For starters, not everyone is named “Reagan,” Dick. For 6 years now, George W. Bush has kept quiet and has let President Obama run the country. I haven’t always agreed with former President Bush but I think he has shown an incredible amount of class during the transition up until the present. Dick Cheney, not so much.

According to Fox News:

Dick Cheney has been Darth Vader for the left since the days when he was seen as the driving force behind George Bush’s dead-or-alive approach to foreign policy.

And while W. has maintained a respectful silence since leaving office, the former vice president has spent the last six years denouncing President Obama time and again, in ways that have ticked off the libs even more.

But Cheney surfacing yet again to slam Obama for the crisis in Iraq—in the aftermath of a war that he aggressively promoted from the White House—has triggered a backlash. And the moment was crystallized when he appeared on Megyn Kelly’s show.

I think it’s fair to say that Cheney, who is routinely bashed at places like MSNBC, considers Fox friendly territory. When he accidentally shot a fellow hunter, he turned to Fox’s Brit Hume to explain himself. His daughter Liz, who joined the interview, has been a Fox News contributor.

But Megyn Kelly came at Cheney hard in that Wednesday night appearance. She did not let him off the hook for what happened in 2003. It was an important moment for her, as a relatively new prime-time anchor, and for Fox.
But Megyn Kelly came at Cheney hard in that Wednesday night appearance. She did not let him off the hook for what happened in 2003. It was an important moment for her, as a relatively new prime-time anchor, and for Fox.

Kelly began by quoting liberal Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman:

“‘There is not a single person in America who has been more wrong and more shamelessly dishonest on the topic of Iraq than Dick Cheney, and now as the cascade of misery and death and chaos, he did so much to unleash raises anew, Mr. Cheney has the unadulterated gall to come before the country and tell us that it’s all someone else’s fault.’ The suggestion is that you caused this mess, Mr. Vice President. What say you?”

Cheney responded with his standard defense: “I think we went into Iraq for very good reasons. I think when we left office, we had a situation in Iraq that was very positive… What happened was that Barack Obama came to office, and instead of negotiating a stay behind agreement, he basically walked away from it.”

Kelly came back hard: “But time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well in Iraq, sir. You said there were no doubts Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. You said we would greeted as liberators. You said the Iraq insurgency was in the last throes back in 2005. And you said that after our intervention, extremists would have to, quote, ‘rethink their strategy of Jihad.’ Now with almost a trillion dollars spent there with 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say, you were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many?”

Megyn Kelly handled this interview as though she worked for another news station. She didn’t back down. She stuck to her guns and grilled Cheney like a pro. Good for her.

Dick Cheney might end up being one of the most reviled men in America by both Democrats and Republicans. He even tried to quote Nancy Pelosi to back up his position. Get real. People like Pelosi might have voted to invade Iraq (did she?) because of flawed information most of those in Congress were fed.

It’s time for the Cheneys to all go away and to STFU. No one cares about their opinion on much of anything at this point. Furthermore, when you go in and rip the guts out of someone else’s country, in a pre-emptive strike, do you really expect that it is going to miraculously heal itself? Unless we did a Marshall Plan on the place, what is happening now was just pretty predictable.

51 Thoughts to “No Darth, YOU are wrong!”

  1. punchak

    Megan Kelly is very smart. I used to watch her when
    she had a news hour at noon. She’s tough and she knows
    what she’s talking about and she sticks to her guns.
    Maybe being a lawyer has something to do with it.
    As for Cheney / ’nuff said!

  2. Lyssa

    … Some sort of republican math, Mr Rove? She’s one of the very few not driven by anger at Fox. Dick Cheney is a mercenary and of course pals with the Koch Bros. They want the US to take over Iraq – for them!

    1. Do I hear the words “Halliburton” being whispered in the background? When the Iraq war started Halliburton got a billion dollar no-bid contract. @Lyssa

  3. blue

    You libs are too funny. Megan quoted an idiot Democrat party operative at the WashPost – in large part to make fun of the quote and the WP and then allowed Cheney to respond. You should listen carefully to the quoted question and – and then to the detailed response. Listening only to the quote of a WP democrat operative because it fits your preconcieved notions about the war and to hear someone once again blame Bush for the Obama failures – not to secure the peace (Bush did that) – but maintain it, borders on mental illness. Your friends at ABC then went ahead and introduced the word treason as it applied to Obama into the conversation – a term Cheney did not use – and a term that ABC and the Libs will wish they could pull back.

    1. Perhaps you should read the entire Fox News article and re-evaluate making such an absurd statement just to try to zing us.

      I didn’t mention treason. What are you smoking there?

  4. Lyssa

    Who’s a lib? Me!!?? Ha! I’m just not a blind supporter of all that is R.

  5. Wolve

    Ah, and “conspiracy” raises its head in the Moonhowling ranks. Cheney. Koch. Halliburton. “The Three Boogeymen” of the libs.

    Keep going. This should be good.

    1. You apparently are now going to go into troll mode, just swinging on my to take a swipe without any real intent to discuss the issues.

  6. Lyssa

    My favorite conspiracy theory is that Cheney bought up all the airport concessions prior to TSA prohibiting passengers from bringing their own water past the checkpoints.

    We are absolutely correct about Cheney and Koch, you’ll see. I dispute the notion “libs” are the only ones that think that way. There are still a few conservatives who think clearly and independently and haven’t succumbed to the groupthink of fringe Republicans. Or is it simply “mob mentality?” 🙂

  7. Kelly_3406

    I am glad that Megan Kelly challenged Dick Cheney. She did her job well. Now let’s see if CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS can follow her example and similarly challenge Obama, Biden, Reid et al. The media need to maintain a healthy skepticism of politicians from both parties and avoid the temptation to cheerlead for one or the other. A return to a more adversarial media would benefit our representative democracy.

    1. When I was growing up, there was an emphasis on newsmen (women hadn’t broken through that glass ceiling yet) being newsmen, not commentators. You didn’t know what party someone favored or what their real opinion was, most of the time.

      I would like to return to those days.

  8. Wolve

    I wouldn’t know. I’m not a Republican. I have my own drum. But, if you all want to go in the conspiracy theory direction, I’ll be happy to watch.

    Do Cheney and Hillary have something in common? In his latest book, “Blood Feud,” Ed Klein says that Hillary has a serious heart problem which is being hidden from the public.

  9. Lyssa

    Adversarial but with some respect and thought.

    Ed Klein – who also reported that Bill raped Hilary and their daughter was the result??

  10. Wolve

    Moon-howler :You apparently are now going to go into troll mode, just swinging on my to take a swipe without any real intent to discuss the issues.

    You are the ones who brought up the possibility of conspiracy. Up to you to explain it. I know nothing about such a conspiracy. Please enlighten us.

    1. No. I didn’t bring up conspiracy. I brought up trolling and someone attempting to be dismissive of women on this blog.

  11. Wolve

    #2 and #3, Moon.

    This attempt to call someone dismissive of women is beneath you. If that was true, I wouldn’t even bother to be on this blog. You do seem to have a problem of late with any opinion that contradicts your own.

    1. It wasn’t even my opinion. I throw up topics that are reflective of current events. Do you really think I care that Eric Cantor got beaten, for example? I don’t. Its a topic for discussion. I don’t think I have been any viler than usual.

  12. Lyssa

    Eh? Who’s calling someone dismissive of women?

    1. Not all women. Just a particular woman. @Lyssa

  13. Wolve

    Somebody who posted #15.

  14. Cargosquid

    @Moon-howler
    Halliburton got a no-bid contract under Clinton too.

    The reason that Halliburton gets these contracts is because three companies do what they do, in regards to military support: Halliburton, KBR, and a French one. And Halliburton bought KBR.

    1. The entire connection to Halliburton/Cheney/War looked fishy. I don’t trust anything out of Cheney.

      Why is he running his mouth now? W has the class to not do that.

  15. Cargosquid

    @Moon-howler
    You didn’t because there was no competition. You had the Big Three. And all of them were politically identical. Their world was considered “normal.” That is why FOX is such an outlier and why it wins the Cable ratings.

  16. Wolve

    Moon-howler :Not all women. Just a particular woman. @Lyssa

    Now, just which woman would that be? The one who mocked me, then cussed at me, and called me all sorts of unpleasant names? Or the one describing herself in one of these threads as possibly being a “raging bitch”? I swear on the graves of my Viking ancestors that I would never talk to a woman that way, or cuss one out on a blog or refer to one as a “raging bitch.”…..Well, there was this one time when the terrorist gang had some very nasty females in their ranks…. But, other than that, old Woverine is a lover. “My pretty one, come wiz me to zee Casbah, and togaizer we shall make…..”

    Anyway, Cargo is right. Halliburton is about the only American company which has been able do those things needed by the troops in the theater of battle.

  17. Starryflights

    The Fix
    The Republican Party likes Rand Paul’s foreign policy — at least for now
    16 More

    BY AARON BLAKE June 23 at 1:30 PM

    Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in recent days said he doesn’t blame President Obama for the situation in Iraq and suggested that U.S. foreign policy is fomenting extremism in the Middle East.

    Needless to say, this isn’t your average Bush-Cheney era Republican.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/06/23/how-big-is-the-rand-paul-foreign-policy-wing-of-the-gop/

  18. Cargosquid

    @Starryflights
    Then he is contradicting himself.

    Its OBAMA’S foreign policy.

  19. Starry flights

    I agree with Senator Paul’s analysis.

  20. Pat.Herve

    if only Cheney had been in a position to influence our actions in Iraq – it would be all different now…. (/sarcasm)

  21. blue

    Yes, it would be different if Cheney was able to directly influence current policy. Of course, a former majority whip, SecDef and Vice President who was there early on – while it was working and who had and still has a good working relationship with most of the leaders in the Pentagon and in the region (as comapred to these current these idiots who cannot even get their phone calls answered) problably does not have a good perspective from the vantage point of a community organizer and a bunch of academics. (sarcasm intended)

    Great interview of Cheney by Charlie Rose today- worth watching.

  22. middleman

    There’s no question that Obama has made mistakes in foreign policy, but Cheney arm-chair quarterbacking Obama’s performance in Iraq is beyond the pale. This would be like Kennedy or Johnson critiquing Nixon’s performance in ending the Vietnam War. In both cases, the previous administrations created an untenable situation with poor planning, poor understanding of the situation, and poor execution of any “plan.” Bush and Cheney destabilized the region by removing a government that was against Iran and was keeping sectarian strife at bay without any real plan for how to engineer a replacement government that shared power with competing sects. This insured that mayhem would ensue as soon as the U.S. military left since they were the only thing keeping the sects from fighting for control of the government. Cheney had no idea what he was doing, and the only thing that saved Iraq from collapse while he was in office was a huge increase in troops (surge) that put off the inevitable for long enough for him to leave office.

    Cheney is trying desperately to re-write history so he won’t look like the total incompetent that he is. He should stick to duck hunting (just not with me!).

    1. Bravo! (in particular the last paragraph)

  23. blue

    @middleman

    Listen to the interview and then try again. The current and dangerous situation in the middle east has nothing to do with what Cheney or Bush did and for them to have done nothing would have had even greater consequences. Let’s try this:

    Bush and Cheney stabilized the region by removing a crazy dictator that HAD ALREADY THREATENED THE WORLD’S OIL SUPPLY BY INVADING KUWAIT AND WAS MOVING ON THE SAUDIS. They stopped the sectarian strife, liberated a people and removed a dictator who had used chemicals against his own people and was close to having nukes – threatening other gulf states and Isreal. If you think leaving Saddam in power any longer would have been better you, sir, are crazy. The problem now is all of Obama’s doing,– from troop reductions to negligence regarding the militrty and government that was a working power sharing agreement among the sects – and your buddy is about to do it again in Afganistan.

    1. You did drink the kool aid, didn’t you? Of course the situation has to do with Bush and Cheney. You don’t go blasting your way into someone else’s country, guns a’blazing with shock and awe, dissolve the political structure and expect things to be normalized. Any semblance of normalcy was artificial and held together with armed Americans.

      You live in political la la land if that is what you really think.

  24. blue

    Hmmm, well it would be nice if Obama supporters would be as nasty and as arrogant with our enemies as they are with our friends and fellow citizens who disagree based on simple facts from qualified, kmowledgeable and experienced managers. Obama supporters will be remembered for their inexplicable ability to ignore the facts and replace it with political theater, put Party interests over Country and for their ability to avoid the truth. Its not, for example, the IRS, the Bengazi movie or any of the other scandals individually that is of primary concern, but the preponderance of the big lies being accepted by supporters and the similarities of their defenses – chief among them, its those people’s or Bush’s fault.

    1. Do you think WMD was a scandal, Blue?

      I find your loyalty to Party almost admirable.

  25. blue

    Moon-howler :
    Do you think WMD was a scandal, Blue?

    A scandal, no unless you mean the Dems ability to accuse Bush of lying. I mean lets use the Dems own standard, where is the proof? Not a single intelligence official, not a single member of the House or Senate Intellingence or Defense Committees, not a single foriegn Government official or spokesman, not a single Pentagon official ever denied the intellegence breifings that said they were there or that he was preparing and ready to use them.

    Cheney himself beleives that Saddam did things to suggest he had them to avoid invasion. Did some of it go to Syria, maybe, but some of it was also recently found by ISIS, in a non-deployable state (not sure wat that means, but I think it means in a state so dangerous it cannot be handled, eg, gas, and clorine and other nasty stuff.

    1. Where is the proof that they were there? Where are these weapons? They have never surfaced.

      I never have said Bush lied. In fact, I believe George Bush was a very sincere person. Do I think he had lying advisors? Yes, I sure do. Presidents are surrounbed by many people. Some lie, some don’t.

  26. middleman

    @blue

    Blue, it sounds like you actually believed the spin (although spin doesn’t really cover this level of B.S.) Cheney was spewing in that interview (and all the others he’s giving in his re-education attempt). Apparently there is nothing this guy has done (and failed at) that you wouldn’t defend. You are WAY out there in that respect, even among Republican apologists.

    Blue, there are a LOT of bad guys and questionable actors out there (even “crazy dictators”) who DO have weapons of mass destruction, or are close to it, if you haven’t noticed. North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Syria- there are many more. Cheney/Bush didn’t invade and destabilize any of them- they picked Iraq, with some vague idea of spreading democracy throughout the region. How’d THAT work out? They propped up an “elected” leader who promoted his own sect while ostracizing the others. They most certainly never “stopped” sectarian strife, they suppressed it with the U.S. military for a time, at great cost in American and Iraqi blood and U.S. treasure. They “liberated” one sect of people at the expense of the others. These are the facts, and that’s why the Iraqi regime is now collapsing, something that was inevitable with Maliki as leader.

    You may not remember, but we created Saddam in the first place, and kept him in power until Bush/Cheney decided it fit their purposes to remove him. If you really think “leaving” Saddam in power would be worse than the current situation with Iran, THE major sponsor of worldwide terror, in ascendance, you are seriously deluded.

    Your use of the term “leaving” in power in reference to Saddam or any leader of any sovereign nation is quite interesting. Is it up to us which leaders we “leave” in power? Do you think it’s ok to remove leaders we don’t like absent of any threat to the U.S.? Or is a threat to oil flow enough for you? Do we invade any state that threatens Israel? Or their neighbors? Or abuses their people? Better increase funding to our military- they’re going to be mighty busy with the “blue” doctrine…

  27. Cargosquid

    @middleman
    Talk about “rewriting history.”

    Until this invasion, the country was pretty stable for a nascent democracy in the Middle East. Outside of Israel, it is the longest lasting democracy in the Middle East.

    We did not “create” Saddam nor did we “keep him in power.”
    Iraq was a Soviet client state.

    And yes….leaving Saddam in power would have been worse. He was on the way to starting his nuclear program as soon as the sanctions were lifted. So, instead of dealing with just Iran, we would be dealing also with a nuclear Iraq. And “leaving” is a good concept. Unlike the other nations you’ve listed, he was under United Nations restrictions. He broke those. He was ignoring the UN. So, he had to go.

    Where did the WMD go? Probably to Syria. Those truck convoys did exist and they did go to Syria.

    1. So you see nothing wrong with a pre-emptive military strike on a sovereign nation?
      How about all the other dictators who remained in power. Weren’t you one of the ones howling because Quaddafi got taken out? We actually even had an axe to grind with him.

    2. re Syria. Prove that the WMDs are in Syria. It can’t be done. You saying they are there doesn’t make it so.

  28. middleman

    Cargo, Iraq was only stable until the US military left.

    The CIA helped Saddam achieve power in 1963. We gave him arms, money, intelligence and even chemical weapons in the 80’S.

    You say he was GOING to have WMD’s, or they went to Syria-well, maybe, but we don’t invade countries on rumors. Ignoring the UN, you say? Now you’re a big UN fan?

    You got nothin, old buddy.

  29. Scout

    It’s pretty hard for me to get past the objective fact that the Bush II first term administration made a conscious decision to stampede the country into war fervour against Iraq at a time when we had just been grievously attacked by fundamentalist Islamists who had been given safe harbor in Afghanistan, and at the very time we were directly engaged in trying to drain the swamp in that latter country. Whatever the logic of the Iraq diversion (my own view is that the inner circle of advisors who controlled the debate swirling around W’s ill-informed head saw it as an opportunistic chance to re-write the Mideast map in a way that would relieve us of the tedious and unrewarding problems of trying to ensure stability in that area), the Administration consciously and willfully was spinning up Congress and the public with faulty and incomplete intelligence while plastering itself with unrealistic estimates of the costs (economic, manpower, and equipment) of both the military operation and the occupation. The best that can be said of it is that it reflects incompetence and a distorted world view that has no equal in American history. However, the “best case” (that this was just life-costing incompetence) doesn’t begin to excuse or explain the deliberate, aggressively disseminated distortions of the significance of available intelligence and the wishful, but essentially goofy conclusions actively peddled to the citizens about the relation of Saddam to Al Qaeda and about the general state of affairs in the Middle East. If Afghanistan had remained the focus and had been dealt with thoroughly, there would have been time at our leisure to explore larger strategic issues in the Middle East, including what America should have done about a regime as brutal as Saddam’s.

    I have very little doubt that, in a century or two, the history of this mendacious irresponsibility will show that this was the beginning of the end of the short dominance of the United States in world affairs, and that the folly of this elective war was the beginning of our decline strategically vis-a-vis China, who will become the hegemonic power of the latter two-thirds of this century. This century could have been one of stability and prosperity but for America’s leader squandering our position in the Iraq catastrophe. The war was avoidable, cost us dearly in treasure and blood, and, as is often the case following costly, badly conceived and executed conflicts, leaves us weak and tentative in a dangerous time.

    Everyone can have an opinion, but Cheney is pretty hard for me to listen to on this particular subject. I think he was an excellent Secretary of Defense. His public record prior to the Iraq fiasco is one that had real and meaningful accomplishments. Sadly, in my opinion, they are all eclipsed by his pivotal, essential and causal role in bringing down this nation with a war that we couldn’t “win” in any long-term sense and that we didn’t need.

    1. I agree with you about Iraq. Cheney, not so much. I expect my present feelings about him cloud any pre-Iraq feelings I might have about his competence.

  30. Scout

    “leader” in second para of previous post, should read “leaders”. I think W was a secondary player in the mix and that he was manipulated by a coterie of advisors. He has responsibility for what happened, but they have responsibility for taking advantage of his lack of sophistication about world affairs.

  31. middleman

    Well put, Scout (post #43). I agree that Cheney did pretty well as Sec. of Def., but was probably restrained by Bush I, who knows something of how the world works, unlike his kid.

    I don’t agree that Bush II was unusually manipulated by Cheney or anyone else- he had his own reasons for invading Iraq, from avenging his dad to his misguided belief that he could impose democracy on the region to securing the oil supply for his oil industry friends to an unreasonable belief in his and his administration’s capabilities (managerial and political). I don’t think Bush II was the bumbling pushover many folks think he was- he was behind the Iraq fiasco as much as Cheney was.

  32. Scout

    He can’t escape responsibility, MM. But it’s hard to imagine that the Chaney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz Cabal could have shouldered around Bush I, Clinton, Nixon, LBJ, JFK, or Eisenhower the way they did W. W simply did not have the knowledge or equipment to push back with the right questions or the right demeanor on those guys. Once they started Jonesing for war with Iraq, they played him and everyone else by trying to piece together an acceptable public rationale and evidence to support it. It clearly was a “decide-first-figure-out-how-to-sell-it-later” exercise. It was widely reported in the immediate hours after 9/11, Bush II expressed an assumption or at least a question that indicated he thought Saddam Hussein might have been behind the attack. That probably is a pretty clear indication of the shabby furnishings of the inside of his head when it came to Middle East issues. So I don’t absolve him of responsibility, but all those guys around him were smart enough to have fulfilled their responsibilities to give their President (and ours, and us) the best possible detached advice. What appears to have happened is that they got into some kind of testosterone-induced Group Think loop that didn’t permit contrary facts or analysis to enter the equation. As noted in my earlier comment, I think the negative consequences for the security of the United States were and will be grave for decades.

  33. middleman

    I agree that Eisenhower or JFK at least would have pushed back on the chickenhawks. It’s amazing how actually having been in war changes one’s hawkishness. It’s well-established now that JFK was planning to pull US troops out of Vietnam, for example.

    I do give Bush II some credit for pulling the plug on Cheney’s plan for war with Iran in his second term, although Colin Powell did most of the heavy lifting in that situation.

  34. Scout

    An irony of that time was that the State Department was populated at the top with combat veterans and the Defense Department had guys who either hadn’t served or who did not serve in periods of combat (my recollection is that Rumsfeld was a Navy pilot, but I think he was pre-Viet Nam – I welcome correction on that point if I’m wrong). The combat veterans were the “weak sisters” trying to hold back the stampede, the civilians were the guys back shooting off guns and whooping trying to spook the herd.

  35. Scout

    BTW, what’s the deal with Cheney’s daughter? Why does she tag along with him in these interviews? Who the heck is she? Would anyone listen to her if she were not his daughter? Apparently they weren’t particularly impressed in Wyoming.

  36. middleman

    It appears that Cheney is grooming his daughter for public office. A new dynasty!

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