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Originally Posted by TheMercenary
(Post 358161)
Funny this stuff about Cheney and his "secret" documents. Should make for a great book in '09. Otherwise it is all pretty insignificant.
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It is only insignificant to those who love fascism. Meanwhile, the Washington Post has an ongoing series on unprecedented power by Cheney - who really makes the decisions unbeknownst to most even in the executive branch.
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Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power
On June 8, 2004, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell learned of the two-year-old torture memo for the first time from an article in The Washington Post . According to a former White House official with firsthand knowledge, they confronted Gonzales together in his office.
Rice "very angrily said there would be no more secret opinions on international and national security law," the official said, adding that she threatened to take the matter to the president if Gonzales kept them out of the loop again. Powell remarked admiringly, as they emerged, that Rice dressed down the president's lawyer "in full Nurse Ratched mode," a reference to the head nurse of the mental hospital in the 1975 film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
Neither of them took their objections to Cheney, the official said, a much more dangerous course. ...
Not only did the court leave the president beholden to Congress for the authority to charge and punish terrorists, but it rejected a claim of implicit legislative consent that Bush was using elsewhere to justify electronic surveillance without a warrant. And not only did it find that Geneva's Common Article 3 protects "unlawful enemy combatants," but it also said that those protections -- including humane treatment and the right to a trial by "a regularly constituted court" -- were enforceable by federal judges in the United States.
The court's decision, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, was widely seen as a calamity for Cheney's war plan against al-Qaeda. As the Bush administration formed its response, the vice president's position appeared to decline further still.
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Cheney's position? Yes, torture was avocated by VP Cheney. Even done so by keeping other government officials so isoated as to discover America was torturing, in violation of Federal law and the Geneva convention in the Washington Post.
Ongoing is a question of George Jr's legacy. To protect that legacy, Guantanamo should be closed. George Jr had even said, "I'd like to close Guantanamo." A year later, Guantanamo is still functioning since that is what Cheney wants.
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the vice president stands by the view that Bush need not honor any of the new judicial and legislative restrictions. His lawyer, they said, has recently restated Cheney's argument that when courts and Congress "purport to" limit the commander in chief's warmaking authority, he has the constitutional prerogative to disregard them.
If Cheney advocates a return to waterboarding, they said, they have not heard him say so. But his office has fought fiercely against an executive order or CIA directive that would make the technique illegal.
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It is quite clear why TheMercenary would love Cheney. Cheney demonstrates everything that fascists advocate including unrestricted torture, wiretapping without judicial review, and wars against enemies that don't really exist. Notiice that TheMercenary has again posted the silly myth that "if we don't stop them there, then they will attack us here".
The Washington Post series started with
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'A Different Understanding With the President'
Just past the Oval Office, in the private dining room overlooking the South Lawn, Vice President Cheney joined President Bush at a round parquet table they shared once a week. Cheney brought a four-page text, written in strict secrecy by his lawyer. He carried it back out with him after lunch.
In less than an hour, the document traversed a West Wing circuit that gave its words the power of command. It changed hands four times, according to witnesses, with emphatic instructions to bypass staff review. When it returned to the Oval Office, in a blue portfolio embossed with the presidential seal, Bush pulled a felt-tip pen from his pocket and signed without sitting down. Almost no one else had seen the text.
Cheney's proposal had become a military order from the commander in chief. Foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States were stripped of access to any court -- civilian or military, domestic or foreign. They could be confined indefinitely without charges and would be tried, if at all, in closed "military commissions."
"What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, incensed, sent an aide to find out. Even witnesses to the Oval Office signing said they did not know the vice president had played any part. ...
[Cheney] has found a ready patron in George W. Bush for edge-of-the-envelope views on executive supremacy that previous presidents did not assert. ...
Cheney is not, by nearly every inside account, the shadow president of popular lore. ... Their one-on-one relationship is opaque, a vital unknown in assessing Cheney's impact on events. The two men speak of it seldom, if ever, with others. But officials who see them together often, not all of them admirers of the vice president, detect a strong sense of mutual confidence that Cheney is serving Bush's aims.
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Cheney's political agenda approaches what is called fascism. He openly states that the President does not have sufficient powers; needs more. A president can openly create war and torture in direct violation of Federal laws, Geneva Convention, and basic American principles - and still does not have enough power? That would explain why those here who know by using a political agenda also so love Cheney. |
