WASHINGTON, April 15, 2007
Cheney Steers Clear Of Libby Mess
VP Says Some Democrats Have Been "Irresponsible" On Iraq In Pushing For Withdrawal Timetable
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Play CBS Video Video Vice President Cheney, pt.1 In an exclusive interview, Bob Schieffer talks to Vice President Dick Cheney about whether the Democrats will drop withdrawal timetables from the troop funding bill in the face of an expected veto.
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Video Vice President Cheney, pt.2 Bob Schieffer talks to Vice President Dick Cheney about the Justice Department firings, and whether he and President Bush are as isolated as Nixon was during the Vietnam War and Watergate.
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Video Sharing the Sacrifice Bob Schieffer asks how much is America sacrificing for the war in Iraq, and whether we should fight with an all-volunteer army.
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Appearing on "Face The Nation," Vice President Dick Cheney said he expects Congress to eventually send President Bush a bill funding the Iraq war without a timetable for troop withdrawal. (CBS)
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Interactive Second In Command A closer look at Vice President Dick Cheney's career and his much-publicized health problems.
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Interactive Iraq: 4 Years Later The conflict wears on as the nation struggles to rebuild.
During an appearance on CBS' Face the Nation, the vice president also said he expects the Democratic-led Congress will eventually relent in its demand that future funding for the Iraq war be tied with a timetable for withdrawal.
"I think the Congress will pass clean legislation," Cheney said. "I don't think that the majority of the Democrats in Congress want to leave America's fighting forces in harm's way without the resources they need to defend themselves."
Congressional leaders have been invited to meet with President Bush at the White House on Wednesday. Both the House and Senate have passed supplemental funding bills for the war that include timetables for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by March 2008. Mr. Bush has vowed to veto such legislation, and Democrats do not have enough votes to override him.
While some Democrats, such as Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, have signaled a desire to send the president a bill he will sign after an initial veto, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said his party will not back down. Cheney said such actions would be "irresponsible," especially after the Senate overwhelmingly confirmed the nomination of Gen. David Petreaus to lead combat operations in Iraq.
When suggested by CBS Evening News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer that a majority of Americans want a timetable for American troop withdrawals from Iraq, as has been voted on in Congress, Cheney said, "Well, there is also a majority that I think would prefer to have us win. And there is a fundamental debate going on here in terms of whether or not our objective in Iraq is to quote 'withdrawal' or whether our objective in Iraq is to complete the mission. And I think a majority of Americans would prefer the latter."
Recent events in Iraq, including a Thursday suicide bomber attack on the Iraqi Parliament building, have not dimmed Cheney's hopes for victory, he said.
"I don't want to underestimate the difficulty of the task, Bob, but just because it's hard doesn’t mean we shouldn't do it."
"There is no question it's a very difficult assignment, but we've got a new commander in the field, we’ve got a good strategy in place, and I think we will soon see positive results," he said.
He said leaving Iraq now would signal U.S. withdrawal from a global war on terror, sending the wrong message to allies such as Pakistan. "Are they going to have any confidence at all that the United States is going to stay and complete its mission?" Cheney said.
In response to Schieffer's suggestion that Cheney's 2005 remark that the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes" might make some dispute his optimistic take on the war going forward, the vice president suggested his comments lacked hindsight ("We have to respond to questions from the press and we do the best we can with what we know at the time"), but still spoke that progress in Iraq was evident.
"My statement at the time that you referenced was geared specifically to the fact that we just had an election in Iraq where some 12 million people defied the car bombers and the assassins and for the first time participated in a free election," Cheney said. "We had three elections in 2005 in Iraq: We set up a provisional government, then we got a ratification of a brand new constitution, then elections under that constitution of a new government, the government that is in place now. I still think in the broad sweep of history those will have been major turning points in the war in Iraq."
In other current issues, the administration continues to back Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Cheney said, even as the controversy surrounding the firings of eight U.S. attorneys continues to grow. E-mails released Friday showed that successors for the attorneys were under consideration nearly a year before their firings — an apparent contradiction of Gonzales' testimony before Congress.
"He is a good man," Cheney said of Gonzales. "I have every confidence in him. The president has every confidence in him."
The vice president would not discuss the conviction of Libby on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice as part of the investigation into the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. The case is under appeal.
Cheney called the verdict a "great tragedy" but said he had not talked to Libby since he was found guilty on March 6. "I haven't had occasion to do that," he said.
He also refuted claims by Reid that, amid a hostile Congress and the president's declining approval ratings, he and other members of the administration had become more isolated that Richard Nixon's White House during the Watergate scandal.
"It's a ridiculous notion," Cheney said.
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U.S. forces kill 3 Iraqi police in friendly fire
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces killed three Iraqi policemen in a case of friendly fire during a raid against suspected al Qaeda militants in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi on Monday, the U.S. military said.
The U.S. military said in a statement that American ground forces had received small arms fire during a raid operation in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, and returned fire. Three men killed in the confrontation were later identified as Iraqi police.
The military said its troops had "coordinated their operation and no Iraqi police were known to be in the area."
It is time for Cheney to take a long vacation in the Green Zone or a ride through Dallas in an open convertible.
The best thing that the nerws media can do is to keep this lying moron off of the airwaves.
Failing to recognize that free trade/globalization is in the end injurious to American workers hastens our demise. Ideological escapades like Iraq hasten our demise. The subverting of the two party system with aberrations like the K-Street Project and the demonization of anyone opposed to the NeoCon point of view hastens our demise. But the demise is inevitable.
As a result of our leaders Americans are now despised globally. We are to the 21st Century what Germany was to the middle of the 20th. The common folk of countries like Brazil and Sweden hate us--and these are people who don't hate ANYBODY! No wonder young American travellers slap Canadian flags on their backpacks when they travel.
*** Cheney is not the cause of our demise. He is merely an agent for its hastening. In that sense, he is the perfect agent of history.
He thinks he's a man on mission...a statesman of incalculable power and principle. He's wrong. He's merely the pawn of the inexorable forces of history. And just like he's 'willing to bet' that Democrats will bend to his will, I'm willing to bet that one day, when he's sitting on his porch and looking out on landscape of his estate, he'll come to understand what he was and also what he wasn't.
7 pesos and dintinhale may be two of the personalities of a Multiple Personality Disorder patient, the first two to manifest are usually nearly opposites. Their abilities to reason do seem to parallel. Failing to inhale for extended periods causes hypoxia and can result in brain damage, need proof? 7 pesos is a one-trick pony.
7 pesos and dintinhale may be two of the personalities of a Multiple Personality Disorder patient, the first two to manifest are usually nearly opposites. Their abilities to reason do seem to parallel. Failing to inhale for extended periods causes hypoxia and can result in brain damage, need proof? 7 pesos is a one-trick pony.
elevator doesn't go to the top! He's on a one-track rant that makes no sense but to anyone with
as fried a brain as in his skull.
And given the senseless diatribe expectorated by didntinhale, I'm guessing they're roommates. It's not likely anybody still sane could survive being so close to either of these kooks !!!
I've reported flagrant abuse before, but I can't
help but wonder if seven-pesos may be Moderator!
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com
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Does chickenhawk Cheney think that it was a bit "irresponsible" to LIE us into the needless Iraq Disaster in the first place?? Was it irresponsible to further the violence, to establish precedent for any rogue nation who wants to INVADE another nation "pre-emptively"?
Fake WMDs, fake bio-mobile labs, fake aluminum tubes, fake uranium from Niger, fake Al Quaeda links to Saddam, fake "intelligence sources", fake NIE summaries, fake color coded terror alerts to keep Americans afraid, fake patriotism, fake "support the troops" as they are used and abused like cannon fodder....
JAIL Cheney and Bush for the Lying Murderous thugs that they truly are. (and if you don't get it, you aren't paying attention - do your civic homework!)
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006)
didntinhale is telling the truth he doesn't inhale
BUT he does swallow.
Excuse me? What we is he talking about? I thought the Iraqis were supposed to be "liberated" and running their OWN country? Was I wrong?
Posted by harp1963 at 08:34 PM : Apr 15, 2007
That's because he is one.
I wouldn%u2019t be at all surprised."
Posted by jn122736 at 08:24 PM : Apr 15, 2007
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That way he and Bush could blame all disasters that befell the troops on the Democrats.
He and Bush would save face.
That's the only reason they're keeping the war going.
They are perfectly comfortable, relaxed, if you will, about any number of U.S. troops being wounded or killed for that purpose.
what a pile of *****!
anybody got a confederate flag i can wipe my azz?
ha,ha,ha.
war, hate, arrogance, creepy christian snakes...
nothing good comes out of the south!
Dirty *** has drunk the Neo-con kool-aid one to many times and is passing out the same ole smoke and mirrors horse *** rationale for war.
Neo-cons think they have created the perfect storm of perpetual war based on the fear (the globle war on terror, without a good boggie man to keep fighting, what would the pentagon, the military industrial complex, and the energy industry do with themselves without someone to kill and keep killing). They have nor want no other solution.
They create their own enemies by their idea of good judeo/christians ethics and standards, which include greed, power, and love of money and you can bet that islam is full of the same bs too, just with more of it but with the same hypocrisy also.... And DIDNTINHALE, your multiple posting are tiresome. grow-up child!
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