Liz Cheney's Compulsive Lies : Pathological or Hereditary?

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There are many reasons why a person would lie, but to cover-up something is always, more often then not, the reason for the attempt. Across the vast abyss of the world wide web, you can find an endless supply of examples where Liz Cheney has just flat out lied, embellished, and repeated statements that are just flat out untrue .

Pathological liars often exaggerate issues. In this case, a person may not be lying deliberately. He/she would think and believe in their lies completely. A pathological liar would thus concoct lies in public to make people believe new stories just like Ms. Cheney did.

Ms. Cheney was quite clear when she said : "When President Bush used to do it, he'd do it without the cameras."

Now, either Ms. Cheney just made that narrative up as the words left her mouth, but made the mistake of assuming that all President's have made trips to Dover to honor our fallen soldiers.

She couldn't have confused it with another airfield or anything of that sort since George W. Bush never, and I mean NEVER went to be there for the brave men who where making their final trip home form a war they fought and died in at his command.

It's so easy for people to be frustrated with President Obama for not just shipping off 20,000 more men without stopping to make sure that we have a plan for getting in, executing the strategy, and getting the hell out. Or if that country even has a government.

You know what? If some Veteren who has been on a battle field wanted to put in his two cents in, that would be one thing, but for Dick Fucking Cheney and his Bi-Polar daughter to even open their pie holes after being caught in lie-after-lie and now just making making it up off the top of your head, it's a slap in the face.

Pathological liars often exaggerate issues. In this case, a person may not be lying deliberately. He or she would think and believe in their lies completely. A pathological liar would thus concoct lies in public to make people believe new stories very much like the way Ms. Cheney just concocted a story about President Bush not having any cameras around over at Dover when he went to pay his respects to our fallen soldiers.

It was another narrative that was now out there in the minds of Americans that she and daddy could use to make President Obama look like an opportunists.

Come on Liz! - If going with cameras after less then a year in office is bad, what is not going at all with or without cameras after nearly 8 fucking years. You said it yourself that every Commander In Cheif should do whatever they can to honor our military folks. Remember? - That's what you said Liz. Because these men have made the untimate sacrifice for thier country. Remember? - Those are your words Liz. But you see, here's the problem. Your fucking dad never went! - George Bush never went! - Neither of them went and they've had thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands of opportunities to do so. THEY DIDN'T GO! - And you have the balls to say that George Bush did when you obviously didn't have a clue if he did or not.

But now we get it! - This lie is the proverbial bell that you cannot un-ring. You said "The way that Presdient Bush did it, he did it without cameras." Your talking about a process that George Bush used to do something that he has never done before.

You were not sure if he had or hadn't ever done that, but when you're live on the radio ,you had just laid out the bad version for Barack Obama and now you needed one of those "What would George Bush have done." and when you didn't know the answer with any amount of certainty, You frickin' made it up! - What's up with that?

Ms. Cheney.

To quote Joe Wilson,

Sen. Paul Wellstones Death Not An Accident?

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I ran across this video and was amazed by it's implication. I had the pleasure of meeting Sen. Wellstone in 1996 at the corner of 9th and Marquette one day as I was leaving work.

While there has always those that never believed that Sen. Wellstones plane crash was an accident, they were quickly disregarded as kooks.

However, fast-forward nearly a decade and look at the Mafioso mentality that has been uncovered and running rampant within the ranks of the Republican Party. We now know just a taste of what has taken place in the Bush - Cheney Crime Syndicate, so it is now a safe assumption that anything is possible when it comes to these crazy mother fuckers.

Now it seems that the Fox News Channel is more then happy to openly pick up the torch where Cheney left it still burning and ready to destroy everything in it's path.

INTERVIEW WITH WELLSTONE:

WELLSTONE ASSINATION THEORY:

SNL's "Rock Obama" Skit Here For The Duration.

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NBC's Saturday Night Live has been poking fun at our presidents going back to Chevy Chase's clumsey rendition of Gerald R. Ford.

They had fun with The elder President Bush and his 2nd in command Dan Quayle. They really gave it to Bill Clinton and every once in a while they'd take a shot at Vice President Albert Gore.

However, in the case of the unsophistocated George W. Bush and his diabolical sidekick, Richard B. Cheney, the material just kept coming fast and furious for all years of thier Christian Jihad.

SNL's been having fun with President Barack H. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden going back well before the election.



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Cheney: Free Pass For CIA Interrogators Gone Wild

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Former New York governor George Pataki who was in Manhattan when the World Trade Center was hit, used the opportunity to criticize the decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate CIA interrogators who went beyond their legal guidance, saying it "jeopardizes" national security:

When the question of the day was the overall legitmacy of the legal opinions drafted by the DOJ's Office of Legal Council, every supporter touted the unambigious language that clearly defined the boundries and limitations for these enhanced interrogation tactics. However, now that he know that some CIA Interrogators went beyond the legal guidance outlined in those opinions, George Pataki and former Vice President Dick Cheney are now of the opinion that investigating even those that went beyond those clearly defined limits would "jeapordize" national security.

"Placing CIA officials who were acting in the aftermath of the worst attacks against our country and civilians in our history in possible criminal jeopardy years after the fact is in my mind a horrible decision. It jeopardizes our ability to continue to effectively protect our country against those who hate us and want to attack us again."

Oddly, Pataki claimed that his disapproval of the investigation sprung from a concern for the rule of law. "We must make sure we obey the rule of law and act in ways that are not just legal but moral," said Pataki. "But now, years after the fact, to consider charges is wrong for our country, wrong for our security and wrong for the entire world that believes in the rule of law." -

President Bush's war policy has taken this country so far into the abyss that he's left the Republican Party with the impossible task of trying to defend the undefendable at all cost. It has made honesty, integrity, and logic obsolete and no longer compatable with public discourse.

Instead, Bush defenders now have to rely on tender notions, contridiction, and prefaced statements to offer up even a flimsey argument. If you look at Pataki's statement above, he could have said that "Placing CIA officials in possible criminal jeopardy years after the fact is in my mind a horrible decision." But the right has lost the luxury of being direct and to the point. They have to sell everything now by making it a threat to national security or plain old unpatriotic.

Instead, Pataki had to add a sentance within a sentance as an excuse. So now it reads like "Placing CIA officials who were acting in the aftermath of the worst attacks against our country and civilians in our history in possible criminal jeopardy years after the fact is in my mind a horrible decision." Oh...so they broke the law while acting in the aftermath of the worst attack against our country. Well shit! - That's different then! - We can't have the rule of law getting in the way of fighting a war and torturing our prisoners.

When we start ignoring the rule of law or allowing public opinon to determine when it should or shouldn't apply, that is when we jeapordize national security. When we start to rationalize criminal acts based on the circumstances under which they were committed, that's when he jeapordize national security. When we begin to excuse criminal acts based on a flimsey rationalization that it jeapordizes our ability to effectively protect our country against those who hate us and want to attack us again, we're just a hop, skip, and a jump away from becoming a rogue nation.

It's quite clear now that to people like Former Gov. Pataki and Former Vice President Dick Cheney, that there are no limits or boundries to anything done in the name of national security. With a new chapter in the Bush-Cheney saga leaking out of the CIA like a book of the month club, I fear that it will not be long before we learn that what we already know is just the tip of the iceberg.

I fear that some really bad Deer-Hunter kind of shit has gone down at these secret prisons and that Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney's magical history tour actually had fuck-all to do with waterboarding. In a few years time, waterboarding will be a tender notion compared to random execution and negligent homicide in the process of "enhanced interrogation" People like Dick Cheney don't jump into CYA mode to the extent that he has just because we sprinkled some fucking water on someones face. Give me a break!

Chico Brisbane

Liz Cheney: SUCK MY DICK CHENEY!

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Liz Cheney, the biggest cheerleader for her father and former Vice President Dick Cheney, has now racked up more airtime thus far into Barack Obama’s administration then her father has in the 8 years he was in office. However, with each passing day, with each newly released CIA, DOJ, or IG report, it is clear that Cheney and the Bush Administration’s actions are beyond any rational defense. Also clear is that Ms. Cheney shares the same disconnect with honesty and integrity as her father.

Ms. Cheney has gone from playing fast and loose with the facts, to ignoring them completely. With newly released information, Liz Cheney has been relegated to sticking to a set of talking points that not only have no basis in fact, but no longer reside within the realm of possibility. They are simply tender notions that both Cheney’s hang onto in the childish hope that if they say them enough, maybe they’ll become the truth.

Sunday, on ABC's "This Week," Liz Cheney’s commentary was riddled with the sort of misstatements, obfuscations and downright lies that have now become a staple of her TV performances as well as the “shit eating” grin as pictured above.

When the discussion turned to Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to investigate the CIA's interrogation practices used on suspected terrorism suspects during the Bush administration, Cheney adamantly argued against the probe. She said, "But this investigation has already been done. Career prosecutors looked this at for five years. They decided not to prosecute except in one case where a contractor has been convicted and is in jail."

The Justice Department's ethics office, the Office of Professional Responsibility, which handles attorney misconduct, recommended that Holder revisit nearly 12 prisoner abuse cases. This clearly suggests that the OPR is not satisfied with the previous investigations into the cases that occurred during the Bush administration. As, according to the Justice Department Web site, the OPR “is responsible for investigating allegations of misconduct involving Department attorneys,” it is likely the office concluded that the Bush-era attorneys who made the previous decisions erred in some way.

During her appearance on ABC, Cheney also said directly that waterboarding "isn't torture." However, those in the Bush administration privately acknowledged that waterboarding was torture and President Obama has said it definitely violates the Geneva Conventions -- as has Republican Sen. John McCain. There seems to be near-universal agreement that waterboarding is, in fact, torture.

In a video made by ABC of the round-table participants talking after the show, Cheney then invoked the "ticking time bomb" scenario to justify using "enhanced interrogation techniques" and said that torture had worked in the past to prevent attacks on the U.S. However, recently released documents on the CIA's use of torture on detainees did not show that torture worked.

From just mid-May to early June, Cheney appeared on television news programs at least 22 times. And nearly every time she's been on, she's taken the opportunity to criticize President Obama -- but has often done so by reiterating factually dubious claims or flat-out lies. As MSNBC's Rachel Maddow quipped in June, "Liz Cheney is still on TV -- making news by apparently making stuff up." Yet, when asked why Cheney is continually booked on MSNBC, despite her problems with the truth, a network spokesperson called Cheney a "great guest."
Indeed. Here's a look at some of the recent times Cheney has strayed from the truth:

On July 21, Cheney defended the Birther movement on CNN's "Larry King Live" -- despite the fact that those behind the movement and their claims about President Obama's birth certificate have been thoroughly debunked.

On July 13, when it was revealed that former Vice President Cheney directed the CIA to keep information on a secret program to assassinate al-Qaida leaders from Congress for eight years, some Democrats called for an investigation into the matter. In response, Liz Cheney misrepresented what Democrats wanted to look into and told the Washington Times, "I am really surprised that the Democrats decide that that’s what they want to fight over. I mean, if they want to go to the American people and say that they disagree with the notion that we ought to be capturing and killing al-Qaida leaders, I think it’s just going to prove to the American people one more time why they can’t trust the Democrats with our national security."
During an appearance on CNN on June 10, Cheney blasted Obama for his foreign policy positions. She said, "I would say one of the things that is troubling to Americans, I think, is the extent to which this administration is focused on the president's popularity overseas. We've now seen several different occasions when he's been on the international trips, where he's not willing to say, flat out, 'I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe unequivocally, unapologetically, America is the best nation that ever existed in history, and clearly that exists today.'"

However, as the Washington Monthly's Steve Benen pointed out at the time, on April 5, Obama in fact stated clearly, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I'm enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world."

Salon's Joan Walsh took her on for a variety of false claims during an appearance on CNN on June 9. Cheney argued that Obama's decision to close Guantánamo and possibly bring the detainees still held there to U.S. soil to stand trial would "make us less safe." Walsh pointed out that in 2006, President Bush had advocated for the very same thing, which Cheney denied, despite all evidence to the contrary. Walsh also discussed the numerous former Bush officials who are staunchly in favor of closing Guantánamo even as Cheney tried to depict the closing of the prison as a completely partisan decision.

On June 4, Cheney appeared on NBC and said that her father never made a link between 9/11 and Iraq in justifying the decision of the U.S. to oust Saddam Hussein from power. This is flatly false.

More CIA Documents Fail To Back Up Cheney's Torture Claim

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For what I hope is the last time, former Vice President Dick Cheney has had his claims about his torture policy shot down and yet again not substantiated by another CIA memo released. The former Vice President needs to focus on which federal prison he’ll be spending time in and not spinning an alternate reality, which he has created for himself since leaving office.

On Monday, the CIA released two memos from 2004 and 2005, which Vice President Cheney said would “show specifically what we gained” from the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation program. As people like Spencer Ackerman noted, those documents didn’t end up showing that at all, however:

Strikingly, they provide little evidence for Cheney’s claims that the “enhanced interrogation” program run by the CIA provided valuable information. In fact, throughout both documents, many passages — though several are incomplete and circumstantial, actually suggest the opposite of Cheney’s contention: that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information the documents cite in defending the value of the CIA’s interrogations.

Despite the fact that they devoted heavy coverage to Cheney’s initial claims, major media outlets have largely buried these new facts. But as Greg Sargent notes, last night on CNN, even former Bush homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend had to admit that Cheney still hasn’t been vindicated:

It’s very difficult to draw a cause and effect, because it’s not clear when techniques were applied vs. when that information was received. It’s implicit. It seems, when you read the report, that we got the — the — the most critical information after techniques had been applied. But the report doesn’t say that.



Cheney, of course, refuses to back down from his initial claims. Earlier this week he put out a statement saying that “individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda.” However, there is still no evidence that the torture techniques were responsible and necessary for producing the intelligence.

Socialist Or Jihadist: You Can Only Pick One

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The claim that the Bush Administration “kept America safe from another attack.” following the September 11, 2001 attack on The Word Trade Center has been a talking point more then a fact from it’s first utterance. In order for such a statement to even be remotely true, George Bush and Dick Cheney would’ve had to pick up a rifle and stand a post in Afghanistan or Iraq. Anything short of that is not only absurd it’s bullshit.

After leaving office, the talking point became a mantra for former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz as they embarked on a media campaign following the release of legal opinions from The Department of Justices Office of Legal Council, which soon became known as “the torture memos.” - Both Cheney’s picked up the pace on their damage control tour and would always fall back on that mantra when their arguments in defense of torture where shot down like ducks in a row. “Well….at the end of the day, the Administration did keep America safe from another attack following 9/11.” Liz Cheney said countless times during the media campaign.

If that’s how the Cheney’s want us to see these events, then lets back up a few years to the first attack on the World Trade Center. President Clinton not only kept up safe through out the completion of two terms in office, but he managed to find the perpetrators, bring them to justice, and do so without launching pre-emptive war against a sovereign nation.

It was only a matter of months after Clinton handed control over to George W. Bush did that protection end when the new administration ignored several warning signs. The daily briefing that warned that Bin Ladin was determined to strike inside the U.S.” was ignored and couldn’t have been more explicitly informative then a courtesy call from Osama Bin Ladin himself.

Now President Obama seems to be falling into the same trap that war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan is a noble cause that will protect America. The fact of the matter is that it won’t and in fact, if anything, it will only increase the desire for Islamic extremist to launch another 9/11-style attack and weaken the Pakistani Government by pushing Al Qaeda and the Taliban across its border.

I needn’t remind the current administration that Pakistan has nuclear weapons that these groups would just love to get their hands on. Yet the Republicans would have us believe otherwise or what Bush and Cheney wanted us to believe for the better part of 8 years. The war against terror was nothing more then a jihad similar to the objectives of Blackwater. It’s chief objective was to rid the world of not only Muslim extremist but also the Muslim faith itself. Therefore, if you supported George Bush, you’re a Jihadist. After all, isn’t that the new battle cry of the right? – If you support Barack Obama, you’re a socialist. Well…I’d rather be a Socialist then a Jihadist.

Cheney Memoir Against His Presidential Loyalty Principal

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Immediately upon leaving office, the release of Department of Justice internal memos cast a far more sinister light on the former President and Vice President's instaiable appitite for war.

While former President George W. Bush quietly took up residence in the Huston suburbs, former Vice President Richard B.Cheney stayed behind in Washington. He and his daughter Liz, embarked on a media tour to sound the alarm over the new administrations "far left" agenda.

However, it soon became clear that the Cheney's focus was to validate the actions of the Bush Administration, and particularly the legal opinions coming out of the DOJ's Office of Legal Council that attempt to justify torture.

For the better part of two months, Liz Cheney defended, or attempted to defend her fathers actions and was usually left without a logical rebuttal, except "at the end of the day, they kept America safe for 8 years, " which most of the country did not agree with. In order for that statement to be true, George Bush and Dick Cheney would have had to pick up a rifle and stand a post in Afghanistan or Iraq, and we all know that didn't happen. However, we do know what happened the last time that Dick Cheney did pick up a rifle.

With Cheney's memoirs taking shape, it's clear that his distain for Geroge W. Bush goes beyond Bush's refusal to grant a Presidential pardon to Cheney's former Aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Bush did however commute Libby's sentance upon conviction in the Federal Court for purgery.

"In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him," said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney's reply. "He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney's advice. He'd showed an independence that Cheney didn't see coming. It was clear that Cheney's doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times -- never apologize, never explain -- and Bush moved toward the conciliatory."

Some conservatives rebut the argument, noting that Bush was nothing if not stubborn in the face of political and public opposition. Commenting on the story, Joe Scarborough pointed out on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Bush was defiant about the surge in Iraq despite the polls.

When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and former White House press secretary Scott McClellan told tales out of school in their own books, Cheney blasted them in the media and said that The presidency is owed loyalty, or at least that was Cheney's view at the time.

That doesn't seem to be the case any longer since his own tell-all book will soon be going to press. Cheney is telling friends that "the statute of limitations has expired" on tensions between them. Last month, Time magazine reported that, Cheney was furious at Bush for not pardoning Scooter Libby, the vice presidential aide who, in Cheney's words, "was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder" by not disclosing all he knew about who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press.

Cheney is apparently sharing his recollections with groups of friends and associates, sort of prepping them for the disclosures to come in his 2011 book. After one group session, one Cheney associate told the Post's Barton Gellman that the former vice president is mad at 43 for being "shackled" by public opinion:

Told in one session that Bush, in his own memoirs, hoped to explore his personal feelings, Cheney responded that he had no intention of doing that.

Lackawanna Mayor: Illegal behavior ecpected by Cheney

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Last week, the New York Times reported that, in 2002, Dick Cheney urged President Bush to illegally deploy American troops to the suburbs of Buffalo to apprehend a group of terrorist suspects (the “Lackawanna Six”). Bush rejected the advice.

Reacting to the news, Lackawanna’s Mayor told the Buffalo News that illegal behavior is exactly what he would expect from the Bush administration:



“I wouldn’t expect anything less of the Bush administration,” Lackawanna Mayor Norman L. Polanski Jr. said in reacting to Cheney’s proposal to send in the troops. “The federal agents did their job and the Lackawanna police did their job. We didn’t need the military coming in. The community reacted cautiously, and nobody got out of hand or made outrageous statements.” [...]

“If you bring in the military, you create a panic,” Lackawanna Police Captain Ronald Miller said.

Bobby Green, a lifelong Lackawanna resident, said Cheney’s idea was “kind of crazy.” Andrew Sullivan writes, “What Cheney was doing here was making a point: that he believes that the president can impose the equivalent of martial law inside the country at any moment he feels it’s necessary, even if it isn’t.” (HT: Raw Story)

Bush Admin Debates Using Military On U.S. Soil

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In early 2002, Bush administration officials debated testing the Constitution by deploying American troops into the Buffalo suburb of Lakawanna to arrest a group of six Yemini men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Some advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

In early 2001, the six young men had traveled to Afghanistan and spent a few weeks training at an Al Qaeda training camp and studying Islamic Revolutionary Theory.





Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force and it was a good this that he did. The FBI had the home shared by the six young men under 24 hour surveillance for nearly a year, but there was never any suspicious activity.

When the government couldn't tie the group to any terrorist activity, they quietly dropped any charges of the men being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell. Instead, the men were charged for having gone to Afghanistan and purchasing uniforms at the Al Qaeda camp prior to there even being a global war on terror.

A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.

The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

In the discussions, Dick Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose.

“The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said. The memorandum — written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty — was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president’s authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States.

The memorandum was declassified in March. But the White House debate about the Lackawanna group is the first evidence that top American officials, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, actually considered using the document to justify deploying the military into an American town to make arrests.

Bush ended up ordering the F.B.I. to make the arrests in Lackawanna, near Buffalo, where the agency had been monitoring a group of Yemeni Americans with suspected Qaeda ties.

The five men arrested there in September 2002, and a sixth arrested nearly simultaneously in Bahrain, but when the Government couldn't tie the men to any terrorists activity, they quietly dropped all charges of the men being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell. The men pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges, which amounted to them purchasing uniforms at the camp during their visit prior to there even being a global war on terror.

Scott L. Silliman, a Duke University law professor specializing in national security law, said an American president had not deployed the active-duty military on domestic soil in a law enforcement capacity, without specific statutory authority, since the Civil War.

Senior military officials were never consulted, former officials said. Richard B. Myers, a retired general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a recent interview that he was unaware of the discussion.

Former officials said the 2002 debate arose partly from Justice Department concerns that there might not be enough evidence to arrest and successfully prosecute the suspects in Lackawanna.

Dick Cheney, the officials said, had argued that the administration would need a lower threshold of evidence to declare them enemy combatants and keep them in military custody.

Earlier that summer, the administration designated Jose Padilla an enemy combatant and sent him to a military brig in South Carolina. Padilla was arrested by civilian agencies on suspicion of plotting an attack using a radioactive bomb.

Those who advocated using the military to arrest the Lackawanna group had legal ammunition: the memorandum by John Yoo and Mr. Delahunty. The lawyers, in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, wrote that the Constitution, the courts and Congress had recognized a president’s authority “to take military actions, domestic as well as foreign, if he determines such actions to be necessary to respond to the terrorist attacks upon the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and before.”

The document added that the neither the Posse Comitatus Act nor the Fourth Amendment tied a president’s hands. Despite this guidance, some Bush aides bristled at the prospect of troops descending on an American suburb to arrest terrorism suspects.

“What would it look like to have the American military go into an American town and knock on people’s door?” said a second former official in the debate.

Chief James L. Michel of the Lackawanna police agreed. “If we had tanks rolling down the streets of our city,” Chief Michel said, “we would have had pandemonium down here.”

The Lackawanna case was the first after the Sept. 11 attacks in which American intelligence and law enforcement operatives believed they had dismantled a Qaeda cell in the United States.

However, none of the sleeper cell cases prosecuted by the Government ever panned out to anything close to the announcements from the White House regarding the disruption of yet another terrorists sleeper cell on American soil.

In the months before the arrests, George Bush was regularly briefed on the case by Mr. Mueller of the F.B.I. and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. The C.I.A. had been tracking the overseas contacts of the Lackawanna group.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article in March, Mr. Yoo defended his 2001 memorandum and its reasoning, saying that after Sept. 11 the Bush administration faced the real prospect of Qaeda cells undertaking attacks on American soil.

“The possibility of such attacks raised difficult, fundamental questions of constitutional law,” he wrote, “because they might require domestic military operations against an enemy for the first time since the Civil War.”

Dick Cheney's Quest For A Pardon For Scooter Libby

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney's disregard for the rule of law played out right up until the final monents of his term in office.

His relentless efforts to convince Bush to pardon Scooter Libby are certainly cause for speculation. Yet Cheney more than most should have known that the moment President Bush commuted Libby's sentance, there would be no pardon.

For President Bush to commute Libby's sentance upon conviction and then grant a last minute pardon on his final day in office would nullify the jury verdict leaving Libby fully restored from the crime and the punishment. Bush was not going to risk his already uncertain legacy by leaning that far into the strike zone for Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, or anyone else for that matter.


Under the Constitution, the President has the authority to grant a pardon for federal offenses, including those obtained in the United States District Courts, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and military courts-martial.


Under the Department's rules governing petitions for executive clemency, there is a minimum waiting period of five years after completion of sentence before anyone convicted of a federal offense becomes eligible to apply for a presidential pardon. The waiting period begins on the date of the petitioner's release from confinement. Alternatively, if the conviction resulted in probation or a fine, but no term of imprisonment, the waiting period begins on the date of sentencing.


A waiver of any portion of the waiting period can be, but are rarely granted and then only in the most exceptional circumstances. The last time that such a broad presidential pardon had been granted was by Gerald Ford to protect Richard Nixon from even being charged with a crime in the Watergate scandal that lead to his sudden resignation.


Nevertheless, Cheney still mounted an effort with a level tenacity that would lead one to believe that Libby was protecting Cheney from crimes far greater then lying to the grand jury.


"Scooter Libby is an innocent man who was the victim of a severe miscarriage of justice," Cheney says.


Cheney says that Libby deserved a pardon and then has strong words for Richard Armitage, the man who actually leaked Valerie Plame's name to Bod Novak. Armitage, Cheney says, "leaked the name and hid that fact from the prisident."

Cheney adds: "Mr. Libby is an honorable man and a faithful public servant who served the President, the Vice President and the nation with distinction for many years. He deserved a presidential pardon."


President Bush spared former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby from a 30-month prison term in the CIA leak investigation, calling the sentence too harsh.


The president announced his decision hours after a federal appeals panel ruled that Libby could not delay his prison term, meaning Libby was likely to have to report to jail soon.

The president has broad discretion to exercise presidential power to pardon convicted felons. In this case, the president did not pardon Libby; rather, he waived his prison term.

Regardless of Dick Cheney's claim about Scooter Libby being an honorable man and a faithful public servant, that fact remains that Libby lied under oath to protect someone other than himself. The odds that being anyone other than Dick Cheney are astronomical at best. However, I also believe that it will not be too long before the lid is blown off the darkest days of the Bush Administration.

Defending Cheney At All Costs

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Isn't the real story that Liz Cheney couldn't possibly know anything about the "secret programs" that her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, ordered the CIA not to inform the congress about? -- Yet she goes from one TV appearance to another speaking as if she were there
at every cabinet meeting.

She certainly seems to know more about the issue then members of congress and that in itself should be a red flag. The primary battlecry of her campaign to defend her father is not welcoming of an investigation that could clear him of wrongdoing, but rather asserting that anything of the sort would be unamerican and why? Because no matter what, at the end of the day, they (Bush Administration) kept America safe from another attack.

Bill Clinton kept America safe after the first attack on the World Trade Center and he did so without launching a wide sweeping global war on terror that resulted in more U.S. Military personnel losing their lives then the number of citizens killed in the terrorist attact that set the whole thing in motion.

In the event that a future investigation should conclude that the vice president did infact break the law, violate the constitution or his oath of office, would this not make Ms. Cheney part of a conspiracy to cover it up and at a minimum, attempting to thwart an investigation or sway
public support for an investigation into these matters? - I think that we've all come to know the former vice president well enough to know that Ms. Cheney is not doing this without the approval, if not at the direction, of her father.

To the average Joe, this may come across as a tender notion by way of a loving daughter defending her fathers honor. However, for many of us out here in the blogosphere, it comes across as a way for the former vice president to control the storyline in the media while leaving the door open to step way from any or all of Ms. Cheney's comments at a later date should they conflict with reality.

Why is it that Rachel Maddow is nearly alone when it comes to mainstream commentator that strikes an even balance when holding Obama's feet to the fire. I have to admit that at first, I was not very keen on the idea. However, with the alternative being to take The Fox News Channel aprocach and support the administration at all costs, I've come to accept the fact that not doing that is more important then Obama having a second term even if the result is the White House falling back into the hands of the Republicans.

Not to Ignore Ed Shultz and others who are beginning to come around on Obama's "flat out 180's" but these two and MSNBC for that matter are just a small part of the media as a whole.
I understand that there are things that Presidential candidates can never realize until becoming president, but to take a position that sways from that during the campaign deserves an explaination no matter how substative or ambigious it may be.

All of this being said, I still have
no doubt that President Obama will turn the country around to the shigrine of the Republic Party.

Bush DOJ Failed To Hunt For Rightwing Extreamist

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In the wake of the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion extremist, the very real problem of extremist violence against abortion providers and clinics has gained a fresh spotlight, even though that violence is not new. After the 1993 murder of an abortion provider, Dr. David Gunn, Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which made any use of “force, threat of force or physical obstruction” against doctors and patients a federal crime. The law was an attempt to put an end to the constant wave of death threats, acts of vandalism, and clinic bombings.
According to the National Abortion Federation, the “FACE law has had a clear impact on the decline in certain types of violence against clinics and providers, specifically clinic blockades.” Under the Bush Administration, however, criminal and civil enforcement of the law by the Department of Justice declined dramatically, the Washington Independent’s Daphne Eviatar reports:
The day after Dr. George Tiller was murdered, TWI obtained data revealing that under the Bush administration, criminal enforcement of the federal law designed to protect abortion providers and clinics had declined by more than 75 percent over the last eight years.
But there’s also a civil component to that federal law, known as the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act. That part of the law allows the attorney general to seek an injunction and compensatory damages for anyone who’s been harmed by any activity that violates the law. And it turns out that the Department of Justice over the last eight years didn’t use that part of the law to protect abortion providers, either.
Eviatar found that, according to DOJ statistics, the Bush Administration “brought only about two criminal prosecutions per year in the entire country under the FACE Act, and never more than four in any single year.” In contrast, under President Clinton the Justice Department “prosecuted 17 defendants for violations of the FACE Act in 1997 alone, and an average of about 10 per year since the law was enacted in 1994.” Evitar reports though that the Bush Justice Department had an even more abysmal record of enforcing the civil component of the FACE Act:
Yet despite these broad powers that Congress granted the attorney general in 1994 to prevent and combat violence against abortion clinics and providers, the Bush administration almost never used them. From 2000 until 2008, during the eight years of the Bush administration, the Justice Department filed only one civil case under the FACE Act. From 1994 until 1999, in contrast, in just five years of the Clinton administration, the Department filed 17 civil cases under the FACE Act — in addition to its much heavier load of criminal cases that we’ve reported before.
Between 2000 and 2008, the National Abortion Federation recorded 3,291 acts of violence against abortion providers and “at least 17 cases of ‘extreme’ violence against abortion providers in the United States, such as arson, stabbing and bomb attacks.” However, the Bush Administration’s Department of Justice “prosecuted only 11 individuals for any acts of violence against abortion clinics or providers.”

Liz Cheney Falsely Claims Bush ‘Did Not Say’ Gitmo Detainees Should Be Tried In U.S. Courts

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Last night, Vice President Cheney’s daughter Liz appeared on a mainstream American television news media outlet, this time on Campbell Brown’s CNN show. During a contentious “Great Debate” segment with Salon’s Joan Walsh, Liz Cheney was trying to argue that bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to U.S. soil “makes us less safe” and that they should remain where they currently reside.
To make her argument, Cheney also continued her penchant for false claims. At one point in the debate, Walsh noted that military leaders want Gitmo closed and that even President Bush once said it should be closed and that some detainees should tried in the U.S. Cheney, however, disagreed:
WALSH: Liz, the top — the top military leaders of our country want Guantanamo closed. President Bush, in June 2009 [sic], gave a speech where he said he would close it, and he would bring people home and try them here.
CHENEY: No, I’m sorry.
WALSH: President Bush said that.
CHENEY: He did not say he would bring terrorists onto the homeland. Joan, no, he didn’t say that.
Watch it:

Walsh is right, Bush did say that. During a June 2006 press conference at a U.S.-EU summit, Bush called for Gitmo to be closed and to have some of the detainees tried in U.S. courts:
BUSH: I’d like to end Guantanamo. I’d like it to be over with. One of the things we will do is we’ll send people back to their home countries. [...] There are some who need to be tried in U.S. courts. They’re cold-blooded killers. They will murder somebody if they’re let out on the street. And yet, we believe there’s a — there ought to be a way forward in a court of law.
However, Cheney’s canards didn’t end there. She also offered the debunked claim that “14 percent” of Gitmo detainees have “returned to the battlefield,” a claim Walsh noted is “not true.” Indeed, last week the New York Times issued a correction to its story, saying that the number is closer to 5 percent.

Liz Cheney: "We made mistakes, No question."

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Liz Cheney admitted on Monday that when it came to her father's handling of the occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces, "certainly we made mistakes."

"There is just no question about that," said the former state department employee and ubiquitous defender of the Bush administration's national security policies.

Speaking at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center for the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute's Conservative Leadership Seminar, Cheney pinpointed the errors as stemming from a fundamental misjudgment about the strength of Iraq's political institutions.

"I think that when we were in the months and years right after Saddam was deposed, there are things that I probably would do differently now," she said. "We had this sense that one could go into a nation like Iraq and if you sort of either arrested or removed from office the top layer of leadership that other Iraqis would sort of rise up and take over. I don't think we expected the population to be so traumatized. But I think what we saw is that after decades of Saddam's rule nobody was willing to step up and take over. People waited for instruction for everything."

Watch Video:


The remarks, which went relatively unnoticed, reflect a willingness for introspection on Iraq that few of the war's most ardent defenders have allowed. The former vice president himself has admitted that mistakes were made, but primarily in posture, not policy. For instance, he has said it was wrong for him to have declared that the insurgency was in its last throes when it clearly wasn't. He has been decidedly less reflective about the troop levels that were deployed to the war in the first place and that had to deal with that insurgency.

Despite calling America's invasion of Iraq "by no means perfect," Liz Cheney, like her father promised that history books would declare the invasion to be a tremendous success. Already, she declared, the war had proven to be "a huge service for humanity, a huge service for security, a huge service for the Middle East, for the people of Iraq."

Cheney's Torture Program Shot Down From Every Angle

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Bruce Fein, the former Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Regan spoke to MSNBC's David Schuster about Dick Cheney's torture program. On the topic of torture, Fein said that Cheney not only clearly knew, he lead the congressional briefing, he authorized, championed, and supported it.

Fein said that here are no exceptions to the torture prohibition. None for ticking time bombs. None for Al Qaeda. None for useful information. In her relentless media tour in defense of her father, Liz Cheney's seems to already understand the simplicity of the Fein's agrument. She focuses more on delivering a national message that her father's efforts have "saved thousands of American lives." and "averted a secondary terrorist attack following 9/11."

In seems as if both Cheney's are trying to create an understanding by the public at large, that while questionable or even outright illegal, the country is in immediate danger should President Obama and his administration not adopt and continue the torture program.

WATCH VIDEO:

Liz Cheney: Defending Daddy Tour Raises Call For Investigation

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As Liz Cheney's whirlwind media junket slips into overdrive, her mug and message have been seen and heard on national television 22 times in the passed 24 days. Ms. Cheney who is not a member of the media, not a journalist, not a politician nor a candidate for public office, yet she seemes to have been given open access to a media platform to repeat the same old rationalizations in defense of her father's enhanced interrogation program, vis-a-vis torture.


Liz Cheney has made seven national appearances since Monday to defend her father, while similtaniously attacking Obama with rediculous Republican talking points. None of the networks that has featured Cheney's daughterit have questioned why they are seeking commentary on Dick Cheney's national security efforts from his own daughter. Liz Cheney not only sounds like her father, she lies like her father routinely on national television, she occasionally even
repeats bogus arguments that even her father won't say anymore. This isn't to pick on MSNBC, which has featured Liz Cheney's on-air attacks four times in the last eight days, and six times in the last 24 days. The other cable nets are just as bad.

In an interview with NBC News' Andrea Mitchell, Cheney insisted that her father had always disavowed the notion that there was a link between Iraq and al Qaeda and September 11th, while simultaneously suggesting that such a link was true. Then she sort of got snippy with Mitchell for the way she kept intimating that maybe this was all a little nonsensical.


The segment began generically enough, with Liz Cheney saying that she was, is, and continues to be troubled by the way the current administration keeps characterizing torture and rendition and the maintenance of Kafka-esque penal colonies as a bad thing. Where things really got testy -- downright mindbending -- was this exchange over Vice President Dick Cheney's appearance at the National Press Club, at which time, as Mitchell pointed out, he "seemed to be taking a step back" from contentions he had previously made about the connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

WATCH VIDEO :

Liz Cheney not only sounds like her father, she lies like her father routinely on national television, she occasionally even repeats bogus arguments that even her father won't say anymore. This isn't to pick on MSNBC, which has featured Liz Cheney's on-air attacks four times in the last eight days, and six times in the last 24 days. The other cable nets are just as bad.
In an interview with NBC News' Andrea Mitchell, Cheney insisted that her father had always disavowed the notion that there was a link between Iraq and al Qaeda and September 11th, while simultaneously suggesting that such a link was true. Then she sort of got snippy with Mitchell for the way she kept intimating that maybe this was all a little nonsensical.

MITCHELL: Has he rethought that? Was he rephrasing it?

LIZ CHENEY: No, this is something he has actually said for many years. There was a report in the aftermath of 9/11 that came from the CIA that Mohammad Atta had met in Prague --

MITCHELL: It was quickly discredited!

LIZ CHENEY: Well, let me finish. So, there was a report, and when the report was outstanding, you had a number of people in the administration publicly talking about the fact that there could have been a connection in terms of the Mohammad Atta meeting. Once it became clear that the report didn't hold up, he and others in the administration were out publicly saying that and there's been a real attempt in my view to blur the distinction. He has not said that there is a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.


That's the core foundational document of the Iraq War and in it, clearly, the administration is arguing vehemently that there was a link between Iraq and both the September 11th attack and al Qaeda.

This warped recall of historical fact continues:

LIZ CHENEY: The issue is whether there's a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, which as he mentioned in that speech, George Tenet himself testified to, there's much evidence between the connection of Saddam and al Qaeda and Saddam and other terrorist organizations.

MITCHELL: Well, al Qaeda in Iraq, which was an offshoot, but didn't exist before the start of the war.

LIZ CHENEY: That's actually not true.

No, Liz, it actually is true, the testimony of "George Tenet himself" (I gather the "himself" is added to imply we should revere this historic bungler) notwithstanding.

In July of 2004, the 9-11 Commission found that there was no "collaborative operational relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda:

"We have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."
At around the same time, the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed with these findings:


MITCHELL: Has he rethought that? Was he rephrasing it?


LIZ CHENEY: No, this is something he has actually said for many years. There was a report in the aftermath of 9/11 that came from the CIA that Mohammad Atta had met in Prague --


MITCHELL: It was quickly discredited!


LIZ CHENEY: Well, let me finish. So, there was a report, and when the report was outstanding, you had a number of people in the administration publicly talking about the fact that there could have been a connection in terms of the Mohammad Atta meeting. Once it became clear that the report didn't hold up, he and others in the administration were out publicly saying that and there's been a real attempt in my view to blur the distinction. He has not said that there is a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.



She's correct that there's been a real effort to blur the distinction! But it's her father and the administration he participated in said effort. If you are looking for evidence of this, well, heck! Let's take a look at the 2002 Joint Resolution to Authorize the use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq.
In plain English, it says:


Whereas members of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;



Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;


Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations;


Additional false foundation comes later in the Authorization:
Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;


Whereas the President and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations.


That's the core foundational document of the Iraq War and in it, clearly, the administration is arguing vehemently that there was a link between Iraq and both the September 11th attack and al Qaeda.

Cheney Points 911 Blame Away From Bush

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Dick Cheney goes on the defensive and blames 911 on Richard Clark, the former counter-terroism chief under President Bill Clinton. Cheney's remarks where spewed while speaking at the National Press Club today, Cheney struck back at Clarke. When asked about Clarke’s argument, Cheney — once again — invoked the "burning ashes" of 9/11 and the victims who leaped to their deaths from the World Trade Center. Then, quite succinctly, Cheney pinned the entire blame for 9/11 on Clarke: WATCH VIDEO


In fact, it was Cheney who "missed" the warning signs, not Clarke. New York Times reporter Philip Shenon’s book, "The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation," reprinted some of Clarke’s emphatic e-mails warning the Bush administration of the al Qaeda threat throughout 2001:

"Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack" (May 3)

"Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot" (May 23)

"Bin Ladin’s Networks’ Plans Advancing" (May 26)

"Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent" (June 23)

"Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats" (June 25)

"Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks" (June 30)

"Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays" (July 2)

Similarly, Time Magazine reported in 2002 that Clarke had an extensive plan to "roll back" al Qaeda —

a plan that languished for months, ignored by senior Bush officials:

Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. … In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, "Response to al Qaeda: Roll back." … The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-01 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush.

Cheney needs to check his "recollections" before blaming former employees for the single most devestating attack in American history.

Bush Kept America Safe: A Fantasy

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George W. Bush claims that his torture policies have kept America safe for seven years and that information obtained via these violations of the Geneva Convention have assertained specific information that have prevented subsequent terrorist attacks (plural) from taking place. Yet we have not heard word one as to the time, place, manor, and person or persons involved in these thwarted attacks, and what judicial measure of justice has been served upon the would-be terrorist?

Much like the so-called terrorist sleeper cell cases of Detroit, Portland, Lackawana, etal, there seems to be an eliment of fantasy in many of claims that Bush and Cheney make in justifying their torture programs. Cheney recently stated in an interview with CBS that he was convinced, absolutely convinced that these policies have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Try as I may, I cannot accept such a claim at face value and particularly due it's source.

If the Septmember 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center claimed 3,500 lives, what kind of attack could Dick Cheney possibly believe his torture policy was directly responsible for interrupting that saved hundreds of thousands of lives. The fact that he says "I'm convinced" that we saved hundreds of thousands of lives makes it quite clear that this claim is nothing more then an assumption, if not wishful thinking and that it has no basis in fact. Therefore, if he is only convinced and not certain that hundreds of thousands of lives were spared, then whatever information that was obtained via the waterboard would also be assumptive and speculative at best.

If you step back and look at the big picture surrounding this issue, I submit that it was actually President Clinton who is responsible for keeping America safe for seven years following the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. As disconnected as the FBI, DOJ, CIA, and State Departments were during that time, Ramsi Youseff and a whole list of other individuals responsible were caught and brought to justice rather swiftly. Not only do I disagree that George Bush kept America safe as he cliams, I believe that Bush ignored vital information that was passed on to him by the Clinton Administration during the transition in regards to Osama Bin Ladin.

We all know that Bush gave no creedence to the "Osama Bin Ladin Determined To Strike Inside of The United States." memo and the famous "Okay, you've covered your ass." line when he was briefed yet again in person regarding OBL.

Way back in 1993, many may have wondered whether the World Trade Center bombing itself is not a harbinger of the train wreck coming. Well...we now have that answer and no matter how you want to disect it, it happened on Bush 43's watch, and his lack of attention and concern over Osama Bin Ladin was a key factor.

Chico Brisbane

Former Senior Interrogator Dissects Cheney's Lies

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As a senior interrogator in Iraq (and a former criminal investigator), there was a lesson I learned that served me well: there's more to be learned from what someone doesn't say than from what they do say. Let me dissect former Vice President Dick Cheney's speech on National Security using this model and my interrogation skills.

First, VP Cheney said, "This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately... it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do." He further stated, "It is much closer to the truth that terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by, not by some alleged failure to do so." That is simply untrue. Anyone who served in Iraq, and veterans on both sides of the aisle have made this argument, knows that the foreign fighters did not come to Iraq en masse until after the revelations of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. I heard this from captured foreign fighters day in and day out when I was supervising interrogations in Iraq. What the former vice president didn't say is the fact that the dislike of our policies in the Middle East were not enough to make thousands of Muslim men pick up arms against us before these revelations. Torture and abuse became Al Qaida's number one recruiting tool and cost us American lives.

Read More Here: Huffington Post

Former Senior Interrogator in Iraq Dissects Cheney's Lies and Distortions