‘Cheney cabal hijacked US foreign policy’

[mrmom2]

Here

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Cheney ' Cabal' hijacked foreign policy

By Edward Alden in Washington

10/20/05 "FT" -- -- Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

Mr Wilkerson said such secret decision-making was responsible for mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran.

It also resulted in bitter battles in the administration among those excluded from the decisions.

“If you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster. And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran.”

The comments, made at the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank, were the harshest attack on the administration by a former senior official since criticisms by Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism czar, and Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary, early last year.

Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.

“He's not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world's most loyal soldier."

Among his other charges:

■ The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example” of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it.”

■ Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president”.

■ The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel”.

Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush “one of the finest presidents we have ever had” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either”.

“There's a vast difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today.”

 

[Ocean Breeze]

The Cheney Factor :evil:



Chickens Come Home to Roost on Cheney

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Ray McGovern

Indictments are expected to come down shortly as special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald completes the investigation originally precipitated by the outing of a C.I.A. officer under deep cover. In 21-plus months of digging and interviewing, Fitzgerald and his able staff have been able to negotiate the intelligence/policy/politics labyrinth with considerable sophistication. In the process, they seem to have learned considerably more than they had bargained for. The investigation has long since morphed into size "extra-large," which is the only size commensurate with the wrongdoing uncovered -- not least, the fabrication and peddling of intelligence to "justify" a war of aggression.

The coming months are likely to see senior Bush administration officials frog marched out of the White House to be booked, unless the president moves swiftly to fire Fitzgerald -- a distinct possibility. With so many forces at play, it is easy to lose perspective and context while plowing through the tons of information on this case. What follows is a retrospective and prospective, laced with some new facts and analysis aimed at helping us to focus on the forest once we have given due attention to the trees.

Background

In late May 2003, the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) informed me that a former U.S. ambassador named Joseph Wilson would be sharing keynote duties with me at a large EPIC conference on June 14.

I was delighted -- for two reasons. This was a chance to meet the "American hero" (per George H. W. Bush) who faced down Saddam Hussein, freeing hundreds of American and other hostages taken when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. More important, since Wilson had served as an ambassador in Africa, I thought he might be able to throw light on a question bedeviling me since May 6, when New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an intriguing story about a mission to Niger by "a former U.S. ambassador to Africa."

There Once Was an Ambassador in Niger...

According to Kristof, that mission was undertaken at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney's office to investigate a report that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. The report was an entirely convenient "smoking gun." Since Iraq lacked any nonmilitary use for such uranium, it had to be for a nuclear weapons program, if the report were true. Or so went the argument. The former ambassador sent to Niger had found no basis for the report, pulling the rug out from under the "intelligence" the administration had used during the previous fall to conjure up the "mushroom cloud" that intimidated Congress into authorizing war.

Kristof's May 6 column had caused quite a stir in Washington. The only one to have totally missed the story was then-National Security Adviser and now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (assuming she is to be taken at her word). Rice claimed that the information did not come to her attention until more than a month later. Right. (And the celebrated aluminum tubes were for nuclear enrichment -- not artillery. Right.)

This ostensibly nuclear-related "evidence" was no mere sideshow; it went to the very core of the disingenuous justification for war. The Iraq-Niger report itself was particularly suspect. The uranium mined in Niger is very tightly controlled by a French-led international consortium, and the chances of circumventing or defeating the well established safeguards and procedures were seen as virtually nil. On March 7, Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, announced to the U.N. Security Council that the documents upon which the Iraq-Niger reporting was based were "not authentic." Colin Powell swallowed hard but took it as well as could be expected under the circumstances. A few days later he conceded the point entirely -- with neither apology nor embarrassment, as befits the world's sole remaining superpower.

The Sixteen Words

Powell had long since decided that the Iraq-Niger report did not pass the smell test. But he was apparently afraid to incur Cheney's wrath by telling the president. Powell's own intelligence analysts at the State Department had branded the story "highly dubious," so he had chosen to drop it from the long litany of spurious charges against Iraq that he recited at the U.N. on February 5, 2003, a performance that Powell now admits constitutes a "blot" on his record. Asked to defend President George W. Bush's use of the Iraq-Africa story in his state-of-the-union address in January 2003, the best Powell could do was to describe the president's (in)famous "16 words" as "not totally outrageous," a comment that did not help all that much.

Those in Congress who felt they had been misled by the story, which the White House PR machine had shaped into a "mushroom cloud," were in high dudgeon. For example, in the days before the attack on Iraq, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote the president to complain that Waxman and his colleagues had been deceived out of their constitutional prerogative to declare or otherwise authorize war. None of this put the brakes on the intrepid Cheney, who three days before the war told NBC's Tim Russert, "We believe he [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

Cheney, of course, had been assured by the likes of neo-conservative armchair general Kenneth Adelman that the war would be a "cakewalk," that U.S. forces would be greeted as "liberators," and that in the glow of major victory, only the worst kind of spoilsport would complain that the "justification" was based largely on a forgery. By May 2003, however, it had become clear that the cakewalk was a pipedream and that no sign of a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons program was likely to be found. In this context, the information in Kristof's May 6 op-ed was like pouring salt into an open wound.

Do You Know the Ambassador?

When introduced to former ambassador Wilson at the June 14 conference, I wasted no time asking him -- rather naively, it turned out -- if he knew who the former U.S. ambassador who went to Niger was. He smiled and said, "You're looking at him." I asked when he intended to go public; in a couple of weeks, was the answer.

Wilson then turned dead serious and, with considerable emphasis, told me the White House had already launched a full-court press in an effort to dredge up dirt on him. He added, "When I do speak out, they are going to go after me big time. I don't know the precise nature the retaliation will take, but I can tell you now it will be swift and vindictive. They cannot afford to have people thinking they can escape unscathed if they spill the beans on the dishonesty undergirding this war." (Sad to say, the White House approach has worked. There are perhaps a hundred of my former C.I.A. colleagues who know about the lies; none -- not one -- has been able to summon the courage to go public.)

Wilson's tone was matter of fact; the nerves were of steel. Hardly surprising, thought I. If you can face down Saddam Hussein, you can surely face down the likes of Dick Cheney. Wilson's New York Times op-ed of July 6, 2003, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," pulled no punches. Worse still from the administration's point of view, Wilson then dropped the other shoe during an interview with the Washington Post also on July 6.

Consummate diplomats like Wilson typically do not speak of "lies." So outraged was Wilson, though, that this bogus story had been used to "justify" an unprovoked war, that he made a point to note that the already proven dishonesty begs the question regarding "what else they are lying about."

It was a double whammy. And, as is now well known, the White House moved swiftly -- if clumsily (and apparently illegally) -- to retaliate.

It was clear from the start that Vice President Dick Cheney and Kemosabe (Amer. Indian for "Scotter") Libby, as well as Karl Rove, were taking the lead in this operation to make an object lesson of Wilson and his wife. And it is somewhat reassuring to notice that some newly tenacious mainstream pundits are now waking up to this. Better late than never, I suppose.

Still Good Advice: Fire Cheney

Watching matters unfold at the time, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity on July 14, 2003 issued a Memorandum for the President, with chapter and verse on how "your vice president led this campaign of deceit." We pointed out that this was no case of petty corruption of the kind that forced Vice President Spiro Agnew out by the side door. It was, rather, a matter of war and peace, with thousands already killed and no end in sight. We offered the president the following suggestion:

"Recommendation #1: We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to attempts to prove Vice President Cheney "not guilty." His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility. Equally pernicious, from our perspective, is the likelihood that intelligence analysts will conclude that the way to success is to acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since those above them will not be held accountable. We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney's immediate resignation."

President George W. Bush rejected our advice (not for the first time). But now the president may have to let Cheney go after all. Why? Because special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is taking his job seriously.


Frog Marching

During a speech in Seattle in August 2003, former ambassador Wilson imagined a scene in which police are frog marching presidential adviser Karl Rove out of the White House. This appeared a bit far-fetched at the time, but not now. Indeed, it seems there will be a need for multiple handcuffs and marshals.

From the beginning of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation in January 2004, Wilson expressed confidence that the truth would emerge. And because of Fitzgerald's professionalism and tenacity, we are about to see at least some of the perpetrators of this fraud get their comeuppance. Normally, Schadenfreude is exceedingly hard to resist in such circumstances. But it is harder still to allow oneself any joy at the misfortune of others, when the focus needs to be placed on the huge damage already done to our country, its values, and its reputation.

Fire the Special Prosecutor? Shades of Watergate

When the Watergate scandal reached a similar stage in October 1973, President Richard Nixon, ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the intrepid special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson resigned rather than carry out Nixon's order; and so did his deputy William Ruckleshaus. So Nixon had to reach farther down into the Justice department where he found Robert Bork, who promptly dismissed Cox in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre.

Fitzgerald is at least as vulnerable as Cox was. Indeed, in recent days some of the fourth estate, Richard Cohen in the Washington Post and John Tierney in The New York Times, for example, seem to have accepted assignments to help lay the groundwork for Fitzgerald's dismissal.

Will the White House decide to fire special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and simply absorb the PR black eye, as Nixon did? There is absolutely nothing to prevent it. Can you imagine Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refusing on principle an order from President Bush?

Could Bush himself be named an un-indicted co-conspirator? If that or something like it happens, we can expect a circling of the wagons and Fitzgerald cashiered.

If the case Fitzgerald has built, however, is not strong enough to implicate Bush personally, it seems likely that the president will acquiesce in wholesale frog marching of others from the White House and then go off for a Thanksgiving vacation in Crawford -- opps, more likely, Camp David. For Cindy Sheehan is planning Thanksgiving in Crawford: she still hopes to see the president so that he can explain to her personally what the "noble cause" was for which her son died.

It promises to be an interesting autumn. By all means stay tuned.


[/quote]

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Powell Aide Blasts Rice, Cheney- Rumsfeld 'Cabal'
by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - As top officials in the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office await possible criminal indictments for their efforts to discredit a whistleblower, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Wednesday, accused a ''cabal'' led by Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld of hijacking U.S. foreign policy by circumventing or ignoring formal decision-making channels.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Powell’s chief of staff from 2001 to 2005 and when Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces during the administration of former president George H.W. Bush, also charged that, as national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice was ''part of the problem'' by not ensuring that the policy-making process was open to all relevant participants.

''In some cases, there was real dysfunctionality,'' said Wilkerson, who spoke at the New America Foundation, a prominent Washington think tank. ''But in most cases..., she (Rice) made a decision that she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president.''

''…the case that I saw for four-plus years,'' he said, ''was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardisations, and perturbations in the national-security (policy-making) process'', he added.

''What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.''

Wilkerson also stressed that the ''extremely powerful'' influence of what he called the ''Oval Office Cabal'' of Cheney and Rumsfeld, both former secretaries of defense with a long-standing personal and professional relationship, adding that both were members of the ''military-industrial complex'' that former President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation against in his 1961 Farewell Address. ''… don’t you think they aren’t among us today in a concentration of power that is just unparalleled'', he asked.

Wilkerson’s remarks came as the administration is besieged by record-low approval ratings and anticipation that a special prosecutor will hand down indictments of top aides to both Bush and Cheney, including Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove, and Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, in connection with efforts to discredit retired ambassador Joseph Wilson.

In July 2003, Wilson publicly challenged the administration’s pre-war depiction of Iraq’s alleged nuclear-weapons programme, and particularly its assertion that Baghdad had sought to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger, an assertion that Wilson himself investigated and rejected in early 2002 after traveling to Niger as part of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) mission.

White House officials, including Rove and Libby, told reporters that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and played a role in selecting him for the mission.

On Wednesday, Capitol Hill was rife with rumours that Cheney himself may also be indicted or resign over the scandal. They were given more credence by an anecdote recounted that Powell had told a prominent Republican senator that Cheney had become ''fixated'' on the relationship between Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, after he and Bush learned about it directly from Powell.

Since his departure from the administration, Powell has declined to publicly criticise U.S. policy or his former cabinet colleagues. Until now, Wilkerson has also kept his counsel, although he publicly opposed John Bolton’s confirmation as UN ambassador. At that time, most analysts believed that Wilkerson reflected Powell’s private views on Bolton.

That would not be surprising, as Wilkerson worked directly with or for Powell for some 16 years out of their 30-plus-year military and government careers. At the same time, Wilkerson said he had paid a ''high cost'' in his personal relationship with Powell for publicly speaking out.

''Wilkerson embodies Powell and (Powell’s deputy secretary of state, Richard) Armitage,'' who is also a retired military officer, Steve Clemons, who organised Wilkerson’s NAF appearance, told IPS. ''That’s how his remarks should be seen.''

If so, it appears that Powell and Armitage have little but disdain for Rice’s performance as national security adviser, although Wilkerson was more complimentary about her work at the State Department and the relative success she has enjoyed in steering U.S. policy in a less confrontational direction compared to the frustrations that dogged Powell.

He attributed her success to several factors, including her ''intimacy with the president'' and the fact that the administration ''finds itself in some fairly desperate straits politically and otherwise.''

Most of his remarks, however, addressed what he described as national-security policy-making apparatus that was made dysfunctional by secrecy, compartmentalisation and distrust, as well as the machinations of the Cheney-Rumsfeld ''cabal.''

''You’ve got this collegiality there between the secretary of defence and the vice president,'' he said. ''And then you’ve got a president who is not versed in international relations -- and not too much interested in them either. And so it’s not too difficult to make decisions in this, what I call the Oval Office Cabal, and decisions often that are the opposite of what you thought were made in the formal (decision-making) process.''

''Why did we wait three years to talk to the North Koreans? Why did we wait four-plus years to at least back the EU-3 approach to Iran,''’ he asked. ''…the formal process …camouflaged the efficiency of the secret decision-making process. So we got into Iraq''.

''And then when the bureaucracy was presented with those decisions and carried them out, it was presented in such a disjointed, incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn’t know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out,'' he said.

''If you’re not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster,'' he said. ''And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran.''

Wilkerson was particularly scathing about the former Undersecretary of Defence for Policy, Douglas Feith, citing Gen. Tommy Frank’s famous description of the neo-conservative ideologue as the ''fucking stupidest guy on the planet.''

''Let me testify to that,'' he said. ''He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man. And yet, after the (Pentagon is given) control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this many is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere. …That’s telling you how decisions were made and …how things got accomplished.''

He also denounced the abuse of detainees and said Powell was particularly upset by it. ''Ten years from now, when we have the whole story, we are going to be ashamed,'' he said. ''This is not us. This is not the way we do business. I don’t think in our history we’ve ever had a presidential involvement, a secretarial involvement, a vice-presidential involvement, an attorney-general’s involvement in telling our troops essentially, Carte blanche is the way you should feel. You should not have any qualms because this is a different kind of conflict.''

''You don’t have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you’ve condoned it,'' he said adding that ''it will take years to reverse the situation'' within the military. He said it was a ''concrete example'' of the result of the way the cabal worked.

Wilkerson also contrasted Bush’s diplomacy very unfavourably with his father’s. Referring to Bush’s first meeting with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, Wilkerson noted: ''When you put your feet up on a hassock and look at the man who’s won the Nobel Prize and is currently president of South Korea and tell him in a very insulting way that you don’t agree with his assessment of what is necessary to be reconciled with the North, that’s not diplomacy; that’s cowboyism.''

''It’s very different when you walk in and find something you can be magnanimous about, that you can give him, that you can say he or she gets credit, that’s diplomacy. You don’t say, 'I’m the big mother on the block and everybody who’s not with me is against me.' That’s the difference between father and son.''

At the same time, Bush had been ''wonderful'' in ''put(ting) his foot down'' against a more-aggressive policy on North Korea, at one point saying, according to Wilkerson, ''I do not want a war on the Korean peninsula.''

''That was very helpful, very helpful,'' said Wilkerson. ''It helped us fight off some less desirable results''.

Cheney, he said, was a ''good executive'' as defence secretary under George H. W. Bush but appeared to change as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks. ''I think (he) saw 9/11 and the potential for another 9/11 with nuclear weapons and suddenly became so fixated on that problem that it skewed his approach,'' Wilkerson said, adding that neither he nor Rumsfeld could be considered neo-conservatives.

On Iraq, he said he was ''guardedly optimistic'' because ''we may have reached the point where we are actually listening to the Iraqis.'' U.S. troops will likely have to remain in Iraq for between five to eight years, however, because ''it is strategic in the sense that Vietnam was not.''

He predicted that a precipitous withdrawal ''without leav(ing) something behind we can trust, we will mobilize the nation, with five million men and women under arms to go back and take the Middle East within a decade,'' due to the U.S. dependence on the region’s energy sources.

He disclosed that the Department’s policy planning bureau had a discussion about ''actually mounting an operation to take the oil fields in the Middle East, internationalise them under some sort of UN trusteeship and administer the revenues and the oil accordingly.''

can "we" hope that the proverbial "shi** is starting to hit the fan"???

 

[Ocean Breeze]

October 20, 2005


More Grist for the TreasonGate Rumor Mill

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Note: This is an e-mail circulating around Capitol Hill that was forwarded to us by a source wishing to remain anonymous (no, not Scooter Libby, for God's sake). We can only offer it up as rumor and speculation, but it certainly is interesting rumor and speculation at that! Much of it is consistent with other corroborating leaks, except for two bombshell points: that Colin Powell spilled the beans on Cheney, and that Cheney's lawyer is negotiating with the U.S. Prosecutor's office.

Here it is, exactly as BuzzFlash received it:

"below, some extremely sensitive information about the impending conclusion of the valerie plame investigations. the sources include two senior members of senate and key staffers; counsel for individuals that have been called before the grand jury; and two journalists taking a lead position in investigating the case. the following represents a composite of the information from those sources.

plamegate coming to conclusion. the investigation has focused mostly closely on vice president cheney and his staff, as well as us ambassador to the un (and former undersecretary of state for arms control) john bolton and his staff. we are told that eight indictments have already prepared, with the possibility of another ten. these indictments include senior white house staff, most notably vice president cheney's chief of staff scooter libby, fred flights (special assistant to john bolton), and--very surprisingly--national security adviser steve hadley. apparently, libby and hadley have both been told by their lawyers to expect indictments. the indictment of senior bush political advisor karl rove seems highly probable.

most critically, a plea bargain process has evidently been opened with vice president cheney's lawyer. that does not mean that an indictment is coming. but i've some critical background around the issue.

in the past several days, former secretary of state colin powell had a meeting with senator john mccain (R-AZ), primarily about the mccain-sponsored amendment on inserting a rider prohibiting torture onto the us defense budget (a bill which powell has himself been lobbying heavily for, against objections of president bush).

during the meeting, powell recounted to the senator that he had traveled on air force one with bush and cheney, and brought to their attention a classified memorandum about the issue of whether there was indeed a transaction inolving niger and yellow cake uranium. the document included ambassador joe wilson's involvement and identified his wife, valerie plame, as a covert agent. the memorandum further stated that this information was secret. powell told mccain that he showed that memo only to two people--president and vice president. according to powell, cheney fixated on the wilson/plame connection, and plame's status.

powell testified about this exchange in great length to the grand jury investigating the plame case. according to sources close to the case, powell appeared convinced that the vice president played a focal role in disclosing plame's undercover status.

in his conversation with mccain, powell felt that--at a minimum--there would be a serious shakeup at national security council as a consequence. in particular, vice president cheney would no longer hold a pivotal role in us national security affairs. powell apparently did not discuss the potential of a cheney resignation.

lead prosecutor patrick fitzgerald has apparently been looking at the precedent of formerly indicted nixon vice president spiro agnew. this shows the likely path, because addressing executive immunity and privilege questions would necessarily begin start with a plea-bargain deal that would entail a resignation.
this is all likely to occur within the next week. 28 october (next friday) is the last day of the grand jury, and no requests have been made to extend their session. the investigator is expecting to wrap up by then.

there are enormous implication for what would be the biggest white house shakeup since the iran-contra scandal in the reagan era. president bush's approval rating at 39% has already led to a significant decrease in policy efficacy with key legislators in congress (which i've already discussed at length elsewhere). i'll spin out the broader policy implications when i have some time to write at greater length, but i wanted to get this out immediately.

one interesting point though--it is worth noting that a parade of senior republican senators have evidently been privately pushing mccain to lobby to be cheney's replacement. senator lindsey graham (R-SC) has also been mentioned. meanwhile, the white house has already been developing countermeasures--notably including senior white house officials privately voicing president bush's disappointment in karl rove's involvement in the case, calling it 'misconduct.' an urgent search for a rove replacement is already underway."

 

[Reverend Blair]

RE: ‘Cheney cabal hijacke

Oh-oh, trouble in BushWorld.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: ‘Cheney cabal hijacke

Oh-oh, trouble in BushWorld.

and the pile of "trouble" just keeps building. Anyone keeping track of all the "issues"....that are hot right now??? Collectively, there must be quite a few.

 

[Reverend Blair]

RE: ‘Cheney cabal hijacke

Domestically there's Plame, Miers, Iraq, oil, the economy, Katrina, possible impeachment, and Delay. You can toss Bush's approval rating in there too...that's become an issue all it's own.

In foreign affairs there is John Bolton, Iraq, Iran, the UN, torture, the US economy, oil, Saddam Hussein's trial, the leaks coming out of 10 Downing, and Uzbekistan.


Bush is crippled at home and abroad.

 

[mrmom2]

What goes around comes around eh?Now if the can get the money back the two of them stole that'd really be something :wink:

 

[GL Schmitt]

. . . Now if the can get the money back . . .

With Cheney dragged off by the heels in company with a few of his cronies, and some emboldened Democrats, even that might be possible through fines and claw-backs everywhere Haliburton et al scrimped or reneged on their contracted work (you know they did) and at every petty embezzlement.

Sadly, nothing will ever bring the thousands of people who died needlessly in that illegal war, including nearly two thousand Americans so far.