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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Starting with the headline: “Harris ‘honored’ by endorsement from Republican Dick Cheney.” For those who came in late:
On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2001, after Justice Antonin Scalia had selected former Texas Republican Governor, dry drunk, ritually branded Yalie, and Christianist George W. Bush as President in Bush v. Gore (“good for one time only“), the country’s Vice President became former Secretary of Defense and Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney. (After Bush was nominated, he had set up a selection committee for Vice President, chaired by Dick Cheney, and, perhaps surprisingly, ended up picking Cheney himself.) 2018’s Oscar-winning Vice (with Christian Bale as Dick Cheney) despite — or perhaps because of — being a “political satire black comedy” gives a reasonably accurate high-level description of what happened next. From the Summary:
The story of Dick Cheney, an unassuming bureaucratic Washington insider, who quietly wielded immense power as Vice President to George W. Bush, reshaping the country and the globe in ways that are still felt today.
(Cheney has been described as Bush’s Chief Operating Officer, though Cheney himself concedes his influence waned in Bush’s second term). And the Synopsis:
The film returns to the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, as Cheney and Rumsfeld maneuver to initiate and then preside over the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in the killing of civilians and the torture of prisoners. As the War on Terror mounts, Cheney continues to struggle with persistent heart attacks. The film also covers various events from his vice presidency, including his endorsement of the Unitary executive theory, the Plame affair, the accidental shooting of Harry Whittington, and tensions between the Cheney sisters over same-sex marriage. Cheney’s actions are shown to lead to thousands of deaths and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, resulting in him receiving record-low approval ratings by the end of the Bush administration.
In this post, for those curious as to why Harris would be “honored” by Cheney’s endorsement, I want to dig a little bit deeper into a few of the more aromatic episodes of Cheney’s tenure, which started just prior to the emergence of the blogosphere. Here’s hoping none of the work done in those days has succumbed to link rot! In order of increasing damage to the country’s institutions and global standing, I will cover the Harry Whittington shooting, Cheney’s adoption of torture as a tool of statecraft, Cheney’s role in fomenting the Iraq War debacle using what we would today call disinformation, and the billions gushing to his former company, Halliburton. All this stuff was difficult and horrid for us “foul-mouthed bloggers of the left” to disentangle at the time, and to see Cheney “honored”… Well, it’s a bit much. Anyhow, here’s a photo of Cheney in case you want to hang it on your kitchen refrigerator or something:
The upward gaze into the brighter future that seems obligatory for Democrats these days…
Cheney Shoots an Old Man in the Face
From Dan Froomkin, back when he was a blogger at WaPo in 2006, with the best headline ever: “Shoots, Hides and Leaves“:
Why isn’t Dick Cheney on TV right now?
The vice president of the United States shoots someone in a hunting accident and rather than immediately come clean to the public, his office keeps it a secret for almost a whole day. Even then, it’s only to confirm a report in a local paper.
“The shooting occurred late Saturday afternoon while Cheney was hunting with Harry Whittington, 78, a prominent Austin lawyer, on the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas. Hearing a covey of birds, Cheney shot at one, not realizing that Whittington had startled the quail and that he was in the line of fire.”
Frank James asks in the Chicago Tribune Washington bureau’s new blog: “How is it that Vice President Cheney can shoot a man, albeit accidentally, on Saturday during a hunting trip and the American public not be informed of it until today? . . .
“When a vice president of the U.S. shoots a man under any circumstance, that is extremely relevant information. What might be the excuse to justify not immediately making the incident public?”
Greg Mitchell writes in Editor and Publisher that “it is not known for certain that Cheney’s office, the White House, or anyone else intended to announce the shooting” had it not been for a call from the local paper.
Why indeed? ‘Tis a mystery! (Fascinatingly, Whittington apologized to Cheney.) Seventeen years later, WaPo follows up with “The thing Harry Whittington refused to lie about” and gets the details of the accident:
When he returned, Whittington was holding an odd object on a hanger. It was an orange safety, slit down the side as if someone was in a hurry to remove it. There were brownish splotches of dried blood on it.
For the next few hours, he told me what happened that day — at least what he could remember of it before he’d passed out from his wounds.
Whittington barely knew Cheney; they weren’t “friends” or “hunting buddies,” as news accounts described them. They’d met only a few times before, and had been invited to the ranch by its owner, a mutual friend.
It was late, around 5:30 p.m., and the February light was fading when Cheney fired his errant shot. Whittington said he had been standing slightly downhill and off to Cheney’s right, his body angled in Cheney’s direction.
Though Whittington wouldn’t say so explicitly, his description suggested that Cheney had violated two fundamental safety protocols. First, in wheeling on a bird winging from the scrub, Cheney had fired without checking if his line of fire was clear. Second, he’d aimed downward, ignoring a rule obliging bird hunters to observe “blue sky” before firing..
The aftermath of the shooting was calamitous. The ambulance that carried the unconscious Whittington from the massive ranch to a hospital blew a tire. The trip took close to an hour.
The injuries he’d suffered were far worse than initially reported. The blast hit Whittington with more than 200 pieces of lead birdshot, causing scores of wounds across his eye socket, hairline, neck and torso. One piece lodged near his heart and caused a mild heart attack a few days later. One of his lungs collapsed. Another piece narrowly missed his carotid artery. He nearly bled out.
Whittington recounted these details without anger or sadness. It was an accident, he insisted, and Dick Cheney was a good man.
After talking for nearly 10 hours, I had one last question. Had Cheney ever apologized?
Whittington leveled his gaze at me.
“I’m not going to get into that,” he said after a short pause.
His face was set. I could sense his discomfort.
Harry Whittington wouldn’t lie. He was too gracious for that.
To me, the 24-hour delay reeks. And Cheney’s extraordinary arrogance and sense of privilege isn’t all that might have reeked, either. Perhaps hunters in the readership may with to comment on this. So, “honored.” Really?
Cheney Normalizes Torture
Once again, Froomkin in WaPo from 2008, “White House Torture Advisers“:
Top Bush aides, including Vice President Cheney, micromanaged the torture of terrorist suspects from the White House basement, according to an ABC News report aired last night.
Discussions were so detailed, ABC’s sources said, that some interrogation sessions were virtually choreographed by a White House advisory group. In addition to Cheney, the group included then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then-secretary of state Colin Powell, then-CIA director George Tenet and then-attorney general John Ashcroft.
According to ABC, the CIA briefed the White House group on its plans to use aggressive techniques against Zubaydah and received explicit approval. Zubaydah is one of the three detainees the CIA has since confirmed were subjected to waterboarding, a notorious torture technique that amounts to controlled drowning.
Such techniques were later authorized in a controversial August 2002 Justice Department memo, signed by then head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee. ABC reports that the memo “was referred to as the so-called ‘Golden Shield’ for CIA agents, who worried they would be held liable if the harsh interrogations became public.”
Nevertheless, even after the memo was in place, “briefings and meetings in the White House to discuss individual interrogations continued, sources said. Tenet, seeking to protect his agents, regularly sought confirmation from the NSC principals that specific interrogation plans were legal.
And the happy outcome:
Zubaydah, it turns out, was a mentally ill minor functionary, nursed back to health by the FBI, who under CIA torture sent investigators chasing after false leads about al-Qaeda plots on American nuclear plants, water systems, shopping malls, banks and supermarkets.
(It has always been my speculation that Cheney had videos of the torture sessions streamed directly to his office. He always did like his intelligence raw.) Cheney had previously arranged to “legalize” torture by securing guidance from a bent lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, John Yoo
So, [Cheney] established a back channel to John Yoo, the No. 2 man in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Little known to the public, that office tells the president and his subordinates what they can and can’t do under existing law. And with guidance from Cheney and his chief counsel, David Addington, Yoo wrote legal opinions that authorized everything from waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics previously considered torture, to domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency without first getting permission from the court set up to approve such surveillance.
(This post won’t even address Bush’s program of warrantless surveillance, which Obama voted to retroactively legalize as a Senator — after promising to filibuster it — and which paved the way for today’s Censorship Industrial Complex).
The Democrat Party platform in 2020 (PDF) rejected torture:
(On illegal, see here.)
The Democrat Party platform in 2024 (PDF) has nothing to say about it:
One might speculate Democrats are now silent on — i.e., accepting of — torture because they wish to attract the (unrepentant, pro-torture) Cheney wing of the Republican Party, or because they don’t want to upset Israel, which tortures routinely. Or perhaps they don’t want to offend Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emmanuel, since the Chicago Police Department’s torture center at Homan Square operated on his watch. Or all three!
On the morality of torture, I think the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosphy has a good all-round discussion of the topic, comparing and contrasting it to murder:
On the moral wrongness of torture as compared to killing, the following points can be made. First, torture is similar to killing in that both interrupt and render impossible the normal conduct of human life, albeit the latter – but not the former – necessarily forever. But equally during the period a person is being tortured (and in some cases thereafter) the person’s world is almost entirely taken up by extreme pain and their asymmetrical power relationship to the torturer, i.e. the torture victim’s powerlessness. Indeed, given the extreme suffering being experienced and the consequent loss of autonomy, the victim would presumably rather be dead than alive during that period. So, as already noted, torture is a very great evil. However, it does not follow from this that being killed is preferable to being tortured. Nor does it follow that torturing someone is morally worse than killing him….. A second point pertains to the powerlessness of the victims of torture. Dead people necessarily have no autonomy or power; so killing people is an infringement of their right to autonomy as well as their right to life. What of the victims of torture?
The person being tortured is for the duration of the torturing process physically powerless in relation to the torturer. By “physically powerless” two things are meant: the victim is defenceless, i.e., the victim cannot prevent the torturer from torturing the victim, and the victim is unable to attack, and therefore physically harm, the torturer. …
The conclusion to be drawn from these considerations is that torture is not necessarily morally worse than killing (or more undesirable than death), though in many instances it may well be. Killing is an infringement of the right to life and the right to autonomy. Torture is an infringement of the right to autonomy, but not necessarily of the right to life. Moreover, torture is consistent with the retrieval of the victim’s autonomy, whereas killing is not. On the other hand, the period during which the victim is being tortured is surely worse than not being alive during that time, and torture can in principle extend for the duration of the remainder of a person’s life.
As at Gitmo (and I’m so old I remember when Obama promised to close it. Oh well). I don’t want to sidetrack the post into a fruitless discussion of the “ticking bomb” scenario[1]. Pragmatically and in the moment, “honored”? We’re honoring torturers now? Really?
Cheney Foments the Iraq War
The post-9/11 2002-2003 run-up to the Iraq War was marked by a disinformation campaign run by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which orchestrated planting stories in the press (which we poor bloggers played whack-a-mole with, with great success, but with no effect on outcomes). Cheney didn’t chair the WHIG, but was above it on the masthead, and propagated its disinformation. From the Atlantic (2011), “Remembering Why Americans Loathe Dick Cheney“:
President Bush bears ultimate responsibility for the Iraq War, as do the members of Congress who voted for it. But Dick Cheney’s role in the run-up to war was uniquely irresponsible and mendacious. And after the invasion, he contributed to the early dysfunction on the ground. Even Iraq War supporters should rue his involvement.
The most succinct statement of his misdeeds comes from “The People v. Richard Cheney,” a 2007 article by Wil S. Hylton. The piece recounts how Cheney undercut the CIA by instructing subordinates in that agency to stovepipe raw intelligence directly to his office. He also worked with Donald Rumsfeld to establish an alternative intelligence agency within the Pentagon. Both of these actions directly contributed to the faulty information that informed the decision to go to war.
Hylton then lays out his most powerful argument:
(1) During the several months preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and thereafter, the vice president became aware that no certain evidence existed of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a fact articulated in several official documents, including: (a) A report by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, concluding that “there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has—or will—establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.” (b) A National Intelligence Estimate, compiled by the nation’s intelligence agencies, admitting to “little specific information” about chemical weapons in Iraq. (c) A later section of the same NIE, admitting “low confidence” that Saddam Hussein “would engage in clandestine attacks against the U.S. Homeland,” and equally “low confidence” that he would “share chemical or biological weapons with al-Qa’ida.” (d) An addendum by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, asserting that Hussein’s quest for yellowcake uranium in Africa was “highly dubious” and that his acquisition of certain machine parts, considered by some to be evidence of a nuclear program, were “not clearly linked to a nuclear end use.” (e) A report by the United States Department of Energy, stating that the machinery in question was “poorly suited” for nuclear use.
(2) Despite these questions and uncertainties, and having full awareness of them, the vice president nevertheless proceeded to misrepresent the facts in his public statements, claiming that there was no doubt about the existence of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq and that a full-scale nuclear program was known to exist, including: (a) March 17, 2002: “We know they have biological and chemical weapons.” (b) March 19, 2002: “We know they are pursuing nuclear weapons.” (c) March 24, 2002: “He is actively pursuing nuclear weapons.” (d) May 19, 2002: “We know he’s got chemical and biological … we know he’s working on nuclear.” (e) August 26, 2002: “We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons … Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” (f) March 16, 2003: “We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
(3) At the same time, despite overwhelming skepticism within the government of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda—resulting in the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission that “no credible evidence” for such a link existed, and the CIA’s determination that Hussein “did not have a relationship” with Al Qaeda—the vice president continued to insist that the relationship had been confirmed, including: (a) December 2, 2002: “His regime has had high-level contacts with Al Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to Al Qaeda terrorists.” (b) January 30, 2003: “His regime aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda. He could decide secretly to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against us.” (c) March 16, 2003: “We know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization.” (d) September 14, 2003: “We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on biological weapons and chemical weapons.” (e) October 10, 2003: “He also had an established relationship with Al Qaeda—providing training to Al Qaeda members in areas of poisons, gases, and conventional bombs.” (f) January 9, 2004: “Al Qaeda and the Iraqi intelligence services … have worked together on a number of occasions.” (g) January 22, 2004: “There’s overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government” (h) June 18, 2004: “There clearly was a relationship. It’s been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming.”
The piece also charges that “as the war devolved into occupation, the vice president again sabotaged the democratic system, developing back channels into the Coalition Provisional Authority, a body not under his purview, to remove some of the most effective staff and replace them with his own loyal supplicants—undercutting America’s best effort at war in order to expand his own power.”
And that’s before we get to PNAC, Curveball, the aluminum tubes… See the timeline: “Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq.” Cheney was up to his eyeballs in all of it. Why would anyone feel “honored” by the endorsement of such a person?
Cheney Hands Billions of Federal Dollars to His Former Firm, Halliburton
This charming old-school blog from an anonymous computer scientist at Cornell has a fine timeline:
2. Early 1990 to 1993. Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, commissions Halliburton to do a classified (secret) study concerning replacing the U.S. military’s logistics by work done by private companies. Halliburton says, yes, a company can do the work. In August 1992, with essentially no bidding, Halliburton is selected by the US Army Corps of Engineers to do all work needed to support the military for the next five years! Thereafter, Halliburton (or its subsidiary KBR) and its military logistics business escalated rapidly. In the ten years thereafter revenues totaled $2.5 billion.
3. 1995-2000. Cheney is CEO of Halliburton….
9. December 2001. KBR (Halliburton subsidiary) is granted an open-ended contract for Army troops supply and Navy construction, wherever U.S. troops go, for the next 10 years (so far, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Yemen, Iraq). This unique contract has no ceiling on cost. KBR is reimbursed for every dollar spent plus a base fee of 1 percent, which guarantees profit. Plus, they can get a bonus as a percentage of company costs.
As TruthDig wrote (2018), “The Blurred Line Between War and Business“:
In 2009, Rand Paul called out Dick Cheney for supporting the invasion of Iraq to benefit his former company, Halliburton, claiming that Halliburton had received a billion-dollar no-bid contract. KBR, or Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, was neck-deep in military contracts with the United States government, under a no-bid LOGCAP III (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program) agreement, a contingency-based contract invoked at the convenience of the Army. Let’s not forget that the official narrative of weapons of mass destruction was the lie sold to the American people to justify an oligarchical class growing wealthier through creating war.
In November 2002, a $7 billion LOGCAP contract was given to KBR for extinguishing oil well fires in Iraq. In 2003, the Army Corps of Engineers awarded a public bid contract with a maximum value of $1.2 billion to KBR to continue repairing the oil infrastructure in southern Iraq. In 2004, the Army Corps handed KBR yet another contract, with the value of $1.5 billion, to cover engineering services in the U.S. Central Command’s area of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The contract had a $500 million ceiling for the first year and four one-year options, each with an annual ceiling of $250 million. In 2004, KBR received more orders under the LOGCAP contract for work in Afghanistan, which added up to $489 million. And then there is the $400 million in payments KBR made in subcontracting private securities services like Blackwater in Iraq.
In 2004, the public was made aware of Halliburton’s monopoly on billions of dollars in Iraq contracts and in the accumulation of tremendous influence over state matters. Or as Rand warned: the dangerous powers given to large corporations when they “get so big that they can actually be directing policy.” The funneling of vast fortunes to KBR was an egregious problem the government ignored. Major media also gave a pass to these contracts, with no questions asked about the larger structures within government that made this all possible.
In total, $138 billion was awarded in federal funds to private contractors for the Iraq War, with Halliburton receiving more than $39.5 billion of the federal contracts related to the Iraq military invasion and occupation between 2003 and 2013.
Back in 2004, Democrat loser John Kerry called out Cheney in the following terms. From the New York Times:
At a community center in Albuquerque on Sept. 17, Mr. Kerry declared: “Dick Cheney’s old company Halliburton has profited from the mess in Iraq at the expense of American troops and taxpayers. While Halliburton has been engaging in massive overcharging and wasteful practices under this no-bid contract, Dick Cheney has continued to receive compensation from his former company.”
But:
Mr. Cheney’s critics concede that there is no concrete evidence that he has pulled any strings on Halliburton’s behalf.
I think both Kerry and the Times have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. What the timeline I led with implies is that Cheney “set the table” as Defense Secretary for private contractors to make enormous profits from war, then arranged for compensatoin (deferred and otherwise) from one of those contractors, and then “furnished the war” as Vice President (which besides economic capital, surely gained him enormous social capital as well). Why would Cheney’s endorsement be “an honor?” It’s like being endorsed by Tony Soprano after a successful bust-out.
Conclusion
I didn’t even get to the Energy Task Force. Sorry.
Dick Cheney is a torturer, a lying weasel, and corrupt to the bone. (Plus, he’s bad with a gun.) He’s everything that we innocent bloggers, back in 2003, thought that Republicans were, and that Democrats could never be. Cheney is certainly far worse than Trump, and arguably worse than Obama (I’m not sure how to weigh rebooting the financial system after the Great Financial Crash vs. the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). As those peaceniks over that the Babylon Bee put it: “‘Never Has America Faced A Greater Threat Than Donald Trump,’ Says Guy Who Started Two Wars And Shot A Dude In The Face.” Yet here we are. Democrats are all aflutter:
NEW: The entire Cheney family is voting for Kamala Harris.
RETWEET if you stand with the Cheneys against Donald Trump! pic.twitter.com/w5jNt3YxRU
— Protect Kamala Harris ✊ (@DisavowTrump20) September 6, 2024
(Ah, “stand with,” no less focus-grouped than “fighting for.”) The Democrats are even hoping for a Bush endorsement:
Hello? Isn’t there something you need to say? Everyone is waiting… pic.twitter.com/8Is8qjKBsn
— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) September 7, 2024
I remain baffled at the use of the word “honored.” How could anyone feel “honored” by the endorsement of such a person? Honor: “honesty, fairness, or integrity in one’s beliefs and actions.” Though I suppose it depends on what your beliefs, if any, actually are. Hamilton Nolan writes:
I believe Dick Cheney’s own explanation that “We have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.” Before you scoff, please allow me to explain. Dick Cheney is one of America’s best living representations of the fluidity of establishment power. Congressional staffer, White House staffer, presidential assistant, White House Chief of Staff, Congressman, Secretary of Defense, corporate CEO, vice president. Dick Cheney is not so much “a Republican” as he is “a man in power.” He ascended the ranks of government power in a friendly administration and then when the administration was gone he got elected to Congress and then he leveled up in another friendly administration and then when that was gone he slid over to running a major corporation that was wholly intertwined with the United States government and finally he leveled up into the White House by standing behind a more likable patsy who he could control.
All of us who vote for Democrats need to understand what we are getting. Our feeling of moral superiority on domestic policy—we are the ones against racism and poverty! We are the ones who protect women!—is at all times floating atop an unmentioned sea of weapons pointed at millions of less powerful people outside of our own borders.
Even among Democrats, the baseline assumption that America must have enough guns to exert our will on the entire world is not questioned. Kamala Harris may push for paid family leave, but she is not going to dismantle the United States intelligence agencies.
It’s not that Donald Trump has any ideological opposition to this commitment, which the Republicans have always embraced with relish. It’s just that he’s insane [disagree] and an unpredictable egomaniac [agree] and therefore cannot be counted on to fulfill his role on this matter [hard agree]. Trump has found himself in a feud with America’s intelligence agencies strictly out of personal vanity and prickliness. He is the sort of man who might undermine the CIA or fuck up the Army’s plans for the stupidest, most childish reasons imaginable. This possibility is more than the sort of people who live in that world can tolerate. They may prefer a Republican, but they need, above all, someone predictable. Someone who will not try to undermine the entire system. In this race, that person is Kamala Harris. And so Dick Cheney and the men like him will support Kamala Harris.
Yes, but honor?!
NOTES
[1] In the cases we are discussing, what gives the ticking bomb scenario an aura of credibility is the presence of the State (surely privatized torture is never, ever moral). But what that means is that there is always a torturer, and always an order-giver. I think the default setting for the order-giver is that they are power-crazed fools, for whom our system is optimized. If all state systems are similarly and inherently so optimized, then torture can never be moral, not even under the most exigent circumstances, because no order-giver can rightly treat the circumstances as known (see Zubaydah above).
APPENDIX Cheney’s Endorsement Statement
Cheney’s statement:
VP Dick Cheney’s official endorsement of VP Harris#RepublicansForHarris pic.twitter.com/IUqdXfM0O7
— Republicans for Harris (@RepsForHarris) September 6, 2024
61 comments
Comments are closed.
Voters in Stepford were particularly enamored of his endorsement.
Walz and Cheney look nearly the same. Coincidence? 🙂
A bold comment, perhaps, but nothing closing a tag wouldn’t fix?
I don’t think so. Cheney has that weird permanent sneer, at least in photos that are not touched up, I think due to one of his strokes.
Bold tag closed.
Rumsfeld laughing more than Kamala at the current state of affairs.
Brilliant essay, thanks very much. -regards, a.v.
x2! much appreciate this valiant antidote to the memory-hole
a.k.a. the United States of Amnesia (Vidal)
Sadly, the only people horrified by the Cheney endorsement were never going to vote for Kamala anyway.
I am often thankful for being a senior citizen. I won’t live long enough to see them totally destroy this country, but I only missed it by this much.
Back in the day, many American friends who voted Democrat and were upset about the election results would refer to the Bush administration as the “Cheney administration”. This was not a compliment and I suspect that many of these people would be inclined to give Kamala Harris a chance, but still remember their hatred of Cheney.
So the endorsement may end up having a slight negative effect.
If y’all want entertainment, just ask the PMC and their lackeys how they can vote for someone endorsed by V. V. Putin and the two cheneys. These folk have no sense of humor.
The memes are gonna be great! /heh
Retired Carpenter: On the Putin “endorsement.” Please seek out the video on Ytoob. There are plenty of posts at news sites. The “endorsement” by Putin is trolling.
Putin:
I supported Biden, natch, but he is out to pasture as non compos mentis. So I now have a new favorite candidate, Kamala Harris. She laughs a lot. I like her laugh.
[The audience is starting to laugh.]
As if everything is good.
[The audience is laughing, and it’s obvious that he’s engaged in some Russian humor.]
Maybe she’ll do something about all of those sanctions.
DJG,
Yes, indeed. The supporters of Willie’s girlfriend trot out this explanation. But, it still makes them apoplectic. Truly entertaining to watch. Do try.
Values.
VP Harris’ “values” stay solid, consistent, the same no matter that she won’t ban fracking!
Morphing values!
Explains a lot.
Flexibility! TDS’er have to stick together.
Excellent piece. Gonna send it to my friendly Harris aficionados.
They might not know who Harris is. But they sure remember Big Dick.
p.s. VICE despite all its good intentions is among A. McKay´s weakest.
For the very reason it´s so outspoken about it´s true intentions.
Films very seldomly should have any such thing. Least of all comedies.
(Which is may be why someone like Steve Bannon had an interesting conversation about Orson Welles´s “Falstaff” with documentarian Errol Morris, according to Morris´s account.)
For that argument see e.g. Herbert Marcuse:
“The Affirmative Character of Culture,” in Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, 1968
(German original 1937)
Unfortunately I cannot find an English version online.
German would be here
1/3
https://www.gleichsatz.de/b-u-t/kriton/marcuse_affirmation.html
2/3
https://www.gleichsatz.de/b-u-t/kriton/marcuse2affirmation.html
3/3
https://www.gleichsatz.de/b-u-t/kriton/marcuse3affirmation.html
It is hard to disagree with this assessment, but the mystery of Cheney was his bouleversement from being ‘responsible’ over Iraq in 1991 to being an arch-hawk a decade later. This was not his only transformation: as a congressman he urged fiscal rectitude, but as vice president he [in]famously declared that ‘Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter’. No doubt this was just another instance of the pliability of politicians, and their tendency to believe different things with equal conviction at different times.
However, I suspect that at least some of the reasons for these abrupt shifts were guilt and remorse. Cheney was the second choice for the DOD in 1989 after the nomination of the reactionary John Tower failed. He had to prove himself in office as a dedicated supporter of the elder Bush’s strategic vision, which Baker and Scowcroft played a larger role in articulating (indeed, Cheney’s influence was markedly inferior to that of, say, Weinberger, and he was confronted in Powell by a forceful and confident chairman of the joint chiefs of staff). He was fully supportive of the decision not to invade Iraq after it had been evicted from Kuwait. Later however, seeing the consequences of that decision (and of Bush’s commitment to fiscal conservatism) upon the right wing of the Republican party, and the diversion of much of that vote to Perot’s Reform party, he decided to cover his tracks.
Therefore, in order to ingratiate himself with the younger Bush and to expiate the real or imagined mishaps of 1989-93, he adopted a strategy of extreme over-compensation, turning himself from a respectable party hack into a reckless warmonger, adversary of human rights and fiscal profligate. I strongly suspect that at the heart of the Cheney mystery there is a story of chronic insecurity, anxiety to please and a nagging knowledge that in 1989 he was seriously over-promoted, faute de mieux after Tower bombed. His endorsement of Harris is surely a fillip to Trump.
Don’t forget that it was Cheney at DOD that cancelled the McDonnell Douglas A-12 program, and had the temerity to ask for the DOD’s funding back. This might have been the straw that broke McD’s back, ultimately leading to the McD/Boeing merger and subsequent Boeing downfall. It took 23 years to end the legal dispute over the contract cancellation:
Finally, A-12 Contract Dispute Ends With Federal Court’s Dismissal
https://www.defensedaily.com/finally-a-12-contract-dispute-ends-with-federal-courts-dismissal/navy-usmc/
So not only did Cheney get America tangled up in endless war in the Middle East that ended up deploying the American military until it was wrecked; he might have also started the pebble that became a landslide that took out America’s largest aviation company.
Ya gotta admit, the man seems to have a talent for leaving a pretty big trail of wreckage.
> Guilt and remorse
Not likely, in my view. But perhaps in another timeline!
I just realized I forgot to add the craziest Cheney idea of all — that the Vice Presidency was a Fourth Branch of government (IIRC because the VP also presides over the Senate.
There was no “abrupt shift” in Cheney’s real orientation, and I doubt he is capable of “guilt and remorse” about anything. It was Cheney, along with Rumsfeld, who were the insiders helping the right-wing carry out the “Halloween Massacre” in the Ford administration. They threw out the Rockefeller folks and set up the neocons, who would take over the Republican Party and, with Reagan, the White House. During this short period of time Bush senior, appointed CIA director, allowed the hawks to carry out the infamous “Team B” study undermining the CIA realists by vastly overestimating Soviet capabilities and fear-mongering their intentions. He was an uber-hawk in his years in the private sector during Democrat administrations, one of the “Vulcans” (James Mann), or neocons pushing an aggressive foreign policy. I don’t know how “responsible” it was to help carry out and justify an unnecessary war in 1991. But he was good at explaining back then what would happen, in terms of chaos and sectarian conflict, if the US had gone ahead and marched to Baghdad. That his predictions were quite accurate, and he didn’t give a s**t in 2003, also says something about his “guilt and remorse” capacities.
I could go on, but let’s just say I find the idea of a “responsible” Cheney who “turned himself into a reckless warmonger” due to his “insecurity” pretty laughable.
I should add that describing Powell as “a forceful and confident chairman of the joint chiefs of staff” also triggers a pretty strong sarcasm response – but that’s a rant for another time.
In Schwarzkopf’s memoirs, he recounts how Cheney tried to play armchair general during the Kuwait War, with a pet notion that the offensive should be made with a much smaller force than Powell and Schwarzkopf thought advisable.
Then, a decade later, it was Cheney who ignored Abizaid’s estimate of the forces required to maintain order in Iraq after an invasion. Aside from the evil of starting the war, Cheney is much to blame for the botch.
One of the things that struck me about Cheney was that when the torture report came out, his reaction was very different to all the other responsible parties like Bush. The others at least read the public response well enough to feign concern, but Cheney seemed utterly unrepentant, to the point of being baffled at the widespread shock and revulsion that resulted. Ashamed? Why would he or anybody be ashamed? They did the right thing. All the stomach-churning details in the report just showed that they’d done a good job.
If the reporter had asked (which they thankfully didn’t) I believe he would quite happily have had one of the detainees wheeled in so he could demonstrate personally. If he wasn’t a psychopath, he was certainly doing an extremely accurate impression of one at that time.
Yep. Thanks for this post.
Robert Reich suggested in 2022his daughter Liz Chaney for pres in 2024. So there’s that. / sheesh
https://www.eurasiareview.com/15062022-robert-reich-liz-cheney-for-president-oped/
Robert Reich is another Rhodes scholar, joining Bill Clinton, Jake Sullivan and Rachel Maddow.
Imperialist Cecil Rhodes would be proud.
Don’t forget Jameson’s Raid and its long list of ‘distinguished’ offspring.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid
None of those four is fit to polish Cecil Rhodes’ kicking-boots.
Although they might be competent to provide him with catamites.
It occurs to me that if Harry Whittington that day had wheeled around and shot uphill striking Cheney who would have died when that ambulance had a flat tire of his heart trouble, that America might be a different country today. Maybe there would be hundreds of thousands of people still alive as well. And as I said recently, when Cheney dies, there will be hardly any criticism of him post death but they will be lauding him as a dominant American public servant – a real servant of the people.
What a great post! You clearly left a lot of material on the cutting room floor. How about the time he told Pat Leahy on the Senate floor to “go family blog yourself.” If only Kamala had responded to Cheney’s endorsement with those words.
Very sad that this even needs saying at all. Is the memory hole truly so powerful?
> Is the memory hole truly so powerful
Yes, as we know from social norming in the ongoing pandemic
One cannot truly know Cheney’s reason for the endorsement. I offer the supposition that by doing so he removes himself as the perceived most vile Republican and throws Trump under the bus while doing so.
Interesting that the Harris campaign is leaning on the failed Hillary Clinton strategy of attempting to peel conservative voters from the Republican ticket rather than court those more to the left. There is plenty of reason to doubt that they will improve upon Clinton’s numbers in that regard. The Democrats are really a center right party who operate under the charade of leaning left. The charade only makes it more difficult to peel away those voters while the choice to court the Cheney’s only reinforces the distrust felt by those on the left.
I suspect that it’s general support for the military-industrial-surveillance community but just guessing
There is also a visceral hate for the proles and the nouveau-riche among upscale Republicans. P J O’Rourke, remember, endorsed Hillary Clinton against Trump. (Not that Trump’s a prole, but he can play one on the Internet.)
They have probably calculated that not as many voters hate Kamala as hated Mrs. Clinton, and they are almost certainly correct about that.
You can posit complex motivations and strategems for this, but, one could argue that on foreign policy and imperial management, the Democratic leadership is just further to the right than the Republican leadership. They aggresively carry the torch of the neocon vision. Rollback and split Russia. Expand greater Israel. Occupy Syria and Iraq, stealing their oil. Thats the simple way to understand it.
Kissinger is looking up from Hell and thinking, “It could have been ME!”
Thanks for that refresher. Now go take a shower.
Remember when right racists were endorsing or supporting Trump or whatever, and Democrats collectively lost their minds.
Yep.
Meanwhile, Kamala is honored. And Cheney really has caused untold suffering and death, not just threatened to do so as groups that supported Trump ostensibly did in 2020.
Quite mind blowing. Liberals can somehow maintain a worldview that is entirely dichotomous. The need for in-group approval is strong with the liberal.
And lol on the greatest threat to Democracy, Eisenhower would beg to differ on that. Cheney is the epitome of fusion of the military congressional industrial complex. And as we’ve seen from the war on terror, the state surveillance, the militarization of the press, the with-or-against us rhetoric, the co-option of the press as an institution, if there was ever a man that was a threat to Democracy, real Democracy, it has been Cheney.
Full stop.
Someone he endorses is clearly going to be a steward of this sorry state of affairs.
So, Jaxon, are you saying that Ms Harris (endorsed by Cheney) is simply a Trump twin. There is no real difference between the two of them?
Since Cheney will not be running for President, we are left with Harris or Trump. No one else will occupy the White House next January.
Consequently, regardless of Cheney’s endoresement, I would cast my vote for Harris in lieu of Trump. What will you do?
So, Dick Cheney is the Democrats’ choice over Donald Trump. If Al Gore, Jr, were dead, he’d be spinning in his grave, but since he’s still alive, I guess he’s now a Republican circa 2000…
A few words from a 1933 Bertrand Russell essay “The Triumph of Stupidity” that, I think, connects with today’s political attitude, Cheney’s endorsement, torture, and how, we can arrive at the empty choice between Harris or Trump.
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points. This was not always the case. A hundred years ago the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent men who were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are; the result was that they dominated politics and that the world advanced rapidly both in intelligence and in material well-being.”
“It is quite true that the intelligence of the philosophical radicals was very limited. It is, I think, undeniable that the best men of the present day have a wider and truer outlook, but the best men of that day had influence, while the best men of this are impotent spectators.”
“Perhaps we shall have to realize that scepticism and intellectual individualism are luxuries which in our tragic age must be forgone, and if intelligence is to be effective, it will have to be combined with a moral fervor which it usually possessed in the past but now usually lacks.”
It’s not an empty choice. If the Establishment were equally comfortable with either candidate, then why are they all lining up behind Harris, and all calling Trump a threat?
If you needed any proof that Trump is not merely tweedledee, Cheney just showed you his smoking gun.
If you want more war and more of the secret police, vote for Harris. If you want a chance for anything else, then you should vote for Trump.
I agree that Dick Cheney’s embrace of torture was and is odious. I don’t consider his endorsement a “get.”
Fortunately, the other major candidate in the race beyond Harris has been quite clear in his view on torture; here he is on Feb. 17, 2016, via FactCheck.org:
“Torture works. OK, folks? You know, I have these guys—”Torture doesn’t work!”—believe me, it works. And waterboarding is your minor form. Some people say it’s not actually torture. Let’s assume it is. But they asked me the question: What do you think of waterboarding? Absolutely fine. But we should go much stronger than waterboarding.”
https://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/trump-torture/
If one is concerned about the normalization of torture — and we ought to be! — surely one’s concern cannot be limited to one candidate and one endorsement; indeed, the above statement from Trump must have given one pause in 2016, and must give one pause today.
I do think it is important to be clear that the alternative to Harris, beyond Stein and West, namely Donald Trump, has publicly expressed his view that Cheney’s legacy as insufficiently bloodthirsty.
Trump’s comment, ‘finish the job’ goading on and endorsing Israel’s disproportionate response after decades of Israeli land and territory appropriation made me drop my jaw.
Harris and Trump are BOTH awful. Maybe they simply represent the distillation of the worst of America.
If we are to gobble up the empty promises and vague vacuous ‘platforms and policies’, Jill Stein seems like the only rational use of ink come ballot bubble time. ( West as I understand it won’t be on the ballot in most states, whereas Stein and Green Party at least appear in some places.)
Or don’t vote- no more license and consent?
Jefemt,
Yes, I think both major candidates are objectively awful, though I do view one as less so (Harris, largely on the grounds of the Democratic vs. GOP platforms).
I unenrolled from the Democratic Party in 2013 after the Snowden revelations, when it was revealed that Obama was doing the things he ran against Dubya for doing, and in opposition to which I went door to door in western PA in support of Obama’s campaign (ah, youth and its follies).
I like Jill Stein as a person, and agree with much of what she says. I even spoke alongside her at an environmental rally in this neck of the woods. But I think the Greens will be in a stronger position if they do as the Sewer Socialists did a century ago and start from towns and cities and go on up from there.
“Fortunately, the other major candidate in the race […]
Why is ti when we are talking about Harris (and her being honored by Dick Cheney’s endorsement) do you insist on deflecting to Trump? This is an obnoxious behavior; the subject is Harris, Cheney, and the Democrats. Let’s stay on subject.
Christopher Smith, I’m sorry that you find it obnoxious. As I note from the start, Cheney’s endorsement, in my view, is not a good thing. I concede that from the outset.
Given that Trump is mentioned, as I count them, five times in Lambert’s conclusion to this essay (including tweets and quotations), I do think this invites discussion of his position on torture. Indeed, pointing out that both major candidates are effectively okay with torture is factually germane to this discussion.
Asking genuinely: if Trump is mentioned in the conclusion to an essay multiple times, by what standard is he then precluded from being mentioned in comments on that essay?
“But Trump …” is all that the Dems have anymore, and I am just tired of hearing it. Given that I am not voting Republican barring a major realignment, I dont really care what they have to say on any given day.
I am not sure who I think is worse but “stay home an play video games on election day” beats outboth in my view.
I can’t wait for the touching photos of Doug Emhoff sharing a breathmint with Darth Cheney!
> breathmint
Yes, need to clear the odor of rotting meat off the fangs
The “Cheney endorsement” is fascinating for it suggests an answer to the question that has plagued the current administration, “Who’s in charge?”, and it suggests that the poll numbers we are being fed are bs, and Harris is well behind Trump. Why else would Cheney crawl out from under whatever rock he’s hiding under and make a public comment? Hamilton Nolan touches on this in the quoted material, “Dick Cheney is not so much “a Republican” as he is “a man in power.” He ascended the ranks of government power in a friendly administration and then when the administration was gone he got elected to Congress and then he leveled up in another friendly administration and then when that was gone he slid over to running a major corporation that was wholly intertwined with the United States government and finally he leveled up into the White House by standing behind a more likable patsy who he could control.”
I’m not convinced his endorsement is going to move the needle whatsoever, but it does deploy narrative cover for later if/when the security state attempts to step in to anoint #47.
Everybody needs a hunting pal… (musical interlude)
> if/when the security state attempts to step in to anoint
I’m not sure what the mechanism would be. It’s clear that neither “the Democrat Industrial Complex” (Democrats, spooks, the press) nor the Democrat PMC base can accept a Trump victory, since “our democracy” is at stake. It’s also clear that the spooks have arrogated to themselves the role of declaring an election legitimate or illegitimate (i.e., “interference” or not). Beyond that point I am not sure where to go.
It seems to me that the weak point in the system is the electoral college. The Democrats tried a “faithless elector” gambit in 2016; Republicans (if you accept Democrat theories of the case) tried a “contingent electors” gambit in 2020. Both failed.
It seems to me that the Democrat approach in 2016 (“faithless electors”) has fewer moving parts: Salt the Republican electors with enough never-Trumpers, then post-election day, gin up an enormous lawfare scandal, or perhaps even a jail sentence though stayed, and voila.
The 2020 (alleged) Republican approach (“contingent electors”) was more complicated. It depended on finding ballots illegitimately cast (checked in AZ with every advantage, didn’t happen) and very competent election lawyers (Giuliani and the kraken lady, not).
No doubt all this is being gamed out by the campaigns even as we read this.
Of course, Blue MAGA and Red MAGA are completely dug in, and neither regards the other as legitimate. I suppose after a complete breakdown, “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” But whose guns? Concerned citizens? Militias? Cops? National Guard? Regular Army? And along what (which) Mason-Dixon line(s)?
…gin up an enormous lawfare scandal… I imagine this is the tactic. If the fuel for the lawfare strategy can be sold to the public as serious enough to override the normal processes and deadlines, then a path to soft coup will be blazed “while we sort it out”.
But who really knows? Dick Cheney is not the kind of guy who likes to do “soft”. Maybe the time has come for a coup, straight, no chaser. As Feral Finster liked to say, “What are you going to do about it?”.
Kamala Harris and Dick Cheney have more in common with each other than they would with the common citizen, and especially not the readers of NC. They are both servants of the very rich, and have sold the nation out for their ideological and political ambitions. They both want war.
Economically, they are both neoliberals. They will want a police state when the population inevitably pushes back against the neoliberal economics. Trump represents a challenge to that neoliberal establishment, even if he largely continues their policies and mostly pays lip service to populism. In that regard, the Establishment wants to perpetuate its own power at all costs.
In a fair and just world, Cheney would be on trial for war crimes and would face a Nuremberg style trial like what happened to Axis rulers after WW2.
Ironically, this may not help Kamala much. If there’s one thing I have seen, it’s that Establishment Republicans and Democrats vastly overestimate their appeal. There aren’t very many non-MAGA GOP voters in the mainstream anymore – they tried this in 2020 and not many of them exist. The elections are increasingly about the legitimacy of the Establishment. I just wish that the challenger were a better person than Trump.
Ultimately it shows that the US is ruled by a uniparty and one that is increasingly desperate to hold onto power, especially as US hegemony wanes. I suspect they can’t keep the mask of pretending to be a liberal democracy anymore with civil liberties and where the people, not the rich, decide.
> . If there’s one thing I have seen, it’s that Establishment Republicans and Democrats vastly overestimate their appeal.
Personally, I’m having a hard time seeing “No CEOs of Fortune 500 Corporations support Trump” and “100 Generals support Harris” as selling points, but no doubt I’m an outlier….
They also share one other thing in common, at least until November – nobody voted for either of them to be in power!
Given that my plan for re-establishing justice involves flying most past and present occupants of the 7th floor of the Hoover Building to Guantanamo, along with four of the five Presidents to have served since 1992, I cannot fully endorse all the points in this otherwise entertaining post.
“Mr. Cheney’s nickname inside the C.I.A. was Edgar (as in Edgar Bergen)…”
Brian Zick June 20, 2006
https://inthesetimes.com/article/mr-cheneys-nickname-inside-the-c-i-a-was-edgar-as-in-edgar-bergen
I still believe likening Bush to Charlie McCarthy was wrong. I always thought one of Edgar Bergen’s other puppets would be a more appropriate choice for Bush.
Perhaps a Kamala puppet could add diversity to Edgar’s puppets to bring his act up to current standards of correctness. While the Kamala puppet keeps us busy watching Edgar’s right-hand while she is speaking, imagine what wonders he and his friends might accomplish with his left-hand.
I see Cheney’s endorsement of Kamala of the expressive and infectious laugh as washing the window so that we can see reality more clearly.
At what point is a national election in the U.S. considered illegitimate?
Many people will vote for one of the two parties because that is what they or their family has always done. Some will vote for a third party in a system completely rigged against third parties. Some will vote for the “lesser evil” even though if they honestly believe something is “evil”, even if “lesser”, should they vote for it in the first place??? Do people honestly believe Kamala Harris being “honored” by an endorsement from Dick Cheney somehow makes her a better person or “lesser evil” than Trump? Have we lost all sense of morality in this country and are we on the same path as the majority of Israelis who view Palestinians as “sub-human”?
Doesn’t Congress tell us how they can’t pass a bill without 60% approval. What percentage of the voting age population is voting, regardless of party? If less than 50% vote, is that representative of the people? The politicians know they can ignore the people and the wealthy donors know that “nothing will fundamentally change” except that which they want changed.
If there is anything left to save in this country after all the destruction we have sent around the world, it would be a reckoning and admission that “we the people” need to change our systems, institutions, and especially a culture which advocates violence and promotes an endless obsession with wealth.