Dick Cheney's lies about President Obama
PakistanPal
It's pathetic to break a New Year's resolution before we even get to
New Year's Day, but here I go. I had promised myself that I would do a
better job of ignoring Dick Cheney's corrosive and nonsensical
outbursts -- that I would treat them, more or less, like the pearls of
wisdom one hears from homeless people sitting in bus shelters.
But he is a former vice president, which gives him a big stage for his
histrionic Rottweiler-in-Winter act. It is never a good idea to let
widely disseminated lies and distortions go unchallenged. And the
shrill screed that Cheney unloosed Wednesday is so full of outright
mendacity that, well, my resolution will have to wait.
In a statement to Politico, Cheney seemed to be trying to provide
talking points for opponents of the Obama administration who --
incredibly -- would exploit the Christmas Day terrorist attack for
political gain. Cheney's broadside opens with a big lie, which he then
repeats throughout. It is as if he believes that saying something over
and over again, in a loud enough voice, magically makes it so.
"As I've watched the events of the last few days it is clear once
again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war,"
Cheney begins.
Flat-out untrue.
The fact is that Obama has said many times that we are at war against
terrorists. He said it as a candidate. He said it in his inaugural
address: "Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of
violence and hatred." He has said it since.
As Cheney well knows, unless he has lost even the most tenuous grip on
reality, Obama's commitment to warfare as an instrument in the fight
against terrorism has won the president nothing but grief from the
liberal wing of his party, with more certainly to come. Hasn't anyone
told Cheney that Obama is sharply boosting troop levels in Afghanistan
in an attempt to avoid losing a war that the Bush administration
started but then practically abandoned?
Cheney knows this. But he goes on to use the big lie -- that Obama is
"trying to pretend we are not at war" -- to bludgeon the
administration on a host of specific issues. Here is the one that
jumps out at me: The president, Cheney claims, "seems to think that if
he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda-trained
terrorists still there, we won't be at war."
Interesting that Cheney should bring that up, because it now seems
clear that the man accused of trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253,
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was given training -- and probably the bomb
itself, which involved plastic explosives sewn into his underwear --
by al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. It happens that at least two men who
were released from Guantanamo appear to have gone on to play major
roles as al-Qaeda lieutenants in Yemen. Who let these dangerous people
out of our custody? They were set free by the administration of George
W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
The former vice president expresses his anger that the Obama
administration is bringing Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to trial in New York. Cheney is also angry
that Obama does not use the phrase "war on terror" all the time, the
way the Bush administration used to. But Obama just specifies that
we're at war against a network of terrorists, on the sensible theory
that it's impossible to wage war against a tactic.
Toward the end of his two-paragraph statement, Cheney goes completely
off the rails and starts fulminating about how Obama is seeking
"social transformation -- the restructuring of American society."
Somehow, this is supposed to be related to the president's alleged
disavowal of war -- which, of course, isn't real anyway. It makes you
wonder whether Cheney is just feeding the fantasies of the paranoid
right or has actually joined the tea-party fringe.
I can find reasons to criticize the administration's response to the
Christmas Day attack. Obama and his team were slow off the mark. Their
initial statements were weak. Obama shouldn't have waited three days
to speak publicly, and when he did he should have shown some emotion.
But using a terrorist attack to seek political gain? I have a New
Year's resolution to suggest for Cheney: Ahead of your quest for
personal vindication, put country first.
Article Source : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/30/AR2009123001696.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Mark Test
news:0e57cac7-17f0-4bda...@z41g2000yqz.googlegroups.com...
Gitmo,
releasing enemy combatants (terrorists), and accepting lax airport security.
You see Cheney is commenting on actions taken, not words. Bottom line Obama
tries terrorists in courts, while the last administration treated them as
combatants.
That's a major departure from US policy, and is a cause for concern. Time
will
tell which strategy is the best.
Mark
Jack Linthicum
> "PakistanPal" <pakistan...@gmail.com> wrote in message
Which one released the Yemen al Qaeda people?
Ray O'Hara
"Jack Linthicum" <jackli...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:5015554c-b184-4eea...@m11g2000vbo.googlegroups.com...
============================================================================
don't go confusing MT with facts. lies are what the connedservatives live
on.
frank
> "Jack Linthicum" <jacklinthi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
Yeah like some in the Bush administration wanted to close Gitmo. Was
more trouble than it was worth as a recruiting tool.
Not to mention Richard Reid was tried in a Federal court and is in a
Federal pen.
La N
> On Jan 4, 10:42 am, "Ray O'Hara" <raymond-oh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> "Jack Linthicum" <jacklinthi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
>>
>>
>> don't go confusing MT with facts. lies are what the connedservatives
>> live on.
>
> Yeah like some in the Bush administration wanted to close Gitmo. Was
> more trouble than it was worth as a recruiting tool.
>
> Not to mention Richard Reid was tried in a Federal court and is in a
> Federal pen.
Where I don't suppose terrorists are held in any higher regard than child
molesters.
- nilita
Arved Sandstrom
The Bush administration bent over backwards to avoid classifying the
terrorists as anything previously known to man, actually. "Enemy
combatant", for Chrissakes...what the hell did that ever mean? Nobody
knew, including Bush and all his cronies. They didn't want to call them
criminals, and they didn't want to call them POWs, so they just invented
an empty stupid phrase.
Incidentally, if time will tell which strategy is the best, then who's
to say that the Bush strategy was better? In which case, why is Obama's
approach cause for concern, and Bush's approach wasn't?
AHS
Mark Test
news:Wmr0n.58550$Db2.39353@edtnps83...
Well, I take it to mean the definition of 1949:
"Any person in an armed conflict who could be properly detained under the
laws and customs of war."
Now, this jihadist that tried to blow up 300 plus innocent people has a
lawyer and
we will never know who was behind this. Whereas if he were at Gitmo we may
have learned much about current terrorist activity.
>Nobody knew, including Bush and all his cronies. They didn't want to call
>them criminals, and they didn't want to call them POWs, so they just
>invented an empty stupid phrase.
>
Uh, no....they used an existing definition.
> Incidentally, if time will tell which strategy is the best, then who's to
> say that the Bush strategy was better? In which case, why is Obama's
> approach cause for concern, and Bush's approach wasn't?
>
It is simple....after 9-11 under Bush there were many attempts but none
successful
under Obama...we'll see.
Mark
Kerryn Offord
<SNIP>
> Whereas his actions do not show he is concerned about terrorists.
> Closing Gitmo,
Considered a major blot on the American image world wide .. also, of
dubious legality.
> releasing enemy combatants (terrorists),
Releasing prisoners who had never been charged with anything, let alone
convicted of terrorism... Heck, there was a lot of chest beating by the
republicans about how many Gitmo detainees were released before Obama
took office
> and accepting lax airport
> security.
What does Obama have to do with airport security? Certainly he comes
across as les than impressed with tehperformance of entities entrusted
with protecting teh US..
> You see Cheney is commenting on actions taken, not words. Bottom line Obama
> tries terrorists in courts,
Which is the due process required by US law for everyone but the
detainees at Gitmo...
> while the last administration treated them
> as combatants.
Right, even those that were kidnapped and sold to the US from Pakistan
and Kenya (Also Italy), and had never faced America in combat...
> That's a major departure from US policy, and is a cause for concern.
Yep.. that major departure from Bush era policy is one reason they gave
Obama the Nobel prize... Anything that actually smelled like legality
was preferable to what had been happening..
<SNIP>
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Ray O'Hara
"Mark Test" <rightwin...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:wdA0n.2565$%P5....@newsfe21.iad...
>> Incidentally, if time will tell which strategy is the best, then who's to
>> say that the Bush strategy was better? In which case, why is Obama's
>> approach cause for concern, and Bush's approach wasn't?
>>
> It is simple....after 9-11 under Bush there were many attempts but none
> successful
> under Obama...we'll see.
>
> Mark
"After" 9/11. you guys act like that was a freebie,
so we know bush failed miserably when the test came yet you laud his
efforts.
Karl Rove attacked Obama for taking 72 hours to make a statement,b when the
shoe bomber tried his attack Bush took 6 DAYS
to offer a comment.
the men the Undiebomber met and got the bomb from in Yemen were men
Bush/Cheney had released from Gitmo.
so what we have is another failure of Bush Era policies.
a screwed economy, a worn out army, 2 wars and a security apparatus that is
barely functional and so byzantine it failed on Christmas.
ALL HAIL GEORGE BUSH! THE WORST PRESIDENT EVER! and let us hope he remains
ever so.
Ray O'Hara
"Kerryn Offord" <ka...@ext.cantrbury.ac.nz> wrote in message
news:hhum4n$1jp0$1...@adenine.netfront.net...
They are closing Gitmo but they are not releasing not releasing anybody.
any terrorists that have been released were done so under Bush.