Mr. Russert: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?Cheney: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.
Dick Cheney
Meet the Press
March 16, 2003
Mr. Russert: Every analysis said this war itself would cost about $80 billion, recovery of Baghdad, perhaps of Iraq, about $10 billion per year. We should expect as American citizens that this would cost at least $100 billion for a two-year involvement.Cheney: I can't say that, Tim.
Dick Cheney
Meet the Press
March 16, 2003
Cheney: U.S. Presence in Iraq Is Unknown
WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday he does not know when the U.S. military presence in Iraq will end and hinted the Bush administration would seek more money than the $87 billion already requested to cover U.S. costs there."How long does it take? I don't know. I can't say. I don't think anybody can say with absolute certainty at this point,'' Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press.''
What a dick...
Strange tone on this news day.
Some of this sleeping d*ckless pundits are starting to wake up.
Theres a story going around and they are missing it.
The laughable diatribe about not having any contact with anyone at Halliburton caused me to nearly lose my lovely Sunday breakfast.
Then, when Timmy just let it hang there and move on to something else caused the entire household to scream murderously at the TV. We're going to have to start going out for brunch.
I was screaming at the tv for Russert not to give Dick a pass on the "mobile weapons labs we found".
...guess I should know better
I switched over to watch Stephanopolous pop General Myers across the head. George is really getting the hang of this.
What, Russert didn't pop up the file footage of Cheney asserting about Saddam, "He has, we believe, reconstituted nuclear weapons," from, as I recall, Russert's own program less than a year ago?
Darn that liberal media! Darn it to heck!
No, the not-completely-dickless Russert did play the "nuclear weapons" clip, but immediately followed it with "but that was a misstatement, right?". And then allowed Cheney to blather on about how he still believes that we'll find those darn WMD, err WMD programs. Would it be so hard to ask a simple follow-up question?
I didn't see any of the Iraq stuff, but I got to see Russert pop Cheney over the deficit-- and old Cheney, he's such a card!-- said "I'm still a deficit hawk"
Dick Cheney has got to be the slimiest guy in the administration. He makes me sick just watching him.
I watched Dick Cheney on MTP for as long as I could stand it. This exchange jumped right out at me.
MR. RUSSERT: This is what concerns people, that the administration hyped the intelligence, misled the American people. This article from The Washington Post about pressuring from Cheney visits: “Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq’s weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analyst felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit wth the Bush administration’s policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials. With Cheney taking the lead in the administration last August in advocating military action against Iraq by claiming it had weapons of mass destruction, the visits by the vice president and his chief of staff ‘sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here,’ one senior agency official said.”
VICE PRES. CHENEY: In terms of asking questions, I plead guilty. I ask a hell of a lot of questions. That’s my job. I’ve had an interest in the intelligence area since I worked for Gerry Ford 30 years ago, served on the Intel Committee in the House for years in the ’80s, ran a big part of the intelligence community when I was secretary of Defense in the early ’90s. This is a very important area. It’s one the president’s asked me to work on, and I ask questions all the time. I think if you’re going to provide the intelligence and advice to the president of the United States to make life and death decisions, you need to be able to defend your conclusions, go into an arena where you can make the arguments about why you believe what you do based on the intelligence we’re got.
Based on the rest of the interview I'd seen, Cheney may ask a 'hell of a lot of questions,' but he seems pathologically incapable of recalling any of the answers. I Dowd'd it out for you below...
MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection? (between Saddam Hussein and the September 11 attacks.)
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know...We just don't know.
MR. RUSSERT: There are reports that the investigation Congress did does show a link between the Saudi government and the hijackers but that it will not be released to the public.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t know want to speculate on that, Tim, partly because I was involved in reviewing those pages....
MR. RUSSERT: Vanity Fair magazine reports that about 140 Saudis were allowed to leave the United States the day after the 11th...Do you know anything about that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t, but a lot of folks from that part of the world left in the aftermath of 9/11....
MR. RUSSERT: ...What is our plan for Iraq? How long will the 140,000 American soldiers be there? How many international troops will join them? And how much is this going to cost?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, some of those questions are unknowable at present, Tim. It’ll depend on developments. It’ll depend on how fast it takes us to achieve our objectives....
MR. RUSSERT: It looked like the administrations truly misjudged the cost of this operation.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, I didn’t see a one-point estimate there that you could say that this is the administration’s estimate. We didn’t know. And if you ask Secretary Rumsfeld, for example—I can remember from his briefings, he said repeatedly he didn’t know. And when you and I talked about it, I couldn’t put a dollar figure on it.
MR. RUSSERT: But Daniels did say $50 billion.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, that might have been, but I don’t know what his basis was for making that judgment....
MR. RUSSERT: How much is all that? (alternative sources of funding for Iraqi reconstruction)
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t have a final dollar figure. We don’t know who will...
MR. RUSSERT: Is the $87 billion the end of it? Will the American people be asked for any more money?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I can’t say that. It’s all that we think we’ll need for the foreseeable future for this year....
MR. RUSSERT: Why is there no bidding? (on Halliburton contracts)
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I have no idea. Go ask the Corps of Engineers.
MR. RUSSERT: Now, Ambassador Joe Wilson, a year before that, was sent over by the CIA because you raised the question about uranium from Africa...Were you briefed on his findings in February, March of 2002?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson. A question had arisen. I’d heard a report that the Iraqis had been trying to acquire uranium in Africa, Niger in particular. I get a daily brief on my own each day before I meet with the president to go through the intel...I don’t know what the truth is on the ground with respect to that, but I guess—like I say, I don’t know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn’t judge him. I have no idea who hired him and it never came...
MR. RUSSERT: The CIA did.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Who in the CIA, I don’t know.
MR. RUSSERT: This article from The Washington Post about pressuring from Cheney visits...No pressure?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Shouldn’t be any pressure. I can’t think of a single instance. Maybe somebody can produce one. I’m unaware of any where the community changed a judgment that they made because I asked questions.
MR. RUSSERT: What do you think of the Democratic field?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Haven’t really, frankly, paid a hell of a lot of attention to it, Tim. I’m awful busy with my normal day job. And I just haven’t—really haven’t looked at it....
This part is very good:
MR. RUSSERT: It looked like the administrations truly misjudged the cost of this operation.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, I didn’t see a one-point estimate there that you could say that this is the administration’s estimate ...
MR. RUSSERT: But Daniels did say $50 billion.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, that might have been, but I don’t know what his basis was for making that judgment....
But, hey, he was only the director of the Office of Management and Budget, right? What the hell did he know?
.
I also thought the denial of knowing Joe Wilson was interesting given that he was a critical actor in the first gulf war. From Joe Wilson's biography.
From 1988 to 1991, he was the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. During "Desert Shield" he was the acting Ambassador and was responsible for the freeing of several hundred American hostages. He was the last official American to meet with Saddam Hussein before "Desert Storm."
How does he say this with a straight face?
Dick Chaney - MTP
"Same on biological weapons—we believe he’d developed the capacity to go mobile with his BW production capability because, again, in reaction to what we had done to him in ’91. We had intelligence reporting before the war that there were at least seven of these mobile labs that he had gone out and acquired. We’ve, since the war, found two of them. They’re in our possession today, mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack.",
from: The Observer
"Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons."
(Obligatory site-pimping): You would think that with all of the perfect predictions the VP had in March 2003, they'd keep him under wraps to preserve his nearly 1.000 batting average! Well, he's branched off into the economy, and has also made representations about the work of David Kay that may have already been contradicted.
What probably upsets me the most about Cheney (on a long all-inclusive list) is that he seems to be three steps behind the parade on everything. Doesn't this man even read a newspaper or watch TV? To be so uninformed and at the same time be the Vice President of the United States is absolutely frightening to me. Not merely disgusting, disagreeable or aggravating; I mean FRIGHTENING!
Reading your post CJW, the thought occurs: in the twilight zone
----- Chaney? ----- Lieberman? ------
Who would we chose?
Send me back to English 9A, the word is choose
And Clarence Thomas never discussed Roe v. Wade with a single human soul.
I remember with Nixon, a day came in my house when even my dad said, (paraphrase) jesus, you lying sack of shit, give it the hell up already.
He can't say. He just can't say. We don't know. We just don't know. He misspoke. He doesn't remember. He forgot to take his medication...
Time Warp. It was as if it was six months ago, that we were still on the brink of invading Iraq, with all of these "unanswered questions" about WMD, links to Al Qaeda, etc. Apparantly, we've got a whole team of experts in Iraq who will soon be discovering WMD, AL Qaeda evidence--we just need to give them some time to work...
Cheney usually functions as the "stolid, calm voice of reason" within the administration. But did anyone else notice that he was talking in a very soft voice, almost with a lack of conviction? He also didn't look well...which I figured was a ploy to get Russert to "go easy on him" (as if Russert needed manipulated into that tack...).
Josh Marshall comes out strong:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/sept0302.html#091403413pm
Cheney was like having rancid grease boil over on the stove. It really was awful.
I cut out for Steph, not knowing Kerry was on with Schieffer.
To be brutal, I would have watched Kerry for the entertainment, never having flown too high (esp. in light of expectations) he now flaps downward. It is a certain type of political photo opportunity, like a traffic camera at a cross roads. Should have had Teresa more involved and Jordan and Lehane packed off ages ago.
Seems that Cheney shares more than a first name with Nixon.
Hope this works, if not, funny Cheney cartoon at www.ucomics.com/tomtoles/2003/09/16.
Will see if I can follow Werner Dieter Thomas's instructions? Cheney
I couldn't watch too much of this, so I kept switching to the more entertaining challenge by Kerry for Dean to "come on down" and do a mano a mano with him. I think that might be interesting if we could get some dueling candidates on Sunday morning talk shows. It would sure beat the 1 minute response snores we usually get.
I noticed that the intrepid reporter Russert kept setting Cheney up with "harsh" criticisms from others and then patiently allowed DICK enough rope to hang himself. This apparently worked so well that he never asked a follow up question, began with misleading statistics or had to interrupt him with a lecture on what he should know as "one defibrilated heartbeat away from the Commander in Chief".
I finally had to stop when DICK was allowed to state categorically that he had not had sex with that, er I mean, he had absolutely NO contact with Haliburton since the election. Of course, Timmy felt no need to add anything. I'm so glad he's there to grill these rascally politicians.