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| Home Front: Politix |
| The Cheney Imperative |
| 2007-08-15 |
| BY STEPHEN F. HAYES Dick Cheney sat transfixed by the images on the small television screen in the corner of his West Wing office. Smoke poured out of a gaping hole in the World Trade Center's North Tower. John McConnell, the vice president's chief speechwriter, sat next to him and said nothing. Then, a second plane appeared on the right-hand side of the screen, banked slightly to the left, and plunged into the South Tower. "Did you see that?" Mr. Cheney asked his aide. A little more than an hour later, Mr. Cheney was seated below the presidential seal at a long conference table in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, better known as the bunker. When an aide told Mr. Cheney that another passenger airplane was rapidly approaching the White House, the vice president gave the order to shoot it down. The young man was so surprised at Mr. Cheney's immediate response that he asked again. Mr. Cheney reiterated the order. Thinking that Mr. Cheney must have misunderstood the question, the military aide asked him a third time. The vice president responded evenly. "I said yes." These early moments and all that followed from them will define Mr. Cheney's vice presidency. He was aggressive in those first moments of the war on terror and has been ever since. Mr. Cheney flew from the White House that night to Camp David, where he stayed in the Aspen Lodge, usually reserved for the president. It was his first night in the "secure, undisclosed location" that would eventually provide fodder for late night comedians. When he woke the next morning, Mr. Cheney asked himself two questions: When is the next attack? And what can I do to prevent it? They were the questions on the minds of many politicians immediately following 9/11. "When, not if" quickly became one of many clichés to emerge from the national trauma of that day. Democrats and Republicans alike spoke of further terrorist acts on U.S. soil with certainty. Sen. Bob Graham, a Democrat from Florida who has since retired but at the time was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, described the intelligence after a CIA briefing days after 9/11. "There is evidence that Tuesday's attack was the first phase of a multi-phase series of terrorist assaults against the United States, all under one umbrella plan," he said. "It's critical that we move with what capabilities we have today and strengthen those capabilities so that the next acts of this horrendous scheme against the people of the United States can be interdicted before it is executed." No wonder, then, that a Time/CNN poll, taken in September 2001, found that four out of five Americans believed another attack within a year was either "somewhat likely" or "very likely." That was nearly six years ago. To many, the threats no longer seem urgent. Critics speak of "the so-called war on terror," and accuse the administration of exaggerating the threats. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a leading indicator of Democratic conventional wisdom, recently argued that the "culture of fear" created in response to the 9/11 attacks has done more damage than the attacks themselves. But Mr. Cheney has not moved on. He still awakens each day asking the same questions he asked on Sept. 12, 2001. Then, as he sips his morning coffee, he pores over the latest intelligence on his own before receiving an exhaustive briefing on the latest threat reports. After that, he joins his boss for the president's daily intelligence briefing. All of this happens before 9 a.m. He mentions the war on terror in virtually every speech he gives, and in a letter he wrote to his grandchildren he acknowledged that his "principal focus" as vice president has been national security. The way that he has gone about his job has won him many critics. His approval ratings are low. A small but growing group of congressional Democrats is mobilizing to impeach him. Respected commentators from respected publications have suggested that his heart problems have left him mentally unstable. Others have called on him to resign. Some conservatives have joined this chorus of criticism, with one prominent columnist labeling the vice president "destructive" and another dismissing those who share his views as "Cheneyite nutjobs." This past Saturday, protesters near his home outside Jackson, Wyo., tore down an effigy of Mr. Cheney in much the way Iraqis famously toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein. So President Bush should ignore Mr. Cheney's advice and the White House communications team should keep him hidden from public view, right? Nonsense. With intelligence officials in Washington increasingly alarmed about the prospect of another major attack on the U.S. homeland, and public support for the Bush administration's anti-terror efforts reclaiming lost ground, we need more Dick Cheney. The policies he has advocated have been controversial. But they have also been effective. Consider the procedures put in place to extract information from hardcore terrorists. Mr. Cheney did not dream up these interrogation methods, but when intelligence officials insisted that they would work, the vice president championed them in internal White House debates and on Capitol Hill. Former CIA Director George Tenet--a Clinton-era appointee and certainly no Cheney fan--was asked about the value of those interrogation programs in a recent television appearance. His response, ignored by virtually everyone in the media, was extraordinary. "Here's what I would say to you, to the Congress, to the American people, to the president of the Untied States: I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. . . . I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together, have been able to tell us." Long, so continue reading at site. You know you want to read it all. |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #3 I remember a discussion with some leftist nut and they were all for impeachment of Bush. I said "so you can't wait for a President Cheney?" They shut up. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2007-08-15 15:24 |
| #2 Mr. Cheney likes to work in the background and he does not care much about being loved. "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?" Mr. Cheney said in 2004. "It's a nice way to operate, actually." Heh heh heh heh heh... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-08-15 13:22 |
| #1 Zbigniew Brzezinski, a leading indicator of Democratic conventional wisdom... Ooookay. That explains a lot... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-08-15 13:16 |