Cheney: We Didn’t Go Far Enough

[The Grim Squeaker]

Cheney: We Didn’t Go Far Enough

* By Kim Zetter


Former Vice President Dick Cheney felt that the Bush Administration didn’t go far enough in the policies it pursued and that had it not been saddled with a weak commander-in-chief, the policies could have been pushed much further.

“If he’d been equipped with a group of people as ideologically rigorous as he was, they’d have been able to push further,” according to an unnamed associate who told the Washington Post that the Vice President expressed these sentiments during talks over a memoir he plans to publish in 2011.

The thwarted policies Cheney referred to included the administration’s controversial warrantless surveillance program, its prisoner torture program and the CIA’s rendition and secret prisons programs.

“What impressed me was his continuing zeal,” a source told the Washington Post. “He hadn’t stepped back a bit from the positions he took in office to a more relaxed, Olympian view. He was still very much in the fray. He’s not going to soften anything or accommodate shifts of conscience. There was no sense in which he looked back and said, ‘I wish I’d done something differently.’”

Cheney blamed President Bush for shackling him and told associates that the president had “gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice,” a source told the Post. “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.”

Although Cheney has expressed contempt in the past for those who spilled secrets after leaving a government job, he appears to be intending to do just this in his book.

Robert Barnett, who negotiated Cheney’s book contract, passed word to potential publishers that the memoir would be packed with news, and Cheney himself has said, without explanation, that “the statute of limitations has expired” on many of his secrets. “When the president made decisions that I didn’t agree with, I still supported him and didn’t go out and undercut him,” Cheney said, according to Stephen Hayes, his authorized biographer. “Now we’re talking about after we’ve left office. I have strong feelings about what happened. . . . And I don’t have any reason not to forthrightly express those views.”

Presumably, the secrets Cheney plans to spill won’t include disclosing information Congress sought for years from his office — such as presidential orders related to the domestic surveillance program, which Cheney’s lawyer reportedly kept in his office safe, and e-mail communications that might have proved who was really responsible for the leak of Valerie Plame’s CIA association had they not mysteriously disappeared.

I'm surprised that his criticism for weak leadership was one of ideological compatability as opposed to strong leadership or forcefulness (which would be a more reasonable claim).

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Yeah. Cheney's goal all along was to make it completely acceptable to routinely torture American citizens into false confessions as a means to crush dissent, lock even more people in prison up on bullshit, and get his rocks off in a State-sanctioned manner.

In other news, the sky is blue and water is wet. We get it.

[erik_t]

This simply furthers my view that Bush was in waaaayyyyyy over his head but is not an intrinsically evil man. I hated his administration and what it stood for and what it achieved, but I cannot claim to hate George W. Bush. No more than I hate a small child whose misbehavior is actively facilitated by his parents.

As you might imagine, I feel a touch different about Cheney and Rove.

[Pelranius]

If Cheney is all that worked up about meddling superiors, then why didn't he run for the presidency, aside from the distinct lack of popular appeal?

[Patrick Degan]

So... Chimpus Caesar was more or less a puppet who got uppity and the only reason Count Dick didn't stage a coup was because in the end he was too gutless to actually try it. Basically, a bully and a coward —often one in the same. Two of them, actually —since Bushy-boy was more than willing to lie us into a wholly unnecessary war against a country that hadn't a hope in hell of fighting back and still passed the torture measures he was willing to go along with.

What remains so disturbing about this duo is the fact that they pushed the Republican Party in a far more authoritarian, fascist direction which it is determined to continue traveling, it seems.

[General Zod]

If Cheney is all that worked up about meddling superiors, then why didn't he run for the presidency, aside from the distinct lack of popular appeal?

Because it's a lot easier to deflect attention when you're not the one in the hot seat. Didn't you read Machiavelli?