cheney — angrily questioning “the veracity of the president’s claims” about the deal and labeling several Obama assertions “simply false.”

A lecture on veracity and falsehood from the man who asserted before the Iraq invasion that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted nuclear weapons ? The man who said hitting Iraq would strike “a major blow right” at the base of the 9/11 terrorists? The man who claimed that Iraq had “long-established ties with al Qaeda” and that it was “pretty well confirmed” that 9/11 mastermind Mohamed Atta met with senior Iraqi intelligence officials?

Most everybody — including former president George W. Bush’s brother, presidential candidate Jeb Bush — has come to acknowledge that, given the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the United States should not have gone to war in 2003. But not Cheney. When Thiessen relayed a question to him about whether containment of Saddam would have been better than military action, Cheney said “I disagree.”

He unabashedly made allegations against Iran Tuesday that he once made against Iraq, citing evidence of “an agreement between the Iranian government and al Qaeda.” Echoing the old warnings about Iraq’s “mushroom cloud,” he noted that a nuclear Iran could kill 6 million Jews in a day. He acknowledged that intelligence failed to predict the North Korea nuclear test when he was in office — but only to argue that there should be “serious concern” about Obama’s claim that it would take Iran a year to produce nuclear weapons.

There should be concern about Obama’s claims — but there should be even more about Cheney’s. He said, for example, that the deal “threatens the security of Europe” without acknowledging that European powers negotiated it. Dropping his longstanding quest to expand executive power, he said Congress should have seized the authority to ratify the deal.

Cheney said it’s a “false choice” to claim the alternative to the deal is war. But he went on to say that unless Iran makes much deeper concessions, “they must understand that the United States stands ready to take military action . . . Iran will not be convinced to abandon its program peacefully unless it knows it will face military action if it refuses to do so.”

And this isn’t war? In the immortal words of George W. Bush: “You can’t get fooled again.”
Twitter: @Milbank

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CHitler Embarasses Himself On Fox (Rev 13:10)

Fox News Embarrasses Dick Cheney On Iraq And Iran

The former vice president waved off numbers that showed Iran’s nuclear capacity grew rapidly under the Bush administration.
 
7 hours ago | Updated 7 hours ago

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday shrugged off the rapid growth of Iran’s nuclear capacity during the Bush years, insisting that the American invasion of Iraq had curbed Iranian nuclear ambitions.

“There was military action that had an impact on the Iranians when we took down Saddam Hussein,” Cheney said on “Fox News Sunday.” “There was a period of time when they stopped their program because they were afraid what we did to Saddam we were going to do to them next.”

The invasion of Iraq in fact deeply strengthened Iran’s hand in the region, ousting a traditional enemy of Iran and installing a new government far more sympathetic to the Iranian regime. Much of Iraq has effectively functioned as a client state of Iran for years.

Fox News host Chris Wallace pointed out to Cheney that Iran had no uranium enrichment centrifuges prior to the Iraq War, but had 5,000 of them by the time Bush and Cheney left office.

Cheney waved off the statistic. “I think we did a lot to deal with the arms control problem in the Middle East,” he said.

Cheney also claimed that the Iraq invasion forced Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi to dispose of his own weapons of mass destruction — a claim that was debunked several years ago. 

In 2006, Time magazine reported that Hussein’s ouster nearly derailed lengthy nuclear negotiations with Gaddafi. American and British leaders had been pressing since the Clinton years to cut a deal with Gaddafi that would require him to dispose of weapons of mass destruction. When Hussein was toppled, Time reported, Gaddafi nearly walked away from the talks, concerned that diplomacy with the United States would make him look weak in the face of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke about the shortcomings of the invasion of Iraq on “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

“The fact of the matter is, we did it right in the first Gulf War. We had to listen to arguments for years afterwards about, ‘Why didn’t you go to Baghdad?’ And the 2003 war came along and you saw why you didn’t want to go to Baghdad,” Powell said. “We had a clear mission, clearly defined and put resources against that mission and took out the Iraqi army in Kuwait, restored the government, what we set out to do.”

“Once you pull out the top of a government, unless there’s a structure under it to give security and structure to the society, you can expect a mess,” he added.

Cheney’s comments on Iraq came amid his criticism of President Barack Obama’s recent diplomatic deal that aims to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Cheney said the U.S. is a “loser” in the pact, while the Iranian regime is “the only winner.”

Supporters of the pact have noted that economic sanctions against Iran have not curbed its nuclear capacities, and that other nations will not be willing to enforce economic levies against Iran if the U.S. abandons the deal. They argue that rejecting Obama’s agreement would leave war as the only remaining tool to deal with a potential nuclear threat.

Dick CHITLER Says Iraq War Was Right! (Rev 13:10)

Dick Cheney: ‘We were right’ to invade Iraq

09/01/15 02:43 PM
By Zachary Roth

Dick Cheney just won’t let it go.

In a new book, the former vice president mounts a furious assault against President Obama’s foreign policy, which Cheney argues has damaged American security by retreating from a position of global leadership. And Cheney takes the obligatory shot at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the deadly attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya. But Cheney often seems more concerned with defending the disastrous foreign policy decisions of the Bush administration—from invading Iraq to the use of torture—made more than a decade ago.

In “Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America,” Cheney, writing with his daughter Liz Cheney, a former State Department official during the Bush administration, takes aim at the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, writing it will “guarantee an Iranian nuclear arsenal.” The Cheneys insist that invading Iraq was the right call, writing “things were in good shape” in the country when Obama took office. Oh, and they suggest that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden was probably a Russian spy.

Almost the first half of the book is devoted to defending Dick Cheney’s tarnished legacy as perhaps the most important figure in the Bush administration’s push for war in Iraq and its handling of the war on terror.

At one stage, the Cheneys write that “history will be the ultimate judge of our decision to liberate Iraq.” But just two pages later, as if unable to resist re-engaging the issue, they describe the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein as a “grave threat to the United States” before concluding: “We were right to invade and remove him from power.”

They even insist that U.S. troops “were in fact greeted as liberators,” just as Dick Cheney predicted before the invasion—a quote that Bush administration critics have frequently hung around his neck.
The Cheneys also offer a strained rationale for why, even though Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, the terror attacks still were a reason to invade Iraq. “[A]fter 9/11 … we had an obligation to do everything possible to prevent terrorists from gaining access to much worse weapons. Saddam’s Iraq was the most likely place for terrorists to gain access to and knowledge of such weapons.”

As for the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation program, “it worked,” the Cheneys write. “As we pieced together intelligence about al Qaeda in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the enhanced interrogation program was one of the most effective tools we had. It saved lives and prevented attacks.”

And, they claim, it’s a “falsehood” to say that the torture that occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison “represented official policy,” or “had something to do with or was related to America’s enhanced interrogation program.”

The prison at Guantanamo Bay “was and remains safe, secure, humane and necessary,” according to the Cheneys. And people who oppose the Bush administration’s controversial warrantless wiretapping program “will be accountable for explaining to the American people why they fought to make it more difficult for the United States government to effectively track the communications—and therefore the plans—of terrorists inside the United States,” they write.
Still, the thrust of the book is an attack on Obama’s foreign policy, which, the Cheneys argue, has made the U.S. less safe by failing to wield American power around the globe.

“President Obama has departed from the bipartisan tradition going back 75 years of maintaining America’s global supremacy and leadership,” the Cheneys write, calling the idea that that “America is to blame and her power must be restrained” the “touchstone of [Obama’s] ideology.”
With the Iran nuclear deal, Obama “is gambling America’s security on the veracity of the Mullahs in Tehran,” they write, calling it a “falsehood” that the pact will prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. “The truth is the opposite,” they write. “This agreement will guarantee an Iranian nuclear arsenal.”

Indeed, the Cheneys compare the deal to the Munich agreement of 1938, a frequently used example among conservatives of the dangers of appeasement.

“Hitler got Czechoslovakia,” the Cheneys write (in fact, at Munich, Hitler got the Sudetenland, an area of western Czechoslovakia mostly inhabited by German speakers). “The Mullahs in Tehran get billions of dollars and a pathway to a nuclear arsenal.”

The Cheneys also take the chance to go after Clinton on Benghazi, in an effort to reinforce questions about her character as she runs for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. They accuse her of “adopting a false narrative because it serves political purposes,” adding, “It is the difference between lying to the American people and dealing with them truthfully.”

Dick Cheney also recounts that a Pentagon official told him in a phone call that the administration’s “pivot to Asia” was “all about budgets.” From this Cheney writes: “President Obama was pretending the war on terror was over so that he wouldn’t have to continue to allocate significant military resources to the Middle East.”

“We’ll decline comment on second-hand anonymous quotes, but the President has been clear about the re-balance and its place in our national security. The re-balance to the Asia-Pacific region is based on a comprehensive assessment of long-term U.S. interests,” Defense Department spokesman William Urban told msnbc. “The security and prosperity of the United States depends on continued stability in the Asia-Pacific region, and therefore, the United States will stay fully engaged in the region to ensure that we continue to promote those interests.”

Perhaps the strangest charge in the book is the one about Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked a trove of classified documents before fleeing to Hong Kong, and, ultimately, Russia.
“Whether Snowden was a Russian operative at the time he stole the U.S. secrets is a subject of debate, although it is hard to conceive of his landing in Moscow as a coincidence,” the Cheneys write. Snowden has denied being a Russian spy.

Hey Dick: Your Iraq War Will Lead To First Use Of Nuclear Weapon Since Hiroshima And Nagasaki

 

Dick Cheney: Iran Deal Will Lead To First Use Of Nuclear Weapon Since Hiroshima And Nagasaki

“Nearly everything the president has told us about his Iranian agreement is false.”

1 hour ago | Updated 1 hour ago

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney launched a broad attack against President Barack Obama’s foreign policy in an excerpt of a forthcoming book that was published in The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

Both Cheneys accused Obama of lying about the Iran nuclear deal and said that the agreement would lead to the first use of a nuclear weapon since 1945.

“Nearly everything the president has told us about his Iranian agreement is false. He has said it will prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, but it will actually facilitate and legitimize an Iranian nuclear arsenal,” they wrote. “The Obama agreement will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclear-arms race in the Middle East and, more than likely, the first use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

The Obama administration has aggressively defended the deal, saying that it cuts off all pathways to a nuclear bomb. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that a better deal simply does not exist.
The Cheneys also blamed the rise of terrorist groups like ISIS on the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2011 –– a talking point that Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has also used.
“He has abandoned Iraq, leaving a vacuum that is being tragically and ominously filled by our enemies. He is on course to forsake Afghanistan as well,” the Cheneys wrote.

But former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno, who was one of the architects of the 2007 surge and a top official in Iraq, has disputed that the decision to leave Iraq was Obama’s.
“I remind everybody that us leaving at the end of 2011 was negotiated in 2008 by the Bush administration. That was always the plan, we had promised them that we would respect their sovereignty,” Odierno said at a press conference earlier this month.

The Cheneys’ book, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America, will be available Sept. 1.

Hitler Torches Iran Deal (Revelation 13:10)

 

Dick Cheney torches Iran deal: ‘What the hell is the president thinking?’

COLIN CAMPBELL Jul. 15, 2015, 8:25 AM

Former Vice President Dick Cheney passionately denounced the Iran nuclear deal in a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity on Tuesday night.

After Hannity asked Cheney why President Barack Obama wants the agreement, the former vice president bluntly said that he didn’t know.

“You asked the key question, Sean. And that is: What the hell is the president thinking of when he thinks this is a great deal? And I frankly simply do not understand. I haven’t met anyone who can explain it to me,” he said.

President Barack Obama announced Tuesday morning that the US and other powers had struck a deal with Iran to curb its ability to produce a nuclear weapon. In exchange, Iran earned a number of concessions, including the rollback of economic sanctions.

But Cheney, like many Republican foreign-policy hawks, has a litany of concerns about the agreement, which he said would only lead to Iran getting a nuclear bomb if implemented. Cheney predicted that other countries would then arm themselves with nuclear weapons in response.

“I can’t help but just shake my head,” Cheney said of Obama. “The one thing that really disturbed me was when he said we have quote ‘stopped the proliferation of nuclear weapons.’ That’s a lie. The fact of the matter is the situation we’ve got, when Iran ends up with a nuclear weapon, that is bound to lead to others in the region to protect themselves.”

Cheney had a dire warning about what would happen after other countries build up their nuclear arsenals.

“That will in fact I think put us closer to the actual use of nuclear weapons than we’ve been at any time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II,” he said.

How Quickly That Dick Forgets: The Iraq War Made Nuclear War More Likely (Rev 13:10)

Dick Cheney: Iran deal makes ‘actual use of nuclear weapons’ more likely

By Nick Gass
7/15/15 6:49 AM EDT

Not since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly 70 years ago has the world been closer to the use of nuclear weapons, former Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday night. And if Iran ends up with nuclear weapons, Cheney said, it would compel others in the region to work toward getting their own.

As for the nuclear deal with Iran, Cheney called it “a lie” on the part of President Barack Obama to claimed that the accord would stop further nuclear proliferation.

“What Obama has done has, in effect, sanctioned the acquisition by Iran of nuclear capability. And it can be a few years down the road. It doesn’t make any difference. It’s a matter of months until we’re going to see a situation where other people feel they have to defend themselves by acquiring their own capability,” Cheney said. “And that will, in fact, I think put us closer to use — actual use of nuclear weapons than we’ve been at any time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.”

Cheney added that nuclear ambitions in the region posed some of the biggest problems during his time in the White House, noting the 1981 Israeli destruction of an Iraqi nuclear reactor, the 1991 U.S. destruction of the Iraqi nuclear program during Operation Desert Storm and the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, which he said led to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi giving up his country’s nuclear program.

 
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/dick-cheney-iran-nuclear-deal-reaction-120137.html#ixzz3g1XwXTQr

Let’s not forget the beast from the sea (Rev 13:10)

  
A reminder of Iraq mess
ROY LEHMAN

I saw the other day where former President George W. Bush’s reputation had been rehabilitated from the 22 percent approval rating he had when he left office to an astoundingly high rate of 52 percent today. I was reminded of the collective amnesia of Americans, which the politicians can always count on to ply them with their propaganda.

Remember back in 2007 when Bush was praised for bringing some stability to his newly minted sovereign nation project of Iraq due to his “surge” of troops into the country? Lost in all that pro-Bush propaganda was the decision of Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, playing the long game, to have his militia stand down and the Sunni “awakening” in Anbar province, which was really nothing more than bribes paid to the Sunni leaders of the tribes to Anbar province for some stability.
Then forward to 2008, near the merciful end of Bush’s second term, working with his handpicked prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, (Ayad Allawi couldn’t work due to him being a Sunni in the newly established democracy with a Shiite majority and it turned out Ahmed Chalabi, his prime choice, was aligned with Iran) Bush dodged a couple of shoes as he and Maliki announced that they had achieved an agreement for all U.S. forces to be out of Iraq by December 2011.

This little factoid seems to have gone down the public’s amnesia hole as the “conventional wisdom” in Republican World is that President Barack Obama pulled the troops out too soon, which is a bald-faced lie. To do what the right-wing wanted, leave troops in Iraq, would have meant Obama would have had to countermand the wishes of Bush’s newly minted sovereign nation while putting American military at risk of the Iraqi justice system due to Bush’s and Obama’s inability to negotiate a status of forces agreement with Maliki. Worldwide, America has a SOFA with every host nation to protect our military.

Call it a can of worms or Pandora’s box, but the instability in the Middle East was birthed by Bush. ISIS is a risk to the region and Obama is wise to try to get the regional powers to handle the situation as ISIS is nothing more than a minimal threat to America’s security.

Obama’s injecting more troops into Iraq is not the right answer as the Western world has no answers to a 1,200-year-old religious schism. More Bush-style bribes for stability in Anbar might work again. Everybody up for trading stability in Iraq for new infrastructure in the U.S.?

On another “bright” note, Bush’s brother Jeb, possible Republican nominee for president, thinks we should be sending more troops to Europe.

I’m hoping Jim Webb joins the presidential race. He is a logical thinking, pragmatic leader.
The writer lives in Woolwich.

The Beast Of The Sea Speaks Blasphemous Words (Rev 13:6)

Cheney: Obama Is ‘Worst President in My Lifetime’

Former VP speaks to ‘Playboy’ about race, torture, military

By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff

Posted Mar 18, 2015 8:37 AM CDT

 

(Newser) – Dick Cheney spends his days sipping lattes in custom-ordered Starbucks cups surrounded by military history and political biography books in his study in Virginia—and apparently brewing over how President Obama has ruined the country. In an interview with Playboy, the former vice president describes the changes since his time in office.

• On the military: Obama has “done enormous damage to the military” and is “crippling the capacity of future presidents to deal with future crises,” Cheney says. Already, the country’s ability to deal with terrorist groups “is rapidly diminishing. I look at Barack Obama and I see the worst president in my lifetime, without question,” he says. “We are going to pay a hell of a price just trying to dig out from under his presidency.” 

• On Obama and race: “To say that we criticize, or that I criticize, Barack Obama or Eric Holder because of race, I just think it’s obviously not true,” he says. “My view of it is the criticism is merited because of performance—or lack of performance, because of incompetence. It hasn’t got anything to do with race.” He adds, “I think they’re playing the race card.”

• On Ferguson: Cheney says Michael Brown’s killing shouldn’t be thrown “all over on the burden of race, or racial inequality, or racial discrimination.” He adds, “I don’t think it is about race. I think it is about an individual who conducted himself in a manner that was almost guaranteed to provoke an officer trying to do his duty.” He adds he’s “disappointed” with the Obama administration’s response to protests.

• On the conflict in Ukraine: “If you want to get Putin’s attention, you really ought to whack him economically, and that’s not just a matter of sanctions,” Cheney says. “It’s also a matter of going after his energy stuff. What’s happening to oil prices now, frankly, is a blessing for us, because it really puts the screws to Putin. He’s so dependent on oil, in terms of his economy, that we ought to do everything we can to encourage that.”

• On Guantanamo and torture: “We did what we felt was necessary and needed to be done” after 9/11 “to make sure it never happened again,” the former VP says. “And we bent over backward to adhere to the law, to not do something that was, quote, ‘torture,'” he says. “So I feel very good about it.” He adds Guantanamo is still open because it’s a place to keep the “really bad guys … If anything, we’ve let too many of them go.”

Flame Stopped Iran, Cheney Stopped Flame (Revelation 13:6)

Former CIA covert officer Valerie Plame Wilson coming to Montgomery on Tuesday

 By Amber Sutton | asutton@al.com
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on January 23, 2015 at 11:54 AM, updated January 23, 2015 

 

Former CIA officer Valerie Plame, right, and her husband former ambassador Joseph Wilson (AP)

Former CIA covert officer Valerie Plame Wilson will speak during an event hosted by the Alabama World Affairs Council on Tuesday in Montgomery. 

 

Wilson was instrumental in ensuring that Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons and played a leading role in uncovering the black-market nuclear weapons network set up by Pakistan’s nuclear scientist AQ Khan.

  Her memoir, “Fair Game,” was the basis of a movie starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. It told the story of her outing as a U.S. spy, an effort orchestrated by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

That Dick Is Full of Crap, & Vice Versa (Revelation 13:5)

Cheney: ‘The report’s full of crap’

By Eric Bradner, CNN

updated 3:28 PM EST, Thu December 11, 2014

 

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Dick Cheney called the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA interrogation techniques a “terrible piece of work”
• He said he has no regrets about the tactics used after the 9/11 terrorist attacks

Washington (CNN) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney called a Senate panel’s report on U.S. interrogation tactics during George W. Bush’s administration is “deeply flawed” and a “terrible piece of work.”

“The report’s full of crap,” he said in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday evening.

Bush’s Republican vice president insisted that the Central Intelligence Agency’s rough tactics — which the report said included mock executions, beatings, “rectal rehydration” and feeding, sleep deprivation and more — helped the United States “catch the bastards who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11.”

“It did in fact produce actionable intelligence that was vital in the success of keeping the country safe from further attacks,” he said.

Asked specifically about the rectal rehydration instance detailed in the report, Cheney said: “I don’t know anything about that specific instance — I can’t speak to that.”

He also said he hadn’t actually read the report. Its full 6,000 pages haven’t been released, but a lengthy summary was issued Tuesday. Cheney said he’d “seen parts of it. I read summaries of it.”

Contrary to the report’s conclusion that Bush didn’t know the extent of the CIA’s efforts, Cheney said the President was involved in discussions about the interrogation techniques, and that Bush even pointed out some of those conversations in a book he wrote after leaving office.

He said he has no regrets about the tactics used after the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks.

“I think what needed to be done was done,” Cheney said. “I think we were perfectly justified in doing it. And I’d do it again in a minute.”

The Bush Administration Was The Beast Of The Sea (Revelation 13:1-10)

National Politics Bears No Stamp Of God’s Approval

Published: Thursday, December 4, 2014 at 12:01 a.m.

Last Modified: Wednesday, December 3, 2014 at 10:56 p.m.

Richard Hilliard’s recent letter states that God has given the U.S. a second chance [“God Has Given U.S. 2nd Chance,” Nov. 16].

I don’t believe God has anything to do with it. He would not put his seal on anything as corrupt as politics. Our problems are not the fault of President Barack Obama.

His predecessor was the beginning of our problems. He and his leader R.B. Cheney thought they would look good in the historical record if they were wartime presidents. So they got a few other countries to form a so-called coalition and talked the American people into believing that Iraq had nuclear weapons of mass destruction that would reach the U.S.

Quoting part of Cheney’s speech for invading Iraq, “We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons,” when, in reality, he had very few small arms, let alone weapons of mass destruction of any kind.

The Iraq war cost 4,500 young American soldiers their lives, and many others were maimed and crippled for life. Countless Iraqi people lost their lives. The cost in money for this bogus war is almost $2 trillion.

Did God approve of this? The writer speaks of taking our country back. I ask where to? The Dark Ages? In my 84 years, I don’t recall our country being taken from us. This country doesn’t belong to one political party or another.

Religion should have no place in government. It says so in the U.S. Constitution. The God I’ve been taught to believe in would not condone what’s going on in these fanatical religious organizations that try to claim our county has been blessed by God.

The U.S. has been blessed by the hardworking immigrants who came here to escape religious tyranny.

AMOS MERRITT

That Dick (The Beast of the Sea) Is Finally Right About Something

That Dick Is Finally Right

By KENDALL BREITMAN | 8/21/14 7:30 AM EDT Updated: 8/21/14 11:24 AM EDT

 

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is predicting that the beheading of American journalist James Foley is just the start of more violence if President Barack Obama doesn’t “deal with this crisis” in Iraq.

“The ISIS organization in charge is very much a threat to the United States, to our friends and allies, not just in the Middle East, but in Europe, and when you see them behead an American reporter, as they did today, that’s obviously a terrible development,” Cheney said Wednesday on Fox News’ “Hannity.” “But magnify that a million times over because that is what’s in store for the rest of the world if we don’t deal with this crisis.”

On Tuesday, a video was posted on YouTube by men claiming to be part of the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The graphic video shows Foley’s murder and includes threats to the life of American journalist Steven Joel Sotloff if Obama does not end the airstrikes in Iraq. On Wednesday, the National Security Council said the video is authentic.

“I think every single day that goes by [Obama] is finding that there’s a bigger and bigger gulf between his hoped-for view of the world and reality,” Cheney said. “I think the danger is enormous, I don’t think the president understands it.”

Cheney commented that he believes Obama’s view of the world is “fundamentally flawed” and that his aversion to military action has made other world leaders view the president as “weak and ineffective,” saying “there is no question … he is viewed as perhaps the weakest president in my lifetime.”

Because of these perceived weaknesses, Cheney argued that while Americans may be war-weary, sometimes military action is “absolutely necessary” in order to prevent more attacks.

“I am absolutely certain that someday there will be another mass casualty attack against the United States,” Cheney said. “Except next time they will have far deadlier weapons.”

Mike Morell, who was CIA deputy director when Foley was captured in Syria in 2012, also warned about the threat from ISIL on Thursday.

“If an ISIS member showed up in a mall in the United States tomorrow with an AK-47 and killed a number of Americans, I would not be surprised,” he said on “CBS This Morning.” “Over the long term, I worry that this group could present a 9/11 style threat. It took Al Qaeda two-and-a-half years to plan 9/11. It would not surprise me to know that ISIS may be thinking about going in that kind of direction. Short-term threat, long-term threat.”

The Beast Of The Sea Can’t Shut Up! (Revelation 13:5)

Dick Cheney: The world’s a mess, and it’s Obama’s fault
By Dr. Stefan Grobe
14/07 23:10 CET

Proud and Arrogant Words

More than five years after leaving office, former US Vice President Dick Cheney sees the world in bad shape, especially the Middle East, and he blames President Obama (again) for most of it.

Crises in Syria, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Ukraine and elsewhere, nuclear capabilities of Iran soon, rapid spread of terrorism: “I don’t like what I see happening”, Cheney said at a lunch hosted by Politico Magazine at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington on Monday.

For Cheney, Obama with his lackluster leadership is the prime suspect responsible for this mess. “He has created a situation in which our friends in the region are scared to death”, Cheney said, quoting Israeli and Arab “friends I have known for 25 years.”

Also speaking were Cheney’s wife Lynne and his daughter Liz. Just minutes into the conversation, things got nasty in the packed ballroom.

Protesters disrupted the on-stage event, shouting that Cheney needed to be held accountable for the war in Iraq.

“Dick Cheney — war criminal!” one woman shouted, holding a pink sign and handcuffs. The moderator tried to move on, but the woman continued shouting. “You destroyed Iraq, you’ll destroy this country!” and “Dick Cheney should be arrested!”

The woman, who belonged to the anti-war group Code Pink, was eventually escorted out by security agents. But just minutes later, other activists sitting in the audience repeated her protest.

Despite these awkward moments, the Cheneys stuck to their talking points during the discussion.
The former Vice President defended the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, calling it “absolutely the right thing to do”. President Obama inherited a stable situation in that country from the Bush administration, but his desire for a full withdrawal of US troops has led to the situation today, Cheney said.

Cheney weighed in heavily on that decision by Obama, deriding him for believing he “can go in and declare the war is over.”

Cheney has been harshly critical of the current administration’s foreign policy throughout Obama’s presidency, and has chimed in recently over the deteriorating situation in Iraq, where militants from the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant have taken over much of the northern and central parts of the country.

Cheney’s recent remarks and the creation of a political action committee to help advance his daughter Liz’ political ambitions have sparked a barrage of attacks from his political opponents and the media.

“When the Cheneys urge more of the same, it isn’t just as if they’ve missed the last decade, it’s also as if they never learned about opportunity costs. America should never again heed the foreign-policy advice of such incompetent analysts”, wrote The Atlantic monthly.

“I don’t think Obama ever had any intention of leaving anybody behind,” he added, saying that he thought Obama wasn’t fully committed to a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq given his desire to get all troops out.

Cheney also ripped Obama for having “dramatically reduced the military,” and called cuts at the Pentagon “outrageous.” He then made a call for the next president to rebuild the military.

“Turn around the whole trend with the United State military,” Cheney said. “That ought to be our top priority for spending. Not food stamps, not highways, or anything else. Your number one responsibility as president is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. He’s the commander-in-chief and he’s absolutely devastating the United States military today.”

What a Dick… He Is Finally Right About WMD

Iraq War redux: Dick Cheney warns Fox that nuclear weapons are ‘spreading’ to terrorists

Dick and Nuclear Terrorism

By David Edwards
Wednesday, June 25, 2014 10:48 EDT

Former Vice President Dick Cheney showed up on Fox News on Wednesday to make a familiar case for going back to war in Iraq: Nuclear weapons are “spreading” to extremists across the globe.

In recent weeks the al Qaeda splinter group ISIS has taken advantage of a power vacuum left after the U.S. invaded Iraq to take over large parts of the country, giving Cheney and other architects of the 2003 invasion an opportunity to use some of their original talking points for military action.

Cheney’s recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal stopped just short of accusing President Barack Obama of treason, saying that he had been determined to take the United States “down a notch” before leaving office.

“Defeating them will require a strategy—not a fantasy,” Cheney wrote. “It will require sustained difficult military, intelligence and diplomatic efforts—not empty misleading rhetoric. It will require rebuilding America’s military capacity—reversing the Obama policies that have weakened our armed forces and reduced our ability to influence events around the world.”

After a campaign of television interviews failed to make his case against Obama, Cheney was back on Fox News on Wednesday to play the same nuclear weapons card that he used in 2003.

“The focus shouldn’t be just on Iraq,” he insisted. “It’s indicative of a much broader problem. We’ve had — The Rand Corporation just recently published a study that shows there’s been a 58 percent increase in the number of al Qaeda-type terrorist groups in the last four years. Fifty-eight percent! Doubling the number of terrorists roughly, and they’re spreading out from West Africa all across North Africa to East Africa, up through the Middle East, all the way around to Indonesia.”

“And the other problem, of course, is the developing possibility that sooner or later some of them will get their hands on deadlier weapons,” the former vice president added.

While Cheney was taking a breath, Fox News host Elisabeth Hasselbeck tossed him a softball
“Are you indicating that we could be on track for something worse than 9/11?” she asked.

“I think that’s a possibility,” he declared. “You know, I can’t say at this point specifically when something like that might happen. But it would be foolish of us to ignore the extent to which there are people who — terrorist-sponsoring states who have in fact tried to provide nuclear technology.”

“The North Koreans, for example, built a nuclear reactor in the Syrian dessert,” Cheney continued. “We’ve also had testimony from the man who created the Pakistani [nuclear] program publicly, A.Q. Khan, that the North Koreans bribed the Pakistanis for the latest enrichment technology.”

“So, it’s spreading. And access to those kind of capabilities, I think, is on an increase.”

In 2002, Cheney had argued that the United States must attack Iraq because Saddam Hussein would have nuclear weapons “fairly soon.”

“We do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon,” Cheney told NBC later that year.

President George W. Bush also used similar talking points, warning that the U.S. could not wait for proof of Cheney’s claims because “the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

And then in his 2003 State of the Union Address, Bush included the now-infamous “16 words” that put the country on a path to war: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

The Beast of the Sea, Dick Cheney, Speaks (Revelation 13)

Speech, Dick Cheney Talks Bombing Iran and GOP Donors Applaud

Revelation 13:1-10

What do former Vice President Dick Cheney, billionaire megadonor Sheldon Adelson, and Republican activists and funders talk about—and applaud—when they’re behind closed doors at a Las Vegas hotel? Bombing Iran.
This past weekend, the Republican Jewish Coalition held its spring leadership meeting at Adelson’s Venetian hotel, where several possible 2016 contenders, including ex-Gov. Jeb Bush and current Govs. Chris Christie, Scott Walker, and John Kasich, showed up to kiss the ring of the casino magnate, who’s looking to bankroll a viable Republican presidential candidate. Though the heavy-on-Israel speeches of the White House wannabes were open to the press, the keynote address delivered by Cheney on Saturday night was off-limits to reporters and the public. But Mother Jones has obtained a recording of Cheney’s talk, during which he once again derided President Barack Obama on foreign policy, blasted the isolationists within his own party, assailed critics of the National Security Agency, and seemingly endorsed the idea of an Israeli strike against Iran.
Speaking about the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon, Cheney dismissed Obama’s negotiations with Tehran, and he recalled a dinner meeting he had in 2007 with Israeli General Amos Yadlin. Yadlin had flown in the Israeli Defense Force’s mission in 1981 that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, and he was the country’s military intelligence chief in 2007 when the Israel Defense Forces obliterated Syria’s nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region. Recalling his conversation with Yadlin, Cheney said, “He looked across the table over dinner, and he said, ‘Two down, one to go.’ I knew exactly what he meant.”
“One to go” was an obvious reference to bombing Iran’s nuclear program. The crowd responded approvingly with laughter and applause. (Last October, Adelson publicly proposed that the US drop a nuclear bomb in the Iranian desert to show Tehran what will happen to Iran if it develops nuclear weapons.)
During his behind-closed-doors talk, Cheney took multiple shots at Obama. The former vice president said Obama has been a bust at home and abroad, proving to be a weak commander-in-chief and failing to project strength around the world. “The bottom line is,” Cheney groused, “the United States’ position in [the Middle East] is worse than at any time in my lifetime.” He added, “It’s reached the point where Israel and Egypt, [the United Arab] Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan are closer to one another—imagine that!—than any of them is to us…Nobody who’s been our friend in the past any longer has any sense of trust in we’ll keep our commitments, that we’ll be there in a crisis when they need us. On the other hand, none of our adversaries need fear us.” Noting that the chief responsibility of a president is to protect the United States against “all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Cheney claimed that today that charge ”is not being pursued in any kind of coherent manner.”
Without naming names, Cheney also slammed the less hawkish members of his own party—such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)—for believing that the United States “can afford to turn its back on that part of the world,” referring to the Middle East. “One of the things that concerns me first about the campaign, that I’m worried about,” he said, “is what I sense to be an increasing strain of isolationism, if I can put it in those terms, in our own party. It’s not taking over, by any means, but there is without question a body of thought now that’s supported by many Republicans and some candidates that the United States can afford to turn its back on that part of the world.” Cheney complained that “some candidates” think that the Middle East is “not our problem…Bring the boys home. There’s no reason in the world for us to be involved in that part of the world.” But, he remarked, “anybody who thinks back on the problems of 9/11″ knows “it makes absolutely no sense at all for us to contemplate that course of action.”
Cheney devoted much of his speech to defending the National Security Agency and its massive collection programs. There is the belief, he said, “that we have created in the National Security Agency this monster bureaucracy that’s reading everybody’s mail, listening to everybody’s phone calls, infringing upon our civil liberties and civil rights. Hogwash.” He claimed that there has not been a single case of NSA abusing its authority. (Cheney must have missed this and this.) And he asserted that if these programs had been in place, “it probably would’ve allowed us to stop 9/11.” Not surprisingly, he blamed the NSA’s current woes on Obama: “We don’t have a president who can stand up and defend the program. Nobody believes him—for good reason. Look what he did with health care.”