Panetta Says Cheney Sounds Like He Almost Wants U.S. Attacked
Uh, oh. Brace yourself for the outrage machine to perhaps go into full gear — or will it be (rightfully) distracted by truly significant, substantive events now unfolding in Iran? CIA Chief Leon Panetta this weekend said what some writers and analysts have hinted at over the past few months: from former Vice President Dick Cheney’s comments about Obama administration security versus the Bush administration security it almost seems as if Cheney was hoping for an attack so he could deliever a big, fat “I told you so.”
US World & News reports’ always-must-read “Washington Whispers” sums up the comment (which would be big media and weblog fodder if a teeney event like the Iranian elections had not intervened) nicely this way:
CIA Director Leon Panetta’s remarks on former Vice President Dick Cheney made in a nearly 7,600-word interview with The New Yorker generated some media attention last night and this morning. Calling them “tough words,” ABC World News reported briefly that Panetta said of Cheney, who “has repeatedly, of course, criticized the Obama Administration’s approach to terrorism,” that “it’s almost as if he is wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point.’” Panetta, the New Yorker (6/22, Mayer) reports, was responding to a speech the former vice president made at the American Enterprise Institute, where he accused the Administration of making “the American people less safe” by banning brutal CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects that had been sanctioned by the Bush Administration. With “surprising candor,” the magazine reports Panetta said, “I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue. It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics.”
Current Vice President Joe Biden was a bit more diplomatic in his reaction:
Also reporting the remarks, the AP reports Vice President Joe Biden was asked during an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if he agreed. The current vice president, however, said “he wouldn’t question the motive behind Cheney’s criticism.” Said Biden, “I think Dick Cheney’s judgment about how to secure America is faulty. I think our judgment is correct.”
So will the outrage machine be in full play this week? Will there be demands that Panetta apologize or resign? Part of American politics has evolved into a new form of political correctness where if someone dares to say something that a good chunk of people may feel or genuinely believe there is a demand that the vocal person obliterate his/her prouncement or plead for someone’s forgiveness. If that happens here (unlikely given how huge the Iranian story is) it’s unlikely to succeed.
Several analysts over the past few months on cable, radio, and on the Internet have speculated that Cheney is laying the groundwork of an “I told you so” but it’a also part of his legacy battle with his former bosss George W. Bush: the administration is reported to have abandoned much of the Cheney-advocated approach during the last years of the administration as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s influence ascended and Cheney’s started to somewhat wane.
Also: Panetta may be CIA chief now, but before that he was a prominent Democratic centrist, not a push-over in the political world, and considered solid on policy matters both when he was in Congress and in his work running his nonpartisan center for the study of public policy, The Panetta Institute. He’s not a career bureaucrat or a political hack.
But whether Panetta repeated a question “out there” or not, did he put his foot in it? MSNBC’s First Read thinks he may well have:
Here’s our final question of the day: Why did CIA Director Leon Panetta engage Dick Cheney? It’s not everyday the head of the CIA gives an on-the-record interview to the New Yorker in which he says the former VP is rooting for a terrorist attack….All in all, this has the makings of a made-for-cable fight, and probably something the White House wishes the CIA director didn’t ignite.
UPDATE: Sen. John McCain has demanded that Panetta issue a retraction.
“I hope my old friend Leon was misquoted,” Cheney said, in a written statement to FOX News. “The important thing is whether the Obama administration will continue the policies that have kept us safe for the past eight years.
10 Responses to “Panetta Says Cheney Sounds Like He Almost Wants U.S. Attacked”
I think this one can be filed under “Well, duh.”
I have no problem with Dick Cheney's words at all (although I disagree with some of his statements). And I'm hardly outraged a Leon Panetta's response. I think where eyebrows get raised concerning Panetta is that he IS the CIA boss. And when he says something, it has more weight than an ex-Vice President. So all kinds of conjecture can roll from Panetta's remarks with more sticking power.
My outrage is saved for actions, not words these days.
Who was in charge at the time of the “9/11 attack”?
The outrage machine will be working on both sides, one outraged that Cheney secretly wants the US attacked and the other outraged that it was suggested.
Here, let me refresh:
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“The trip was made known only after Air Force One, flying from Istanbul at the end of Obama's first major international tour, had touched down at Baghdad International Airport.
Obama met the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General Raymond Odierno, and also held talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Talabani and the two vice presidents.
His arrival came a day after a string of seemingly co-ordinated bombings across the Iraqi capital killed 37 people. On Tuesday, a car bomb killed nine people in a Shiite district in northwest Baghdad, police said.”
Source: http://www2.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?i…
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1. Obama arrival in Iraq “unknown” [to all but top US Security Officials]
2. Day before a string of…co-ordinated bombings happens in Baghdad
3. Just at the time Cheney was pushing for “need” to keep troops in Iraq.
4. Do the math..
USA Today/Gallup Poll. May 29-31, 2009. N=1,015 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.RV = registered voters
.
“We'd like to get your overall opinion of some people in the news. As I read each name, please say if you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of these people — or if you have never heard of them. How about Dick Cheney?”
.
Favorable Unfavorable NeverHeard Of Unsure
% % % %
5/29-31/09 37 54 3 6
3/27-29/09 30 63 2 5
A special thanks to Joe Gandelman and other lefty bloggers for assisting the RNC in its quest to elevate Dick Cheney's stature. A job well done, guys!
[sigh] Both Obama and Cheney made speeches about terrorism and the Guanantano prisoners recently (which was stupidly hyped as a “duel”). Obama's speech was better, but Cheney's was okay, and he'll never get the credit or respect he deserves, being a Republican, politically incorrect, and the object still of pathological hatred at times on this liberal Web site. (After all, Obama is the Dem and more attractive!)
Invading a sovereign nation under false pretenses to get richer by securing an oil monopoly is hardly worthy of respect.
I'm in the middle, not liberal at all [see my posts on gay marriage if you don't think so]. The Middle doesn't like Cheney either.
Any government leader who undermines their country's own constitution for the sake of political gain, while calling anyone unpatriotic (or terrorist sympathizers) who questioned his actions would undoubtedly support further attacks on his country for his (and his party's) own political gain. Particularly if that same leadership sought to divide America's citizens against one another, as they did, for ideological purposes and gain.
WHY THE CHENEYS WON’T LEAVE THE SCENE: A QUESTION OF JOURNALISTIC DEONTOLOGY!
The recent appearances of the Cheneys over the media as a credible political opponent on par to the Obama administration's policies and stances raises an issue of journalistic deontology! This is definitely of artificial making.
On the one hand, we've got a legitimately elected President of the United States who has undergone the rigorous electoral process having to make his case to the American people and coming out successful in eliciting the policies he intends to carry out during his mandate within the confines of the American political institutional structure and process.
On the other hand, we've got political personae (the Cheneys) who are effectively being presented by the media as a legitimate opponent on par to the Obama administration whereas they do not bear any electoral mandate whatsoever for the political views they profer and with no consequent responsiblity, stake and risk that will arise from any such mandate while the President is tied to them.
For comments/expressions of opinion on the President's policies, their views have been given such a broad artificial reception by the media that runs very contrary to the expression of opinion as we've come to know it. These views are rather given almost the same weight and placed on par as the political stances of a legitimately elected president with a legitimate mandate for the policies he is undertaking while the Cheney's hold no such legitimate mandate and with no accompanying political accountability whatsoever.
The issue here is that such attitude by the media is contrary to what we've come to expect from normal implicit democratic rules. If the Cheneys had any pretense for policies they wished to be implemented after the Bush Administration, the solution would have simply been for Dick or Liz to run for president. Since they didn't, it is artificial for the media to strive to present them as a counterweight on par to the Obama administration's policies well beyong what will be expected for the opinion of a simple citizen that the Cheneys are now notwithstanding their previous political roles.
And by the way, by extension is it acceptable that any citizen, no matter what self-righteous pretense they might have, to be artificially given a similar counterweight role on par with the President on any policy issues of the Obama administration while not holding any legitimate political mandate for which they will be politically accountable for their stances? It can be understandable, that the Cheneys can be of direct concern when it comes to matters of direct relation to political issues having to do with Cheney's role in the Bush administration. But to raise their views on the policies and stances the administration should take on par with the President undermines appropriate journalistic deontology because as we should all know by now “elections do matter”.
What strikes the mind here is that the Cheneys have perfectly understood this “naïvété” of the media and are using this “media confusion about fairness” to artificially strive to extirpate Mr. Dick Cheney from accusations of introducing torture policies during the Bush Administration among other political accusations. Their strategy is very simple. Legally, Cheney can't make it (they know that secretly). In all courts of law, so-called EITs are definitely torture practices. Besides, the facts as we know them are overwhelmingly against him and the Bush Administration, and Dick Cheney's contradictions are extensive.
The real strategy of the Cheney's here is totally otherly: turn it “political”. First, saying torture works and was for the good of the country should elicit the fervour of many Americans. Afterall, all what is needed is that a substantial number of Americans polled buy to this argument, and then the issue’s legal underpinning may be undermined.
Secondly, posing artificially as the right wing counterweight to the Obama's administration policies elicits the impression and fervour in some quarters particularly to the right that he is making the President moderate and thus he is political useful. A look at this second political trick shows how the media has effectively been manipulated: knowing fairly well that in his administrative role the President will have to take practical and pragmatic postures with respect to the release of photos of abused detainees as well as on other policies, all what Dick simply have to do is to posit that he is against releasing the pictures and pretend to take critical policy issues postures on the right, making him seemingly a moderating influence on the President.
Thirdly, the Cheneys simply have to claim that Obama is following the Bush Administration’s policies he criticized pointing to his strategies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. In this case too, the media is manipulated as they ignore the fact that the Obama administration does not have the luxury of starting from scratch as Bush had on all these issues but rather adopts a “course correction strategy” of the situations to bring them as close as possible to what he advocates.
The fact is that, the underlying strategy of Dick and her daughter is to make this three steps political trick extirpate Dick from the accusations levied against the former administration. The sad thing is that the media is “naïvely” falling for these political tricks!
While Obama has been criticized for following the Bush Administration policies on National Security, there is a failure to recognize that the Obama Administration does not have the luxury of revoking abruptly all the policies of the previous administration with which he disagrees politically simply from an “administrative” standpoint as starting all over is unrealistic. So what he is doing is to adapt a “course correction strategy”.
With military commissions, a legal framework approved by the judicial and legislative branches will be set up unlike during the Bush Administration where these commissions existed in “legal limbo” and were ruled illegal by the Supreme Court. As for rendition, the Obama Administration policy unlike the Bush Administration policy is to hand over foreign detainees to their foreign governments only on the assurance that they will not be tortured. Further, the CIA will no longer move detainees to “black sites” (secret CIA prisons) since these have been ordered to be closed. The point is Obama is determined to remain within the bounds of the law. Even with the issue of indefinite detention of prisoners, the Obama Administration has advanced that it will regularly seek the approval of the legal and judicial branches.
Cheney goes as far as to make a remark seemingly to prove that even Obama finds EITs (torture) potentially useful:
“Yet having reserved for himself the authority to order enhanced interrogation after an emergency, you would think that President Obama would be less disdainful of what his predecessor authorized after 9/11. It's almost gone unnoticed that the president has retained the power to order the same methods in the same circumstances,”
This is a crappy fallacy! Of course, it is the obligation of the President to be open to take any action as he might deem appropriate in the case of any future eventuality whatever its nature (and not only with respect to a terrorism related emergency). Now it is one thing for the President to be open to take any action (on the basis of this broad principle) and another thing to purport that because in principle he is open to any such future eventuality, he should validate any unlawful principle as the policy of the administration. In which case he may just as well validate the overriding of any legal principle, for instance the fifth amendment, since there is the remote possibility that there might be a future eventuality which may require him to be open to an action that compromises the fifth amendment.
The President's official stance is always for the primacy of legality. To follow Dick Cheney's logic, then no legal principle should be upheld by the President as well, since there is a remote possibility that he may be open to override it in case of a future eventuality. The fact is the onus for overriding a legal principle rests on the exception to the legal principle, and it does not rest on the legal principle in of itself as Cheney seems to purport. In the case of the so-called “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” (torture policy), the immediacy and efficiency grounds raised by Cheney as the exception to the legal principle (Geneva protocol and other legal rules on torture) fail awfully given the details we now have of how these EITs were carried out.