Replies to post #224006 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Post of The Decades!

..............love the Rude One ... ;)

[F6]

arizona1 -- a nice bookend to (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=6531542 (and following) (direct source link for the one there http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2005/05/what-else-would-you-do-with-dick-in.html )

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[fuagf]

Actually, Let’s Hear More From Dick Cheney on Iraq

great post! .. lol .. and loved the fact he didn't tell Cheney to STFU .. let the Dick and Liz show go big on prime time tv .. then tell the public
what a disaster he has been, and how stupid and hypocritical they are about Iraq today .. i agree with Chait here .. yeah, let them talk ..

By Jonathan Chait Follow @jonathanchait


Let's hear him out before we laugh at him. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

What do liberals believe about the current disaster in Iraq? One thing most of us believe is that the United States should stay the hell out. But another thing liberals believe with even greater conviction is that advocates of the last Iraq war should not participate in the current debate. The Atlantic’s James Fallows .. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/the-past-is-never-dead-bill-faulkner-said-but-what-did-he-know/372887/ .. argues that Iraq war hawks “might have the decency to shut the hell up on this particular topic for a while.” Slate’s Jamelle Bouie .. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/06/paul_wolfowitz_bill_kristol_and_douglas_feith_should_be_ignored_the_neocons.html , writing in the second person, instructs Iraq hawks, “Given your role in building this catastrophe, you should be barred from public comment, since anything you could say is outweighed by the damage you’ve done.” Washington Post columnist Katrina Vanden Heuvel .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-where-is-the-accountability-on-iraq/2014/06/16/eba0ff24-f597-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html , MSNBC host Rachel Maddow .. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/18/maddow-iraq-media-coverage_n_5506739.html?&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000021 , and many others have reiterated the point. This meta belief about who should be allowed to argue about Iraq, more than any actual argument about Iraq itself, has become the left’s main way of thinking about the issue.

Advocates of shut-the-hell-up have different ideas for who should be placed within the cone of silence. Fallows would include all 2003 advocates of war (a sweeping group that would include me, Fred Kaplan, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, not to mention a handful of .. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/lets-not-ignore-those-who-got-iraq-wrong/372997/ .. Fallows’ colleagues):

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James Fallows ? @JamesFallows Follow

Working hypothesis: no one who stumped for original Iraq invasion
gets to give ‘advice’ about disaster now. Or should get listened to.
7:14 AM - 14 Jun 2014

791 Retweets 498 favorites
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Others .. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/17/stop_treating_war_crazy_buffoons_as_experts_they_got_it_wrong_remember/ .. seem to have in mind only members of the Bush administration. Still others would apply it only to members of the Bush administration who are also neoconservative, oddly exempting non-neocons like John Bolton or Condoleeza Rice:


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pourmecoffee ? @pourmecoffee Follow

Every time a Bush neocon speaks about Iraq, a giant Monty Python foot should come down and crush them
11:51 AM - 18 Jun 2014

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The most frequent justification for STHU is “accountability.” There should be a price for being wrong. I supported the war in 2003, which I now regret .. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/03/iraq-what-i-got-wrong-and-what-i-still-believe.html [ Chait, amazingly admits he didn't consider postwar (the Bush/Cheney/Chalabi war) as much as he should have .. i find it amazing that anyone wouldn't have, anyway, that aside, the link is well worth a read for it's other content ] and it is entirely reasonable to think more skeptically about my arguments. (I do; I consciously decided to write less frequently about foreign policy as a result.) Interviewers soliciting the opinions of Iraq War architects should certainly disclose and clarify that their subjects have an interest in salvaging their reputation.

But STHU advocates aren’t making a generalized case for retroactively scrutinizing the arguments made by politicians and public intellectuals. They’re arguing for accountability applied to the singular event of the 2003 Iraq War.

Most Democrats in Congress opposed the Gulf War, warning .. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/12/world/confrontation-in-the-gulf-day-2-lawmakers-debate-war-and-more-time-for-sanctions.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar&pagewanted=all .. of Saddam Hussein’s fearsome, World War I–style fortifications and citing .. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/11/world/confrontation-gulf-war-peace-sampling-debate-capitol-hill.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar&pagewanted=all .. 45,000 body bags as an indication of the likely U.S. death toll — predictions that turned out to be wildly incorrect. Why shouldn’t anti-Gulf war Democrats -- that is, the vast majority of Democrats — have been excluded from subsequent foreign policy debates? If your answer is “because people died — Iraq,” then then you’re not arguing that pro-war arguments should be ignored because they’re analytically wrong, you’re arguing they should be ignored because they’re inherently morally suspect, regardless of accuracy.

When you’re trying to set the terms for a debate, you have to do it in a fair way. Demanding accountability for failed predictions is fair. Insisting that only your ideological opponents be held accountable is not fair. Nor is it easy to see what purpose is served by insisting certain people ought to be ignored. The way arguments are supposed to work is that the argument itself, not the identity of the arguer, makes the case. We shouldn’t disregard Dick Cheney’s arguments about Iraq because he’s Dick Cheney. We should disregard them because they’re stupid .. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/06/cheney-not-completely-sure-if-obama-is-a-traitor.html .


Let's also cool it with the shoe-hurling, please.Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

The trouble with STHU is not that it will succeed in depriving Dick Cheney, or anybody else, of a forum to propagate his beliefs about Iraq. The trouble is that it is currently preventing liberals from thinking about Iraq. Liberals are treating the current Iraq debate as if it is literally the same thing as the 2003 debate. Paul Waldman .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/06/13/on-iraq-lets-ignore-those-who-got-it-all-wrong/ , in a column headlined “On Iraq, let’s ignore those who got it all wrong,” riffs:

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And the rest of the neocon gang is getting back together. Here’s Lindsey Graham advocating for American airstrikes — and I promise you that if the administration does in fact launch them, Graham will say they weren’t “strong” enough. Here’s Max Boot saying that what we need is just short of another invasion of Iraq: “U.S. military advisers, intelligence personnel, Predators, and Special Operations Forces, along with enhanced military aid, in return for political reforms designed to bring Shiites and Sunnis closer together.”
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Providing air strikes, aid, and intelligence coordination to a government that has requested it may or may not be a good idea. (I’m undecided, leaning against.) It is not the same thing as invading and occupying a country. Indeed, the ideological fault lines of the current debate aren’t even the same. Former Bush staffers and Iraq War champions David Frum .. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/iraq-isnt-ours-to-save/372932/ .. and John Bolton .. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/06/16/us-focus-must-be-on-iran-as-iraq-falls-apart/ .. have argued for a policy of non-intervention. Should they be ignored because they got Iraq wrong in 2003? The Center for American Progress .. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/17/obama-s-favorite-think-tank-we-should-prepare-to-bomb-iraq.html .. is advocating air strikes. Should it be heeded?

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/06/actually-lets-hear-more-from-cheney-on-iraq.html

Truly. Am shaking my head that Chalabi still has his snout well and truly still blubbering in the trough .. no, sorry, not surprised at that at all, but am incredulous that he is actually among those named as a possible successor to the arch sectarian (course he has only followed the de-Baathification policy of the Bush/Cheney/Chalabi et al people .. hmm, which Chalabi now does not support .. wonder why? .. could it be because he wants to be the Pentagon's man again? .. as he was before he purportedly leaked secrets .. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/02/1086058913867.html .. to Iran? .. anyway, Malaki has to go, but, please, not Chalabi.

Yes, for sure ..

"And we need to bring former Vice President Dick Cheney before those families and have him tell the truth: "We did it for the dollars. We went to war with Iraq because war profiteering was the easiest goddamn way to enrich already rich people, like my friends at Halliburton. It was robbery and we named it 'patriotism.' It was extortion and we called it 'honor.'" Then, we should let the families do what they want. Maybe they'd let him go. Maybe they'd tear him limb from hideous limb. Maybe they'd rip out his machine heart and fuck the hole left behind, jizzing into his sternum.

If nothing else, it would stop him from co-signing an editorial from him and his heinous daughter-beast, Liz, like the one that ran in the Wall Street Journal today. In it, Cheney and Cheney pretty much say that President Obama is an America-hating cocksucker who wants our enemies to win and who is too stupid to understand jackshit about the real world, the world that Cheney (Dick) understands is full of threats without understanding that they are threats he created."

See also:

Chalabi, 59, is a Savile Row Shiite who has spent much more time in London than in Baghdad. His career as a banker has been a trail of lawsuits and investigations (and one conviction for fraud, in absentia by a military court, in Jordan [fuagf: OOPS!]; Chalabi says he was framed by Saddam Hussein). Along the way, Chalabi has worked as an American spy and enjoyed the life of bon vivant and friend to the great. Though he plotted for years to overthrow Saddam, he was not taken seriously by the regime. NBC's Tom Brokaw recalled a conversation with a friend of the then Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz on a trip to Baghdad in the summer of 2002. "You guys can have Chalabi!" the Saddam flunky told the American newsman. "You can keep feeding him all the prime rib and expensive Scotch. He doesn't know anyone here. He hasn't been to Iraq in 25 years."
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=42813663

If anyone is interested in Ahmad Chalabi you will be interested in this .. a side note, one of his key backers was none other than our johnnymack ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=27480051

Now, Sen. John McCain - a longtime Chalabi advocate with many ties to the man - finds himself on the receiving end of this bamboozlement.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=30901676

[BOREALIS]

Crazy Cheney sounds like he may be overdue for another heart transplant.

[BOREALIS]

Dick Cheney Should be Rotting in a Prison Cell, Not Opining About Iraq

The former VP's hypocrisy on Iraq makes him the worst person to ever listen to for advice on everything.

June 19, 2014

If there's one person who has absolutely zero business criticizing anyone for how they're running the country, it's Dick Cheney.

This should be obvious to pretty everyone by now, but apparently the Wall Street Journal didn't get the message. This week, the paper published an editorial by Cheney and his daughter Liz in which the former Vice President blasts the "collapsing Obama doctrine" of foreign policy."

Taking the rapid advance of ISIS radicals through northern Iraq as his cue, Cheney accuses President Obama of "emboldening" America's enemies. He writes:

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is 'ending' the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - as though wishing made it so. His rhetoric has now come crashing into reality...America's enemies are not 'decimated.' They are emboldened and on the march.

According to Cheney, the "failures" of the Obama presidency - which I guess are to not get the country involved in any more decade-long wars - are proof that our first African-American president is actively trying to take down America. He writes:

Despite clear evidence of the dire need for American leadership around the world, the desperation of our allies and the glee of our enemies, President Obama seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch. Indeed, the speed of the terrorists' takeover of territory in Iraq has been matched only by the speed of American decline on his watch.

Forget for a second that President Obama has continued many of the policies of the Bush administration - the drone wars and NSA spying both started under Cheney's watch - and just consider the fact that Dick Cheney of all people actually has the gall to call someone else out for "taking America down a notch" and "being so wrong about so much at the expense of so many."

You don't need a political science degree to know how ridiculous this is.

The Iraq War was the single biggest foreign policy disaster in recent - or maybe even all - of American history.

It cost the country around $4 trillion dollars, killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of innocent civilians, left 4,500 Americans dead, and turned what was once one of the more developed countries in the Arab World into a slaughterhouse.
The War in Iraq Cost $4 Trillion and Enormous Loss of Life: 8 Warmongers Who Would Take Us Back
http://www.alternet.org/media/war-iraq-cost-4-trillion-and-enormous-loss-life-8-warmongers-who-would-take-us-back

Make no mistake about it, Iraq would not be the violent place it is today if the Bush administration hadn't lied its way into a costly, unnecessary, and destructive war.

Ironically, things have played out exactly as Cheney said they would when he was asked back in the 1990s about why the first Bush administration didn't march all the way to Baghdad during the First Gulf War.

Really, there's no one who's done more to damage America's reputation around the world and embolden our enemies than our former Vice President.

The Iraq War was the best Al Qaeda propaganda video ever, and whatever Cheney might say about the surge and how successful it was, the truth is that there were no terrorists in Iraq before we invaded.

But Cheney's hypocrisy on Iraq is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the reasons why he's probably the worst person ever to listen to for advice on, well, everything.

Remember, Cheney was the guy who almost bankrupted Halliburton by exposing it to asbestos liabilities and then used his position as Vice President of the United States to bail the company out with no-bid contracts during the Iraq War, all while owning millions in Halliburton stock options.

Remember, Cheney was the guy who played a key role in the Bush administration's illegal torture program. You know - the illegal torture program that was based on tactics invented by Maoist China and turned our country into a pariah state.

And remember, Cheney was the guy who was supposed be on the lookout for terrorist attacks in the summer of 2001, but was too busy plotting out ways to attack Iraq to listen to warning after warning about how Al Qaeda was about to kill thousands of Americans. Cheney let 9/11 happen on his watch.

American history has had its share of villains - J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, and Richard Nixon come to mind as some of the worst - but there is no one in recent history who has disgraced our country quite like Dick Cheney has.

He lied his way into an illegal war, profited off that war, and shredded the Constitution. He's a war criminal and has the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent people on his hands.

Dick Cheney should be rotting in a prison cell at The Hague, not writing editorials for the Wall Street Journal.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dick-cheney-should-be-rotting-prison-cell-not-opining-about-iraq

[F6]

In Rare Consensus, Sunnis and Shiites Tell Cheney to Shut Up


Photograph by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.

Posted by Andy Borowitz
June 20, 2014

BAGHDAD (The Borowitz Report)—In a development that offers a faint glimmer of hope for Iraq, both Sunnis and Shiites are finding common ground in the view that former Vice-President Dick Cheney seriously needs to shut up.

In the days following the publication, this week, of a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece about Iraq [ http://online.wsj.com/articles/dick-cheney-and-liz-cheney-the-collapsing-obama-doctrine-1403046522 (next below)] that Cheney wrote with his daughter Liz, hatred of the former Vice-President has, to the surprise of many, become the first thing that Sunnis and Shiites have agreed upon in centuries.

Iraqi observers in recent days have reported seeing both Sunnis and Shiites reading the Cheneys’ op-ed then tearing it to shreds in a rage.

“Cheney is an ass!” a Sunni merchant reportedly exclaimed in a Baghdad market on Thursday, to the resounding cheers of several Shiites nearby.

“Historically, it’s been challenging to find anything that Sunnis and Shiites agree on,” said Sabah al-Alousi, a history professor at the University of Baghdad. “That’s why their apparent consensus that Dick Cheney needs to shut the hell up is so significant.”

Visiting Baghdad on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the joint Sunni-Shiite calls for Dick Cheney to shut his pie hole were a cause for optimism.

“If Dick Cheney winds up being the one thing that brings Sunnis and Shiites together, the United States owes him a debt of thanks,” he said, adding that the two sects’ view of the former Vice-President was also shared by the Kurds.

© 2014 Condé Nast

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2014/06/in-rare-consensus-sunnis-shiites-tell-cheney-to-shut-up.html


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The Collapsing Obama Doctrine


An Iraqi soldier in Baghdad with volunteers to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, June 17.
Reuters

Opinion Video [embedded]
Carnegie Mellon Director of the Center for International Relations and Politics Kiron Skinner on the consequences of President Obama's decision to slow-walk military action against Iraq's Islamic militants.

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.

By Dick Cheney And Liz Cheney
Updated June 17, 2014 7:34 p.m. ET

As the terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) threaten Baghdad, thousands of slaughtered Iraqis in their wake, it is worth recalling a few of President Obama's past statements about ISIS and al Qaeda. "If a J.V. team puts on Lakers' uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant" (January 2014). "[C]ore al Qaeda is on its heels, has been decimated" (August 2013). "So, let there be no doubt: The tide of war is receding" (September 2011).

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is "ending" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as though wishing made it so. His rhetoric has now come crashing into reality. Watching the black-clad ISIS jihadists take territory once secured by American blood is final proof, if any were needed, that America's enemies are not "decimated." They are emboldened and on the march.

The fall of the Iraqi cities of Fallujah, Tikrit, Mosul and Tel Afar, and the establishment of terrorist safe havens across a large swath of the Arab world, present a strategic threat to the security of the United States. Mr. Obama's actions—before and after ISIS's recent advances in Iraq—have the effect of increasing that threat.

On a trip to the Middle East this spring, we heard a constant refrain in capitals from the Persian Gulf to Israel, "Can you please explain what your president is doing?" "Why is he walking away?" "Why is he so blithely sacrificing the hard fought gains you secured in Iraq?" "Why is he abandoning your friends?" "Why is he doing deals with your enemies?"

In one Arab capital, a senior official pulled out a map of Syria and Iraq. Drawing an arc with his finger from Raqqa province in northern Syria to Anbar province in western Iraq, he said, "They will control this territory. Al Qaeda is building safe havens and training camps here. Don't the Americans care?"

Our president doesn't seem to. Iraq is at risk of falling to a radical Islamic terror group and Mr. Obama is talking climate change. Terrorists take control of more territory and resources than ever before in history, and he goes golfing. He seems blithely unaware, or indifferent to the fact, that a resurgent al Qaeda presents a clear and present danger to the United States of America.

When Mr. Obama and his team came into office in 2009, al Qaeda in Iraq had been largely defeated, thanks primarily to the heroic efforts of U.S. armed forces during the surge. Mr. Obama had only to negotiate an agreement to leave behind some residual American forces, training and intelligence capabilities to help secure the peace. Instead, he abandoned Iraq and we are watching American defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

The tragedy unfolding in Iraq today is only part of the story. Al Qaeda and its affiliates are resurgent across the globe. According to a recent Rand study, between 2010 and 2013, there was a 58% increase in the number of Salafi-jihadist terror groups around the world. During that same period, the number of terrorists doubled.

In the face of this threat, Mr. Obama is busy ushering America's adversaries into positions of power in the Middle East. First it was the Russians in Syria. Now, in a move that defies credulity, he toys with the idea of ushering Iran into Iraq. Only a fool would believe American policy in Iraq should be ceded to Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terror.

This president is willfully blind to the impact of his policies. Despite the threat to America unfolding across the Middle East, aided by his abandonment of Iraq, he has announced he intends to follow the same policy in Afghanistan.

Despite clear evidence of the dire need for American leadership around the world, the desperation of our allies and the glee of our enemies, President Obama seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch. Indeed, the speed of the terrorists' takeover of territory in Iraq has been matched only by the speed of American decline on his watch.

The president explained his view in his Sept. 23, 2009, speech before the United Nations General Assembly. "Any world order," he said, "that elevates one nation above others cannot long survive." Tragically, he is quickly proving the opposite—through one dangerous policy after another—that without American pre-eminence, there can be no world order.

It is time the president and his allies faced some hard truths: America remains at war, and withdrawing troops from the field of battle while our enemies stay in the fight does not "end" wars. Weakness and retreat are provocative. U.S. withdrawal from the world is disastrous and puts our own security at risk.

Al Qaeda and its affiliates are resurgent and they present a security threat not seen since the Cold War. Defeating them will require a strategy—not a fantasy. It will require sustained difficult military, intelligence and diplomatic efforts—not empty misleading rhetoric. It will require rebuilding America's military capacity—reversing the Obama policies that have weakened our armed forces and reduced our ability to influence events around the world.

American freedom will not be secured by empty threats, meaningless red lines, leading from behind, appeasing our enemies, abandoning our allies, or apologizing for our great nation—all hallmarks to date of the Obama doctrine. Our security, and the security of our friends around the world, can only be guaranteed with a fundamental reversal of the policies of the past six years.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan said, "If history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom." President Obama is on track to securing his legacy as the man who betrayed our past and squandered our freedom.

Mr. Cheney was U.S. vice president from 2001-09. Ms. Cheney was the deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs from 2002-04 and 2005-06.

Copyright ©2014 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/dick-cheney-and-liz-cheney-the-collapsing-obama-doctrine-1403046522 [with (over 4,000) comments]

*

Letters
We Slid Down This Slope Before With the Cheneys
I read with amazement Dick and Liz Cheney's comments about President Obama, "Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many."
June 22, 2014
http://online.wsj.com/articles/we-slid-down-this-slope-before-with-the-cheneys-1403463109


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