1 Boring Old Man

Cheney Assails Those Favoring Iraq Drawdown

Vice President Dick Cheney offered an aggressive defense of the Bush administration’s Iraq strategy today, asserting that those in Congress who pursue a gradual drawdown of American forces are “undermining” the troops and that a withdrawal would represent “a full validation of the Al Qaeda strategy.”

Mr. Cheney’s comments, delivered before the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, came days after Democratic leaders said they would seek to place new conditions on military operations in Iraq and would call for the withdrawal of most American troops by August 2008.

But Mr. Cheney, speaking before a clearly supportive audience, did not temper in the slightest the often-tough language he has used in describing the stakes in Iraq or in the fight against terrorism.

Indeed, the vice president’s remarks were the strongest warning yet from an administration official that Democrats should not seek to tie the president’s hands on troop deployments.

President Bush called on Congress on Sunday, during a visit to Colombia, to finance the Iraq war “with no strings attached.” Mr. Cheney, however, appeared to go a step beyond the president, who has offered repeated assurances that he does not question the patriotism of war critics.

The Democratic-led efforts to place conditions on military operations, Mr. Cheney said, were “counterproductive and send exactly the wrong message.”

“When members of Congress pursue an antiwar strategy that’s been called ‘slow-bleed,’ they’re not supporting the troops, they are undermining them,” the vice president said.

And when those lawmakers seek to impose time limits on the American presence in Iraq, Mr. Cheney added, “they’re telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out.”

He took us to Iraq with an agenda. What he says repeatedly is that leaving Iraq defeats the agenda. And he tells us that our enemy in Iraq is al Qaeda. So, he would have us stay in Iraq so as to not give in to the Al Qaeda strategy. If our enemy is al Qaeda, why don’t we go fight al Qaeda. They’re over in Pakistan getting ready to attack Afghanistan. Why do we let our troops be sitting dicks in Iraq, if, indeed, the fighters there are al Qaeda? What he says only makes sense if the agenda he speaks of is occuppying Iraq. What he says only makes sense if occuppying Iraq long term was the plan in the first place. What he says only makes sense if the goal of going to Iraq in the first place was to get control of their oil.

But there’s another reason besides his motives in getting us into this war to ignore what he says. He’s always wrong. Everything he’s said about this war has turned out to be dead wrong. They have bombs. They have chemical/biological weapons. We’re going to be greeted as liberators. We’re winning in Iraq. We don’t need more troops. We do need more troops.

The released emails from Alberto Gonzales’ assistant Kyle Samson [who has just resigned] make things exceedingly clear. He spent his time evaluating whether the Federal Prosecutors were bringing enough voter fraud cases against minority voters [who vote for Democrats]. In the emails, his term is "push out." It’s worth reading the emails to see the extent to which the Attorney General’s Office has become a political arm of the Republican Party. Samson’s recommendations for getting around Congress are reminiscent of Bush’s Bolton appointment or the prewar campaign to go to war in Iraq  – plans for how to circumvent and/or manipulate the system. We live in a country that’s run from the dark shadows. The public persona is there to put tell us that what’s happening isn’t really happening.

Every story is exactly the same these days. They say, "We’re not doing what you think we’re doing." And what we say they’re doing is, in fact, just the tip of the iceberg. …

Firings Had Genesis in White House

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that "it doesn’t appear the president was told about a list nor shown a list" of U.S. attorneys at any point in the discussions. She said White House political adviser Karl Rove had an early conversation with Miers about the idea of firing all chief prosecutors and did not think it was wise.

Bush mentioned complaints about voter-fraud investigations to Gonzales in a conversation in October 2006, Perino said. Gonzales does not recall the conversation, Justice Department officials said.

…

Bush "believes informally he may have mentioned it to the AG during the meeting discussing other matters," Perino said. "White House officials including the president did not direct DOJ to take any specific action with regards to any specific U.S. attorney."

We’ve heard this kind of phraseology before. Careful wording that finds something that can be said that is, in itself, the truth but is used to tell a lie. For example, Karl Rove responded in the early invesigation of the outing of Valerie Plame that he never gave her "name" to anyone. The truth? He said Wilson’s "wife" or confirmed to reporters that she was a C.I.A. employee without using her specific name.

Now we have Dana Perino using careful, preplanned phrases, "it doesn’t appear that…" or "believes informally he may have mentioned it" or "did not direct DOJ to take any specific action." It’s doesn’t take an English Professor or a Psychoanalyst to parse this grammar. Each one is a way of disavowing some particular action that can’t be prosecuted as a lie, but obviously hides the real truth.

I’ve spent a year and a half jumping on each outrageous story that’s come out of Washington, in part to validate the obvious reality I [we] live with now. I don’t feel so compelled to prattle on about them any more. Finally, the newspapers are doing that for us again. And this story has their M.O. all over it: partisan political meddling; using some quietly inserted power to get around the Congress; careful covering of their tracks; nondenial denials, Administrative operatives avoiding their Constitutional responsibilities. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, and Bush’s Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, are embedded in this particular story up to their eyeballs.

This story "has legs" as they say, and in a chess game like this, the capture of a pawn and a bishop late in the game would be a cause for celebration!

Halliburton Moving C.E.O. From Houston to Dubai

Halliburton, the big energy services company, said on Sunday that it would open a corporate headquarters in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai and move its chairman and chief executive, David J. Lesar, there.

The company will maintain its existing corporate office here as well as its legal incorporation in the United States, meaning that it will still be subject to domestic laws and regulations.

Although the announcement of the new Dubai arrangement took many by surprise, Halliburton said that the move was part of a strategy announced in mid-2006 to concentrate its efforts in the Middle East and surrounding areas, where state-owned oil companies represent a growing source of business.

Halliburton, which was led by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000, is currently in the process of spinning off KBR, its military contracting unit, to focus on its business of drilling wells and maintaining fields for oil companies. The company did not say what implications the Dubai development might have for its military contracts. Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney, referred questions about the company’s plans to Halliburton.

Just unbelievable…

Falwell lauds Gingrich for repentance

Newt Gingrich’s admission of an extramarital affair as he pursued President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in the Monica Lewinsky scandal has won praise from another conservative Christian leader: Rev. Jerry Falwell.

It’s also helped to gain Gingrich an invitation to deliver the commencement address at Falwell’s Liberty University. Gingrich is considered a possible Republican presidential contender, although he has not announced an intention to run.

So, we’re not surprised. But one really wonders how the faithful rationalize such baloney. Newt Gingrich is a political chameleon – he’ll be whatever it takes. To pass Newt off as anything close to the way they’re describing him here is just plain ludicrous. He was a sleazy teenager, a sleazy congressman, and he’s a sleazy Christian Right fair-haired boy.

My dad had a saying, "I don’t mind you peeing in my boot, but don’t tell me it’s water."

Rove Was Asked to Fire US Attorney

Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state’s U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

"Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.

"He’s gone," Rove said, according to Weh.

"I probably said something close to ‘Hallelujah,’" said Weh.

Weh’s account calls into question the Justice Department’s stance that the recent decision to fire Iglesias and seven U.S. attorneys in other states was a personnel matter – made without White House intervention. Justice Department officials have said the White House’s involvement was limited to approving a list of the U.S. attorneys after the Justice Department made the decision to fire them.

Rove could not be reached Saturday, and the White House and the Justice Department had no immediate response.

"The facts speak for themselves," Iglesias said, when he was told of Weh’s account of his conversation with Rove.

Weh’s disclosure comes as Congress investigates the circumstances behind the firings of the U.S. attorneys, most of whom had positive job evaluations, including Iglesias. Democrats have charged the Bush administration tried to inject partisan politics into federal prosecutions in order to influence election outcomes.

Weh said he doesn’t know whether Rove was directly involved in the firing or was merely advised of the decision.

Weh insisted this wasn’t about partisan politics.

"There’s nothing we’ve done that’s wrong," he said. "It wasn’t that Iglesias wasn’t looking out for Republicans. He just wasn’t doing his job, period."

But Iglesias, who was fired Dec. 7, said he believes politics was the driving force. He accused Republicans Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson of trying to pressure him to bring indictments against several Democrats in time for the 2006 congressional election.

Domenici and Wilson acknowledge calling Iglesias, but deny pressuring him.  (more)

The weakest piece in the court of chessmen is the King, yet the game in won by creating a situation where the King can be attacked and have no escape route. Much of the defensive part of a chess game is aligning the other more powerful members of the court in a protective position around the King. And the early offensive strategy of a chess game is capturing these lesser figures to both reduce the defenses and undermine the future offense. Of course, the most powerful piece on the chess board is the Queen, and her isolation and capture often heralds the beginning of the end of the game.

President Bush’s Iraq policies weaken our military’s readiness, dishonor our nation’s promises to our veterans, and fail to hold the Iraqi government accountable for overdue reforms.

By threatening to veto the House’s military funding bill, the President is walking away from his promise to the American people. The President has vowed to veto a bill that contains his own reform benchmarks for performance by the Iraqi government, our Defense Department’s own standards for troop readiness, and America’s promise to our veterans.

With his veto threat, the President offers only an open-ended commitment to a war without end that dangerously ignores the repeated warnings of military leaders, including the commander in Iraq, General Petraeus, who declared in Baghdad this week that the conflict cannot be resolved militarily.

The House of Representatives will soon have a chance to choose a new direction for the American people. The bill the President dismisses out of hand will measure the Iraqi government’s actions by the standards Mr. Bush himself set, conforms deployment of our troops to existing military standards for readiness, and provides badly needed help to an overburdened military and veterans’ medical system wracked by scandal.

And General Paul Eaton, a compelling speaker for the troops and against the Administration. Well worth the watch…