Dick Cheney

"Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk was on the mark... in November 2002, he wrote, “Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 11 September. If the United States invades Iraq, we should remember that.” On many psychological levels, the Bush team was able to manipulate post-9/11 emotions well beyond the phantom of Iraqi involvement in that crime against humanity. The dramatic changes in political climate after 9/11 included a drastic upward spike in the attitude—fervently stoked by the likes of Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the president—that our military should be willing to attack potential enemies before they might attack us. Few politicians or pundits were willing to confront the reality that this was a formula for perpetual war, and for the creation of vast numbers of new foes who would see a reciprocal logic in embracing such a credo themselves. President Bush’s national security adviser “felt the administration had little choice with Hussein,” reporter Bob Woodward recounted in mid-November 2002. A quote from Condoleezza Rice summed up the approach. “Take care of threats early.” Determining exactly what constitutes a threat—and how to “take care” of it—would be up to the eye of the beholder in the Oval Office."

"You know, I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over. I don't believe he went in there for oil. We didn't go in there for imperialist or financial reasons. We went in there because he bought the Wolfowitz-Cheney analysis that the Iraqis would be better off, we could shake up the authoritarian Arab regimes in the Middle East, and our leverage to make peace between the Palestinians and Israelis would be increased."

"President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have asserted the president's right to wield virtually unchecked power. They have used the tragedy of 9/11 to implement a radical political agenda, attempting to ram through a right-wing wish list, from gutting social security to delivering tax cuts to the rich, to discarding basic civil liberties. Our government now routinely invades the privacy of its own citizens, then pulls the cloak of national security over its operations to hide its deceptions and blunders from public view. The economy has been trashed, inequality is now at levels not seen since the Great Depression, and at least 5 million more Americans live in poverty than did at the start of the Bush presidency. Many eminent historians and economists are concluding that George W. Bush has earned the distinction of being the "worst president ever.""

"Vice President Dick Cheney made it clear who was setting the environmental agenda when he huddled behind closed doors with his former colleagues in the oil industry in early 2001 and virtually allowed them to write a new national energy policy to their liking. The result: the 2005 Energy Bill, which gave $16 billion in subsidies to the oil, gas, and coal industries, recommended opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas drilling, deregulated the electricity market, subsidized building new nuclear power plants, and dumbed down fuel economy standards for SUVs and light trucks."

"What Liam Madden saw in Iraq quickly disabused him of the idea that Americans were being "greeted as liberators," as Vice President Dick Cheney blithely promised in 2003. "People in Iraq had eyes full of fear and hopelessness. It was obvious to me that we were not helping those people. Any help was for propaganda-'Look, we're slapping a coat of paint on a building!' It was not systemic help." He was sent to Fallujah a few months after U.S. forces attacked in retaliation for the killings of four employees of Blackwater, the American mercenary firm. "It was devastated. Just rubble."...In the course of our conversation, Madden stops to do a brief radio interview. He is asked his view of his commander in chief and of Vice President Cheney. "I personally believe they are war criminals," he says without hesitating. Sounding like a seasoned media professional, he is quick on his feet and forceful. "They committed a war of aggression. Certainly they should be impeached for trampling on the Constitution.""

"We shall never know many of the facts about the invasion [of Panama], nor shall we know the true extent of the massacre. Defense Secretary Richard Cheney claimed a death toll between five hundred and six hundred, but independent human rights groups estimated it at three thousand to five thousand, with another twenty-five thousand left homeless... Noriega was arrested, flown to Miami, and sentenced to forty years' imprisonment; at that time, he was the only person in the United States officially classified as a prisoner of war... The world was outraged by this breach of international law and by the needless destruction of a defenseless people at the hands of the most powerful military force on the planet, but few in the United States were aware of either the outrage or the crimes Washington had committed. Press coverage was very limited. A number of factors contributed to this, including government policy, White House phone calls to publishers and television executives, congress people who dared not object, lest the wimp factor become their problem, and journalists who thought the public needed heroes rather than objectivity."

"Cheney and Rumsfeld were inveterate schemers whose cynicism about going to war was exceeded only by their ineptitude in conducting it."

"Few talk or think about Iraq these days; the media ignores this important but demolished nation. Iraq, let us recall, was the target of a major western aggression concocted by George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Britain's Tony Blair, and financed and encouraged by the Gulf oil sheikdoms and Saudi Arabia... We hear nothing about the billions of dollars of Iraqi oil being extracted by big US oil firms since 2003."

"Recognize that Dick Cheney is the most cynical political figure to hold high office in this country since his former boss Dick Nixon. And he is perfectly willing to say what he thinks will advance him, particularly in an election season. In 1994, he was, at least in his own mind, competing for the Republican nomination for President in 1996. In 2000 of course he was competing for the vice presidency. In both cases he needed to seem to be a mainstream and responsible figure. But the real Dick Cheney, the man who was secretary of defense in 1990 and produced a secret plan for invading Iraq and capturing Saddam Hussein that was ultimately rejected by Norman Schwarzkopf and others, I don't think ever relinquished his desire to take control of Iraq and its oil."

"One of the things that [his old professors at Yale] said is that back in 1960 he was a guy who was looking for simple ideas about the world, most of them rooting back to the idea of the United States being able to do whatever it wants without any consequences. I don't think Dick Cheney has changed at all, but I do think we often see different faces of him when he believes it is politically convenient."

"One week into the [[Gulf War|[Gulf] war]], the public mood had become unsettled and the media was becoming critical. After the success of the first day and the excitement of watching cruise missiles strike with incredible accuracy, it looked from the outside as though the war was going nowhere. "Why isn't the war over?" people were asking. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and I realized we had to act to settle things down. The point of decision for us at that moment was not in our offices or in the situation rooms monitoring the war, but down in the press room. We called a press conference where Dick gave an excellent summary of the strategic and political situation, and then I covered the military campaign. I summarized our actions during the previous week, concluding with a few sharp words detailing our strategy to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait: "First we are going to cut it off," I told the assembled reporters, "and then we are going to kill it." My line was picked up by all the newspapers and all the radio and TV news shows. It did the trick. It told the people out there what they needed to know. Confidence about our war aims returned. And Dick and I could leave the front lines and get back to our offices."

"I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons."

"As was documented in Josh Fox's excellent documentary Gasland, the chemicals injected into the ground pose serious health and environmental risks to drinking water, air quality, and wildlife. However, the full extent of the risk is not known, because the gas industry isn't required to disclose what chemicals are used, or in what quantities. If that complete lack of transparency sounds outrageous, it is. We have Dick Cheney to thank for the "Halliburton loophole," which exempts fracking companies from many of the disclosures normally required under the Safe Drinking Water Act."

"The real anomaly in the administration is Cheney. I consider Cheney a good friend — I've known him for 30 years. But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore."

"As a general matter, the left's favorite three lines of attack are (1) you're stupid; (2) you're mean; (3) you're corrupt. Sarah Palin is supposedly stupid; Mitt Romney is supposedly mean; Dick Cheney is supposedly corrupt. Take away those lines of attack and watch the discomfort set in."

"[clip]: My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week. Jon Stewart: Wow. How powerful a man do you have to be to able to shoot someone in the face and have that guy say, "My bad"?"

"He became vice president well before George Bush picked him. And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush — personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum."

"Clearly, he's a coward."