Dick Cheney Slams Condi Rice & Colin Powell In New Memoir! Still Supports Waterboarding

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Cheney says he urged Bush to bomb suspected Syria nuke site

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says in a new memoir that he urged President George W. Bush to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site in June 2007. But, he wrote, Mr. Bush opted for a diplomatic approach after other advisers — still stinging over “the bad intelligence we had received about Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction” — expressed misgivings.

“I again made the case for U.S. military action against the reactor,” Mr. Cheney wrote about a meeting on the issue. “But I was a lone voice. After I finished, the president asked, ‘Does anyone here agree with the vice president?’ Not a single hand went up around the room.”

Mr. Bush chose to try diplomatic pressure to force the Syrians to abandon the secret program, but the Israelis bombed the site in September 2007. Mr. Cheney’s account of the discussion appears in his autobiography, “In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir,” which is to be published by Simon & Schuster next week. A copy was obtained by The New York Times.

Pugnacious

Mr. Cheney’s book — which is often pugnacious in tone and in which he expresses little regret about many of the most controversial decisions of the Bush administration — casts him as something of an outlier among top advisers who increasingly took what he saw as a misguided course on national security issues. While he praises Mr. Bush as “an outstanding leader,” Mr. Cheney, who made guarding the secrecy of internal deliberations a hallmark of his time in office, divulges a number of conflicts with others in the inner circle.

He wrote that George J. Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, resigned in 2004 just “when the going got tough,” a decision he calls “unfair to the president.” He wrote that he believes that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell tried to undermine President Bush by privately expressing doubts about the Iraq war, and he confirms that he pushed to have Mr. Powell removed from the cabinet after the 2004 election. “It was as though he thought the proper way to express his views was by criticizing administration policy to people outside the government,” Mr. Cheney writes. His resignation “was for the best.”

He faults former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for naïveté in the efforts to forge a nuclear weapons agreement with North Korea, and Mr. Cheney reports that he fought with White House advisers over softening the president’s speeches on Iraq.

Mr. Cheney acknowledged that the administration underestimated the challenges in Iraq, but he said the real blame for the violence was with the terrorists.

He also defends the Bush administration’s decision to inflict what he called “tough interrogations” — like the suffocation technique known as waterboarding — on captured terrorism suspects, saying it extracted information that savedlives. He rejects portrayals of such techniques as “torture.”

In discussing the much-disputed “16 words” about Iraq’s supposed hunt for uranium in Niger that were included in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address to help justify the eventual invasion, Mr. Cheney said that unlike other aides, he saw no need to apologize for making that claim. He writes that Ms. Rice eventually came around to his view.

“She came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk and tearfully admitted I had been right,” he wrote.

Detailed account of Sept. 11 response

The book opens with an account of Mr. Cheney’s experiences during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he essentially commanded the government’s response from a bunker beneath the White House while Mr. Bush — who was away from Washington and hampered by communications breakdowns — played a peripheral role. But Mr. Cheney wrote that he did not want to make any formal statement to the nation that day.

“My past government experience,” he wrote, “had prepared me to manage the crisis during those first few hours on 9/11, but I knew that if I went out and spoke to the press, it would undermine the president, and that would be bad for him and for the country.

“We were at war. Our commander in chief needed to be seen as in charge, strong, and resolute — as George W. Bush was.”

Mr. Cheney appears to relish much of the criticism heaped on him by liberals, but reveals that he had offered to resign several times as President Bush prepared for his re-election in 2004 because he was afraid of becoming a burden on the Republican ticket. After a few days, however, Mr. Cheney said that Mr. Bush said he wanted him to stay.

Waning influence

But in the Bush administration’s second term, Mr. Cheney’s influence waned. When Mr. Bush decided to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense after the 2006 midterm elections, Mr. Cheney said he was not given a chance to object.

Mr. Cheney praised Barack Obama’s support, as a senator from Illinois, for passing a bank bailout bill at the height of the financial crisis, shortly before the 2008 election. But he criticizes Mr. Obama’s decision to withdraw the 33,000 additional troops he sent to Afghanistan in 2009 by September 2012, and writes that he has been “happy to note” that Mr. Obama has failed to close the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as he had pledged.

Mr. Cheney’s long struggle with heart disease is a recurring theme in the book. He discloses that he wrote a letter of resignation, dated March 28, 2001, and told an aide to give it to Mr. Bush if he ever had a heart attack or stroke that left him incapacitated.

And in the epilogue, Mr. Cheney writes that after undergoing heart surgery in 2010, he was unconscious for weeks. During that period, he wrote, he had a prolonged, vivid dream that he was living in an Italian villa, pacing the stone paths to get coffee and newspapers.


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Sources: MSNBC, NY Times, Telegraph.co.uk, Zimbio, Youtube, Google Maps

Sept. 11, 2001: What America Saw & Heard (Videos)...Pres. Bush's Speech, Pres. Obama's Promise

(This segment is comprised of a succession of newscasts that feature the impact of Flight 175 into the South Tower as it happened LIVE at 9:03 AM.

This segment documents and preserves how just about each and every network covered the moment the South Tower was struck on live television. Included are clips from ABC News, CBS News, WNYW-TV (Channel 5, New York), WNBC-TV (Channel 4, New York), NY1 (New York One, All News), Fox News Channel, WCBS-TV (Channel 2, New York), WPIX-TV (Channel 11, New York)... Also included in this segment are four NON-BRAOADCAST angles of the impact of Flight 175 into the South Tower.

They are included here for completeness and utilize audio from NPR Radio from the morning.)




(Now former President George W. Bush addressing the American people following 9/11 Terrorist attacks on our nation.)



(Today Pres. Obama paid tribute to all the American lives lost on 9/11/2001 from Terrorist attacks. He made this promise to our nation "the US will never falter in its pursuit of Al-Qaeda.")

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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Sources: MSNBC, Whitehouse.gov, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, WNYW-TV (Channel 5, New York), WNBC-TV (Channel 4, New York), NY1 (New York One, All News), Fox News Channel, WCBS-TV (Channel 2, New York), WPIX-TV (Channel 11, New York), Wikipedia, September11news.com, Youtube, Google Maps

Dick Cheney Strongly Objects To US Justice Dept Interrogation Probe...Here's Why

NY Times----

Dick Cheney's Version

After the C.I.A. inspector general’s report on prisoner interrogation was released last week, former Vice President Dick Cheney settled into his usual seat on Fox News to express his outrage — not at the illegal and immoral behavior laid out in the report, of course, but at the idea that anyone would object to torturing prisoners. He was especially vexed that the Obama administration was beginning an investigation.

In Mr. Cheney’s view, it is not just those who followed orders and stuck to the interrogation rules set down by President George Bush’s Justice Department who should be sheltered from accountability. He said he also had no problem with those who disobeyed their orders and exceeded the guidelines.

It’s easy to understand Mr. Cheney’s aversion to the investigation that Attorney General Eric Holder ordered last week. On Fox, Mr. Cheney said it was hard to imagine it stopping with the interrogators. He’s right.

The government owes Americans a full investigation into the orders to approve torture, abuse and illegal, secret detention, as well as the twisted legal briefs that justified those policies. Congress and the White House also need to look into illegal wiretapping and the practice of sending prisoners to other countries to be tortured.

Mr. Cheney was at the center of each of these insults to this country’s Constitution, its judicial system and its bedrock democratic values. To defend himself, he offers a twisted version of history:

•

He says Mr. Bush’s Justice Department determined that the “enhanced interrogation techniques” ordered by the president were legal under American law and international treaties like the Geneva Conventions.

In reality, those opinions were based on a corrupt and widely discredited legal analysis cooked up after the White House had already decided to use long-banned practices like waterboarding. Mr. Cheney was an architect of the decision to “get tough” with prisoners, as the bureaucrats often say to soften the outrage of this policy.

•

He insists the inspector general’s findings were “completely reviewed” by the Justice Department and that any follow-up investigation would be improper and unnecessary.

In reality, Mr. Bush’s attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, did not appoint an independent investigator after receiving the inspector general’s report, which was completed in 2004. The Justice Department decided there was only one narrow case worth pursuing, involving a civilian contractor — hardly a surprise from a thoroughly politicized department whose top officials set the very rules they were supposed to be judging. Mr. Gonzales’s team did not look into allegations that some interrogators broke those rules. Mr. Cheney may not care about that, but Mr. Holder rightly does.

•

Mr. Cheney claims that waterboarding and other practices widely considered to be torture or abuse “were absolutely essential” in stopping another terrorist attack on the United States after Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. Cheney is right when he says detainees who were subject to torture and abuse gave up valuable information. But the men who did the questioning flatly dispute that it was duress that moved them to do so.

Deuce Martinez, the C.I.A. officer who interrogated Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, engineer of the 9/11 mass murders, said he used traditional interrogation methods, and not the infliction of pain and panic. And, in an article on the Times Op-Ed page, Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who oversaw the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, another high-ranking terrorist, denounced “the false claims” about harsh interrogations. Mr. Soufan said Mr. Zubaydah talked before he was subjected to waterboarding and other abuse. He also said that “using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions.”

Every week, it seems, new disclosures about this sordid history dribble out. This week, Physicians for Human Rights analyzed what the inspector general’s report said about the involvement of C.I.A. physicians and psychiatrists in the abuse of prisoners. It said they not only monitored torture, like waterboarding, but also kept data on the prisoners’ reaction in ways that “may amount to human experimentation.”

Getting at the truth is not going to be easy. The C.I.A. destroyed evidence — videotapes of interrogations — and is now refusing to release its records of the questioning of its prisoners. It also is asking the courts to keep secret the orders Mr. Bush gave authorizing the interrogations, and the original Justice Department memos concluding that they were legal.

Americans need much more than glimpses of the truth. They should not have to decide whether to believe former interrogators, whom they do not know, or Mr. Cheney, who did not hesitate while in office to mislead them when it suited his political aims.

Sources: NY Times, Huffington Post

Cheney Directed CIA To Hide Counter Terrorism Program Info. From Congress...War Crime Or No?

Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal----


WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney directed the CIA eight years ago not to inform Congress about a nascent counterterrorism program that CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated in June, officials with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

Subsequent CIA directors did not inform Congress because the intelligence-gathering effort had not developed to the point that they believed merited a congressional briefing, said a former intelligence official and another government official familiar with Panetta's June 24 briefing to the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

Panetta did not agree.

Upon learning of the program June 23 from within the CIA, Panetta terminated it and the next day called an emergency meeting with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to inform them of the program and that it was canceled.

Cheney played a central role in overseeing the Bush administration's surveillance program that was the subject of an inspectors general report this past week. That report noted that Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, personally decided who in Bush's inner circle could even know about the secret program.

But revelations about Cheney's role in making decisions for the CIA on whether to notify Congress came as a surprise to some on the committees, said another government official. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program publicly.

An effort to reach Cheney was unsuccessful.

A former intelligence official, who was familiar with former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden's tenure at the CIA, said Hayden never communicated with the president or vice president about the now-canceled program and was under no restrictions from Cheney about congressional briefings. The official said Hayden was briefed only two or three times on the program.

Exactly what the counterterrorism program was meant to do remains a mystery. The former intelligence official said it was not related to the CIA's rendition, interrogation and detention program. Nor was it part of a wider classified electronic surveillance program that was the subject of a government report to Congress this past week.

The official characterized it as an embryonic intelligence gathering effort, and only sporadically active. He said it was hoped to yield intelligence that would be used to conduct a secret mission or missions in another country _ that is, a covert operation. But it never matured to that point.

The government official with direct knowledge of the Panetta briefing and the former intelligence official said the CIA has numerous efforts ongoing under its existing authorities that have not yet been briefed to Congress. He said they are not yet known to be viable for intelligence gathering.

The Cheney revelation comes as the House of Representatives is preparing to debate a bill that would require the White House to expand the number of members who are told about covert operations. The White House has threatened a veto over concerns that wider congressional notifications could compromise the secrecy of the operations.

That provision, however, would have no effect on programs like this one.

The former intelligence official familiar with Hayden said Congress has a right to contemporaneous information about all CIA activities. But he said there are so many in such early stages that briefing Congress on every one would be too time consuming for both the CIA and the congressional committees.

The New York Times initially reported about Cheney's direction not to tell Congress of the program on its Web site Saturday.



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Sources: Huffington Post, Day Life, Wikipedia, Google Maps

The G.O.P. Fights Back By Revealing CIA Interrogation Briefing Info.

The Hill Briefing Room----

Republicans ignited a firestorm of controversy on Thursday by revealing some of what they had been told at a closed-door Intelligence Committee hearing on the interrogation of terrorism suspects.

Democrats immediately blasted the GOP lawmakers for publicly discussing classified information, while Republicans said Democrats are trying to hide the truth that enhanced interrogation of detainees is effective.

GOP members on the Intelligence Committee on Thursday told The Hill in on-the-record interviews that they were informed that the controversial methods have led to information that prevented terrorist attacks.

Hoekstra did not attend the hearing, but said he later spoke with Republicans on the subcommittee who did. He said he came away with even more proof that the enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the CIA proved effective.

“I think the people who were at the hearing, in my opinion, clearly indicated that the enhanced interrogation techniques worked,” Hoekstra said.

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), a member of the subcommittee who attended the hearing, concurred with Hoekstra.

“The hearing did address the enhanced interrogation techniques that have been much in the news lately,” Kline said, noting that he was intentionally choosing his words carefully in observance of the committee rules and the nature of the information presented.

“Based on what I heard and the documents I have seen, I came away with a very clear impression that we did gather information that did disrupt terrorist plots,” Kline said.

Neither Hoekstra nor Kline revealed details about the specifics of what they were told Thursday or the identity of the briefers.

Democrats lambasted their Republican counterparts for discussing the information that was provided behind locked doors.

“I am absolutely shocked that members of the Intelligence committee who attended a closed-door hearing… then walked out that hearing – early, by the way – and characterized anything that happened in that hearing,” said Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairwoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).
“My understanding is that’s a violation of the rules. It may be more than that.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) said, “Members on both sides need to watch what they say.”

Both Schakowsky and Reyes accused GOP members of playing politics with national security.

“I think they are playing a very dangerous game when it comes to the discussion of matters that were sensitive enough to be part of a closed hearing,” Schakowsky said.

Asked about the validity of Republican contentions that information shared in Thursday’s hearing showed the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques, Schakowsky said she could not comment on what was discussed at a closed hearing.

Reyes responded by saying he did not attend the entire hearing.

“I wasn’t at the whole hearing,” Reyes said. “As the chairman my view is we need to get the facts about how the enhanced interrogation techniques came about, not just the results.”

That task has become complicated for Democrats, as has the task of proving any effectiveness, or not, of waterboarding and other similar methods of interrogation.

While Democrats, led by President Obama, have firmly labeled those methods torture, cast doubt on their utility, and called for their abolition, Republicans, led by former Vice President Dick Cheney, have consistently said they have worked.

Cheney has called on Obama to declassify CIA information that he says will show that enhanced interrogation techniques have made the U.S. safer.

Since Obama’s release of the Bush administration legal memos justifying the use of many of those enhanced interrogation techniques, Democrats have been on the defensive on an issue they hoped would place them on the political and moral high ground.

And at the center of the storm has been House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Pelosi has been dogged for weeks about how much she was told by CIA officials about the development and use of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques.

Pelosi last month accused the CIA of lying to Congress about its treatment of suspected terrorists and detainees.

Republican leaders have since demanded that Pelosi either back up those claims or apologize.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday pressed the issue.

“It’s been three weeks since I asked Speaker Pelosi to back up her allegations that the CIA lied to her or purposely misled her,” Boehner said at his weekly press conference. “Allowing this to hang out there is unconscionable. And I just think the silence from Speaker Pelosi is deafening.”

On Thursday Pelosi was asked if she was still receiving intelligence briefings.

“I’ve said what I’m going to say on that subject,” she immediately replied.

Before the reporter could repeat the question, Pelosi answered, “Yes I am. Yes I am.”

As part of their line of attack, Republicans have called not just for open hearings on interrogations, but for an inquiry in which Pelosi would testify about what she was told by the CIA, as well as for the release of still-classified documents they say will back up their claims that waterboarding and other methods have yielded valuable intelligence.

“We’ve asked for hearings,” Hoekstra said. “Clearly the chairman and I are of different thinking on this. But I think a whole lot of questions would be answered if those materials would be released.”

Reyes contended that the committee is acting appropriately.

“We want to know everything there is to know about interrogation, wherever that leads us,” Reyes said. “This was just the first hearing.”

“They can talk all they want and they can continue to make a political issue out of it,” he said of Republicans. “We will continue to do our work.”


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Sources: The Hill, Huffington Post, Day Life, Wikipedia, Google Maps

WTF?? Cheney Was In Charge of Interrogation Briefing Hearings For Congressional Members?

Washington Post----

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney personally oversaw at least four briefings with senior members of Congress about the controversial interrogation program, part of a secretive and forceful defense he mounted throughout 2005 in an effort to maintain support for the harsh techniques used on detainees.

The Cheney-led briefings came at some of the most critical moments for the program, as congressional oversight committees were threatening to investigate or even terminate the techniques, according to lawmakers, congressional officials, and current and former intelligence officials.

Cheney's role in helping handle intelligence issues in the Bush administration -- particularly his advocacy for the use of aggressive methods and warrantless wiretapping against alleged terrorists -- has been well documented. But his hands-on role in defending the interrogation program to lawmakers has not been previously publicized.

The CIA made no mention of his role in documents delivered to Capitol Hill last month that listed every lawmaker who had been briefed on "enhanced interrogation techniques" since 2002. For meetings that were overseen by Cheney, the agency told the intelligence committees that information about who oversaw those briefings was "not available."

The revelations do not shed light on whether top Democrats, as Republicans contend, were aware that waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning, was being used on terrorism suspects as early as the fall of 2002. That discussion has dominated Capitol Hill since last month, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who was not present at any of the briefings that included Cheney, accused the agency of intentionally misleading her in a 2002 briefing about the use of waterboarding.

An official who witnessed one of Cheney's briefing sessions with lawmakers said the vice president's presence appeared calculated to give additional heft to the CIA's case for maintaining the program. Cheney left it to the professional briefers to outline the interrogation practices, while he mounted an impassioned defense of the program.

"This is a really important issue for the security of the United States," the official recalled Cheney saying.

The CIA declined to comment on why Cheney's presence in some meetings was left out of the records. One senior intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the identities of individual briefers are intentionally concealed in all cases -- their names do not appear in any of the CIA documents that describe congressional briefings. In at least some cases, he added, the identity of the briefer was never recorded in the agency's internal records.

For all but seven of the 40 meetings listed, however, the documents outlined which agency led the briefing and which provided support. And on at least five occasions, they spelled out that then-CIA Director Michael V. Hayden led the classified meetings.

Since leaving office in January, Cheney has mounted a vigorous public defense of the interrogation practices. Speaking at the National Press Club on Monday, he said CIA officials approached the White House in 2002 with the request to use harsher techniques such as waterboarding.

"We all approved it. I'm a strong believer in it. I think it was the right thing to do," said Cheney, who is now pushing for the declassification of the information gained from the detainees who were subjected to the most brutal techniques.

Several members of Congress who took part in the Cheney meetings declined to comment on them, citing secrecy concerns. But there was little doubt that he was leading the charge on the issue.

"His office was ground zero. It was his office you dealt with at the end of the day," recalled Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who jousted with Cheney over the system of interrogations.

One of the most critical Cheney-led briefings came in late October 2005, when the vice president and Porter J. Goss, then director of the CIA, read Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) into the program on the interrogation methods, according to congressional and intelligence sources.

One knowledgeable official described the meeting as contentious. Cheney and Goss, with other CIA officials present, tried to persuade the former Vietnam POW to back off an anti-torture amendment that had already won the support of 90 senators.

The McCain amendment would have ended practices such as waterboarding by forbidding "cruel, degrading and inhumane" treatment of detainees. The CIA had not used waterboarding since 2003, but the White House sought to maintain the ability to employ it.

In the meetings with lawmakers, Cheney was adamant that the enhanced interrogations were needed to preserve national security, according to two participants. He advocated briefing more lawmakers about the program, against the wishes of National Security Council officials who sought to inform only the top members of the intelligence committees.

Lawmakers at times challenged Cheney and CIA officials about the legality of the program and pressed for specific results that would show whether the techniques worked. In response, the CIA briefers said that half of the agency's knowledge about al-Qaeda's plans and structure had been obtained through the interrogations.

Before the McCain briefing, Cheney met with a friendlier audience, his longtime friends Sens. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who oversaw the Pentagon's annual spending bill, to which the McCain amendment was attached. Cochran said yesterday that it was the first time he had been given a full description of what waterboarding entailed.

"I found the conversation with the vice president to be very candid, straightforward, helpful," Cochran said.

CIA records indicate that another briefing -- for which the briefer's name is "not available" -- was given to Senate GOP leaders on Nov. 1, 2005. That was the same day Cheney made a regular appearance at the weekly Tuesday luncheon for Senate Republicans. Cheney usually engaged only in brief, quiet asides with senators at the lunches. But at this meeting -- the day before The Washington Post published a detailed account of the CIA's secret overseas prison system -- Cheney rose to speak, and the room was cleared of all staff.

He discussed the value of the interrogation program and the information gleaned by using the harsh techniques, according to numerous contemporaneous media accounts.

Cheney's briefings on interrogations began in the winter of 2005 as the top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, Sen. John D. Rockefeller III (W.Va.) and Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), publicly advocated a full-scale investigation of the tactics used against top al-Qaeda suspects.

On March 8, 2005 -- two days after a detailed report in the New York Times about interrogations -- Cheney gathered Rockefeller, Harman and the chairmen of the intelligence panels, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), according to current and former intelligence officials. Weeks earlier, Roberts had given public statements suggesting possible support for the investigation sought by Rockefeller. But by early March 2005, Roberts announced that he opposed a separate probe, and the matter soon died.

Cheney's efforts to sway Congress toward supporting waterboarding went beyond secret meetings in Washington. In July 2005, he sent David S. Addington, his chief counsel at the time, to travel with five senators -- four of them opponents of the CIA interrogation methods -- to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On the trip, Sen. Graham urged Addington to put the interrogations at secret prisons and the use of military tribunals into a stronger constitutional position by pushing legislation through Congress, rather than relying on executive orders and secret rulings from Justice Department lawyers.

Subsequent court rulings would challenge the legality of the system, and Justice Department lawyers were privately drafting new rules on interrogations. Addington dismissed the views of Graham, who had been a military lawyer.

"I've got all the authority I need right here," Addington said, pulling from his coat a pocket-size copy of the Constitution, according to the senator, suggesting there was no doubt about the system's legal footing.

Sources: Washington Post, Huffington Post, Day Life, Politico

Dick Cheney AKA "Darth Vader" Speaks Out (Again) On Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, the GM Bankruptcy, Sotomayor & Gay Marriage

Former V.P. Dick Cheney aka "Darth Vader" on the recent GM Bankruptcy filing: "I'm worried. I guess is the way I would put it. I think once you get into the business of having the government run a major corporation like GM, and it looks to me like today they own GM, certainly a major shareholder. Then all these political pressures come to bear, and decisions begin to be made not for Economic reasons or for Business reasons but rather to appease certain Political interests. Some companies succeed and some companies fail."




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Sources: Politico, Day Life, Elect Textiles, Google Maps

Dick Cheney Humbly Welcomes Colin Powell Back Into The G.O.P.

Well, well how quickly the tables have turned.

During former V.P. Dick Cheney's recent interview with CNBC's Larry Kudlow, host of "The Kudlow Report", he decided to make amends with his "buddy" General Colin Powell.

During the broadcast Cheney basically begged Powell to remain a member of the Republican Party.

I Guess Cheney must have seen Powell's high approval poll numbers.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

KUDLOW: ... You kind of took a shot at General Colin Powell the other day, said you didn't know he was still a member of the Republican Party. He responded to you by saying that you were mistaken. He is a member of the Republican Party, and he regards himself a, quote, "Jack Kemp Republican," end quote. Could you react to what Mr. Powell is saying?


Mr. CHENEY: Well, we're happy to have General Powell in the Republican Party. I was asked a question about a dispute he was having, I think, with Rush Limbaugh, and I expressed the consent, the notion I had that he had already left since he endorsed Barack Obama for president. But I meant no offense to my former colleague. I wasn't seeking to rearrange his political identity.

KUDLOW: So you welcome him back into the party.

Mr. CHENEY: We're in the mode where we welcome everybody to the party. What I don't want to do, in the course of trying to expand the overall size of the Republican Party and expand our base, is to take away from basic fundamental principles. I think it's very important that we remind people out around the country what it is that we stand for, that we do believe in a strong national defense, in low taxes and limited government; and giving up on those principles, in order to try to appeal to people who are otherwise going to vote Democratic, seems to me is a--would be a fundamental defeat for those of us who are essentially conservative, who've been long-time supporters of the Republican Party.

Sources: Huffington Post, CNBC, The Kudlow Report, Crooks and Liars, American Spectator, Day Life, Reuters

Colin Powell Defends His Republican Party Affiliation....Responds To Rush & Cheney

During a recent appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation" former Secretary of State and retired Army General Colin Powell defended his political party affiliation.

Prior to the 2008 Presidential election Powell crossed party lines to endorse President Obama. Having done so Limbaugh and Cheney branded him as a Democrat.

Two weeks ago former V.P. Dick Cheney also appeared on "Face the Nation".

While discussing the future of the Republican party with host Bob Schiffer, Mr. Cheney commented, "Well, if I had to choose — in terms of being a Republican — I’d go with Rush Limbaugh, I think." "My take on it was that Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican."

Today Powell responded to Cheney and Limbaugh's divisive, false claims by stating, "Rush will not get his wish and Mr. Cheney was misinformed – I am still a Republican." "Neither Cheney nor Rush Limbaugh are members of the membership committee of the Republican Party."

In addition Powell urged the G.O.P. "to broaden its appeal".

Considering the Republican Party's scant support nationwide, it would be very foolish for G.O.P. leaders to diss such a distinguished member as Colin Powell. Very foolish indeed.

(Colin Powell setting the record straight regarding his Political Party affiliation this morning on "Face the Nation".)



Sources: Politico, MSNBC, CBS, Face the Nation, Think Progress, Day Life

Chicago Right Wing DJ "Mancow" Experiences Waterboarding...Now Admits Its Torture!

Today Chicago Right Wing radio shock jock Erich "Mancow" Muller, a guy who has been a thorn in President Obama's side ever since he was presidential candidate Barack Obama, decided to experience Waterboarding firsthand to convince listeners of his radio show that the Obama administration is wrong as it relates to using Enhanced Interrogation Techniques on prisoners of war.

By participating in this experiment "Mancow" was attempting to prove that Waterboarding is NOT really Torture.

The results? He almost drowned. Literally!

After 6 seconds of having water poured on his face, then catching his breath and appearing visibly shaken, "Mancow" humbly admitted Waterboarding IS indeed Torture!

Well former V.P. Dick Cheney and daughter Liz, what do you have to say about this?

Note: Parents please prevent/ educate your kids from trying this experiment at home.


("Mancow" almost drowns during a Waterboarding experiment.)



("Mancow"'s remarks after the Waterboarding experiment.)

"It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke ... It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back… It was instantaneous… and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture."


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Sources: MSNBC, The Moderate Voice, Day Life, The Inquisitr, Youtube, Google Maps

Dick Cheney's Counter National Security Address....Supports Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

After President Obama delivered his speech on National Security, former V.P. Dick Cheney expounded on the subject with his own perspective in support of the Bush administration's use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.

Oh boy, now I'm really confused!

Dick Cheney: "Keep in mind that these are hardened terrorists picked up overseas since 9/11. The ones that were considered low-risk were released a long time ago... I think the president will find, upon reflection, that to bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger and regret in the years to come."

"In seeking to guard this nation against the threat of catastrophic violence, our administration gave intelligence officers the tools and lawful authority they needed to gain vital information."

"Our government prevented attacks and saved lives through the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which let us intercept calls and track contacts between al-Qaida operatives and persons inside the United States."

"In the years after 9/11, our government also understood that the safety of the country required collecting information known only to the worst of the terrorists. And in a few cases, that information could be gained only through tough interrogations... The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do."

""The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism... But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed."

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Sources: MSNBC, Day Life, Wikipedia, Google Maps

George W. Bush & Dick Cheney Together Again On SNL (Spoof)

Will Ferrell as George W. Bush: "I needed the kind of VP that did dumb stuff to make me look smarter."

Check out this super hilarious spoof of former President George W. Bush (Will Ferrell) and former V.P. Dick Cheney (Darrell Hammond) shown uniting on Saturday Night Live.

During the skit Bush tried to convince Cheney to stay out of the limelight and move on.

Too funny!



Sources: SNL, NBC, Huffington Post, Associated Content, Day Life