zed.

Informed Comment has a good guest column on Afghanistan today.

It might be worth something if whichever “media person” who was hosting the forum in which Cheney made these ridiculous remarks would smack her down for them.

Naw, not gonna happen.

Ever since I wrote Obama’s “Dithering” on Afghanistan: Neocons Should Shut Up & Let Real Leaders Fix the Mess (Nov 14, 2009), I will forever hear President Obama telling Big Dick and Baby Dick to go fuck themselves.

Why does any network allow this war mongerer to spew lies and not call her on them? Liz Cheney can’t be valuable to the ratings, unless you are worried about losing the teabagger crowd! She has the gall to claim that we can’t walk away from Afghanistan even though her father was responsible for losing Afghanistan when they diverted funds and manpower to invade Iraq.

Lynne Cheney is a twit.

Worst of all? Hearing Cheney try to jam Obama about the dangers of “walking away” from her father’s mess — after Dick and W. did exactly that…

couldn’t have said it better.

These criminals have absolutely no shame.

Also true – but not exactly anything we didn’t already know.

She needs to STFU.
Her Daddy is a treasonous war criminal and should be in jail, awaiting execution.

The fact that she even gets air time to spout her crap is beyond irritating, who the hell is she?
The daughter of a former Vice President and a former government employee from an obscure department who got the job because of nepotism.

Why she is always in the news is beyond me.

Just like Palin.

Make it stop.

Lynne Cheney is a twit.

aw – come on – you can come up with a better adjective than that…

She talks about “the last time America walked away from Afghanistan” as if it was in the 1980s and 1990s, with absolutely no acknowledgment that “the last time America walked away from Afghanistan” was in 2002-3. Why are we subjected to this woman’s inanity? She has no credibility whatsoever and lies with more impunity than her father.

In a just society, the Cheneys would be shunned.

Why she is always in the news is beyond me.

she’s never done a goddamned thing in her life except travel around, where they will have her, tryin’ to cover daddy’s back.

Because Baby dick and all the other war mongers who were wrong about everything from 2001-2008 are considered “serious people” by the Beltway Village Idiots.

The people who got it correct are just a bunch of DFHs and not to be bothered with.

A comparable analogy just might be the folks who fought against Franco during the Spanish Civil War leading up to WWII. The term used for them was Premature Anti-Fascists (PAFs)

You mean, like, use an O?
She’s nobody. Nothing. Why would Anyone listen to her?

It’s my adjective of the day. I called someone else a twit on an earlier thread. Maybe Blanche Lincoln? Maybe it was yesterday? Anyhow, I’m in a twit groove.

Also had a first today. I had dinner reservations for tonight. The chef of the restaurant called an hour or two ago to say that they had run out of food and couldn’t open tonight! Left me speechless. I had to ask him to repeat himself.

I think she’s trying to be polite. I’d use a different term to describe BabyDick.

The Bushies’ failure, after 8 years of pissing away American lives and treasure, to competently execute and win that war is so massive, so scandalous, that anyone named Cheney shouldn’t be doing anything else on television but apologizing and begging the American people’s forgiveness.

Obviously Little Dick is servicing an agenda which is not reality based. Having said that, I reject the assumption that a greater commitment to Afghanistan by the Bush/Cheney Junta would have resulted in a favorable outcome. I do not consider such an outcome attainable.

A military response to 9/11 was at the very least probably a political necessity. In that case, after routing the Taliban we should have declared “victory” and left. It is likely the Taliban would have regained control but so what? That will be the likely outcome even if we continue to pour blood and treasure into the region for another decade.

Why would Anyone listen to her?

Why would (a)nyone give her air time?

It seems that to operate at the national level Republicans have to have thier sense of shame surgically removed.

Thanks. Also, it’s a diminutive kinda word, to belittle the person so described.

You know what would be far more important for a rational, thinking media person to do in this situation?

Pointedly ask Lil Baby Dick Cheney if there were and are any black ops which funded the Taliban for which she was the author or responsible person.

Ahem.

Granted, if a covert op she might not answer — but it would be great to watch whatever response she gives.

Assuming facts not in evidence, namely that Rs had any shame to begin with.

So Blue Texan, I am not the only who thought that Liz Cheney seemed to be living in a different world and George didn’t call her on it. Something seems profoundly wrong with that woman. It seems at least that, given her father’s role in creating this mess, she would see the reason she should simply be quiet.

There’s something so unworldly about the fact that she seems to want to perpetuate the Bush’s Administration disastrous policies into perpetuity just to somehow validate her father, regardless of how many die or the fact that we simply don’t have the money to nation build. Or perhaps the biggest reason why this must end, Al Queada may again emerge in Afghanistan but they don’t have to; Al Queada can do what it does from Yemen, Somalia or the southside of Chicago. Nothing will change the fact that that desert will be the same the day after we leave as it did the day before we came.

Yet nothing, absolutely nothing alters her course: with the Cheneys it really is “my way or the highway” and they talk to rest of us as if we are children who don’t know any better.

But to lecture the President about his behavior abroad or what he should do in Afghanistan and to assert that she knows “what the American people want” as though it is her mantra…Seriously…That is just delusional.

Had dinner with a friend who’s an therapist a couple of weeks ago. He is also very interested in politics & foreign policy. I made the statement: So the Rs are certifiable? He knew I was seriously asking his professional opinion. He said: Yes.

The *supposedly* Liberal Media gives this woman a platform to speak without ever getting asked serious questions because her Dad not her is an expert caused the current situation.

Something seems profoundly wrong with that woman

Agreed. It’s disturbing how divorced she is from reality or rational thought. There is more than a mere element of callousness to her. Sociopath.

I think they should have the Bush twins on to talk about foreign policy. Seems only fair. s/

The audacity of dopes.

The Press seems to want to legitimize Crazy, Lying, etc and not give voice to the rational Conservative Viewpoint. Its like showing teen age boys hours of violence and porn on TV and then not expecting them to act out some will get hooked and act out more than others. Some may choose to do something else like read blogs or just turn off the news all together.
The fact that less and less Americans watch the news has been called a bad thing for decades but maybe its the result of the end of the Fairness Doctrine and all the Crazy, Lies.

Lynne Cheney aka “Dicks Little Deferment” knows as much about the military as I do about menstrual cycles. Which is to say, not fucking much. The reason they have no shame is that the media thinks that they are covering their bases by giving her access to free tv to spin her crap, and as long as she talks loud enough, why, it must be true!

Eight years, the longest direct conflict in American history and she’s talking about Obama’s failure to unfuck her Daddy’s malfeasance with Bewitched-like nose-wiggle? Fuck her and the stalking horse she rode in on.

A strategy to win in Afghanistan where was she 8 years ago? The cost of retreat is huge no its a huge savings. Ask Liz if the GOP will support a tax increase first to pay for the war. Force the GOP to vote first if 90% of them don’t vote for the tax increase then the war is over and the GOP get the blame.
Congress not the President controls the Purse.

When do they ever ask serious questions? The goal is infotainment, not journalism. They invite people like Liz to create an illusion of conflict. Look at Big Media’s coverage of the primaries and the entire 2008 presidential campaign. Substance was ignored while they focused on phony controversies.

The reason TV news appears to favor Republicans is that they know how to play the game and give the talking heads what they want, i.e. phony controversy. The fact that they pull it out of their ass doesn’t matter, the talking heads won’t expose their fabrications.

We Dems get asked serious questions by the press like how will we pay for Healthcare. I have never heard one GOPer asked how will we pay for Iraq at least not since the Iraq’s oil will pay for the war meme got forgotten as the years went by.

Remember when Social Security used to be the third rail of politics? Now war is the third rail.

Why are you/we asking these questions/having this conversation among ourselves? Why are we not asking these questions of the show’s producers? Sponsors? Airhead teleprompter readers? Why are there no pickets with these questions on signs in front of the teevee stations where they show up to shovel their shit shill?

Just watched the clip and think i’m going to be sick.

Jo what great words … reminds me of some one uh.. uh ..oh yeah busted something…. *G*

When they ask Dems how they will pay for healthcare reform they are simply regurgitating Republican talking points to gin up a sense of conflict. It doesn’t matter how many times Dems provide an answer or how detailed the answer is, the answer will be ignored and the question will be asked again. TV execs equate controversy with drama and they believe that will draw viewers. Reality has no bearing.

Yep it gets votes but nobody has the stones to ask how will we pay for it.

http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/creationism-v-journalism-a-true-story-from-real-life/

this column gives a pretty good reason why the MSM does what it does.
News is no longer “news” but is now “infotainment”.
The MSM is a very larger part of the problem. My suggestion is to watch the News from a source outside the country. You get a real feel for what the “news” actually is.
Finally, I have no solution to the problem. When “unscripted” TV becomes “reality” TV, when you can only really find out the “truth” about what the MSM says is “news” from TDS and The Colbert Report, then we have a problem. When corrections to eye popping lies on MSM “news” can only be found on partisan web pages, then ladies and gentlemen, the battle is mostly lost, because the sheeple hear the lie, hear it repeated on different programs and believe it. Since the lie is never corrected by those who told it-unless like the “apology” that hamidy gave to Jon Stewart, you have your face pushed into the lie-then it is never heard and never corrected.
Example. I know all the MSM is simply agog with the “news” that Palins ghost written book is #1 everywhere and that her “book tour” is only going to “Real Merica”-I believe the Ft Bragg book signing has been canx(last I heard anyway) because the Post has refused to allow the “press” in to cover it. I am unsure about the Ft Hood stop as the same conditions apply-no using uniformed soldiers to be part of political diatribe- Anyway, to my point. Has ANY MSM “news” organ checked up on the #1 factoid? Her books were featured in my local paper(San Antonio Express-News)in a full page ad offering them up for $4.95 and a subscription to a conservative journal that I never heard of, or that you can purchase her book for $9 at walmart and sams club? Nope. The implication of course is that her books are flying off the shelves at full price. So, instead of checking and rechecking the “facts” before it is broadcast on any of the big 4 network newscasts, they simply go with what somebody else said. Where have all the real journalists gone? My guess, dead or retired, replaced by the current crop of JrHigh school paper “reporters” who will search until they get the response they want, even if they have to ask a thousand people. I canx my subscription to US News-reading since 1988- a month ago. I have been a subscriber to Time since 1970, a reader since 1964. I am writing to inform them I have had enough. No more will I read opinion poorly disguised as news. My subscription to Newsweek-a reader since 1975-is not going to be renewed. I used to read all 3 because I figured that if I did I could possibly discover what the facts of the story were. But Time and Newsweek have, along with the networks, gone from being news and analysis to being “infotainment”, which, if I had wanted to read about I would be reading People. We are rapidly becoming the most ignorant polity on the planet. Not from a lack of “news” but from the trivializing of what should be news into sound bites, lies and never checked factoids that talking heads report as real vs what they really are. Lies. Remember this, there are Lies, Damned Lies and Politics. Figuring out the truth behind the lies and spin USED to be the job of the MSM-which I remember them doing as late as 1975-(after that I don’t know, I was not in the US very much after 1975 for many years)

We don’t watch them which is even better all the news companies stock has gone down for decades its not our fault they are to stupid to learn.

There is something surreal about listening to Liz and her dysfunctional cronies. That’s because they live in a surreal world that reflect their surreal reality. They have this hallucination that somehow what they say is really important and believed by a majority of Americans. Get a clue, Liz, the reality is that neither of the foregoing is true.

And shame on the MSM for enabling this insipid garbage and other frauds like Sarah Palin.

They don’t care. In their minds doing their job well doesn’t mean getting their facts straight, it means increasing ratings. They won’t be held accountable unless they consistently trail in ratings and their replacement won’t care about journalism either, it will be someone who thinks they know a better way to market bullshit.

Her books were featured in my local paper(San Antonio Express-News)in a full page ad offering them up for $4.95 and a subscription to a conservative journal that I never heard of, or that you can purchase her book for $9 at walmart and sams club?

I have never heard of a best seller being discounted what not even a month into its release is her book actually costing her publisher money or are GOP groups bulk purchasing and then reselling the book?

*G… Busted something?

You just haven’t been noticing. This is standard wing-nut welfare in operation. So-called conservative ‘news’ sites (NewsMax for instance), purchase the bulk copies to get the book on the Best Seller lists then within one to two months the ads start showing for a “Free/$4.95 copy of (fill-in-the-blanks) “New Best Seller” with your donation/subscription/whatever

Fine use of the “People’s” English…

Hi gayle, liked your post. Just had a problem with one of the sentences and wanted to fix it, ok?

It seems at least that, given her father’s role in creating this mess, she would see the reason she should simply be quiet STFU.

There, much better. *g*

In complete agreement regarding the MSM. I cannot believe where we are a year after a historic election to throw these rascals out, with the papers still headlining these leftover morons. Why the headlines? Are they imagining that they can control the political narrative completely, Goebbels style, by claiming that’s what the Obama administration is ‘doing’ — the proof is in the pudding there. Does anyone even recall some of the milestones in Obama’s administration? No, all we’ll remember is the frightening faces of Beck and Palin, know-nothingism and maximally paranoid rhetoric. People abroad think the right wing are ridiculous. They are. And we should be insisting that the media treat them for what they are, marginal, terminally stupid, and purely venal.

Maybe not so much war (I really don’t think the country will so easily go along with another boondoggle like Iraq for awhile), but certainly defense spending is that third rail. Good point.

And we’re going to do just what other empires eventually did if we don’t face up to the fact that we can’t sustain that kind of defense spending forever. But, since it is the third rail, the odds ain’t so good.

It’s more war than defense in the sense that getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan means losing the war. That point has been finessed for Iraq but not yet for Afghanistan and O continually paints himself into corners.

Fine I admit I don’t read righty blogs much or read their books.:)

Over and again we are confronted with ideological minds that reduce the world down to, I am perforce right and if you do not agree with me you are perforce wrong. There is no arguing with them because their point is never to be reasonable unless you start with the assumption that being reasonable is synonymous with agreeing with them. This mentality is applicable to all True Believers—left or right.

Often, you want to reach out and wring their necks because they simply refuse to acknowledge any facts, any analysis, any evidence contrary to their rock hard assumptions about how the world works. And that is because once you have acquired rock hard assumptions about how the world ought to work everything henceforth revolves around reinforcing it.

In other words, this is far more about human psychology than *debating the issues*. And only when it is approached as such is there ever a chance to change minds.

Yeah, I see what you’re saying, and you’re right. Right now it is more war than defense. I guess I don’t think (at least I hope) the American people are going be so easy to agree to another war like that for some time in future, while any politician trying to cut defense spending, even in the future, is brutalized.

But yeah, I see what you’re saying. War is the third rail right now.

You don’t have to visit right wing sites to see the ads. Even FDL gets them sometimes.

Why does any network allow this war mongerer to spew lies and not call her on them?

This network [like all the others] is part and parcel of a world in which the interests of the rich and powerful are tantamount to the interests of the network.

Next time you watch a Sunday morning talk show focus instead on the corporations that advertize on the show. Invariably they will be big defense contractors, big banks and financial institutions, big corporations etc.

The dots are all there to connect. War and defense spending is such a vital component of the American economy, any substantive debates about American foreign policy are moot without grounding them in this fundamental assumption.

Educate yourself about the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations. All the same politicos, corporations, media moguls pop up over and again.

Or go to the video store and rent a copy of the movie, The American Ruling Class.

Here is a review from Bulldog Films:

The American Ruling Class is one of the most unusual films to be made in America in recent years–both in terms of form and content. The form is a *dramatic-documentary-musical* and the content is our country’s most taboo topic: class, power and privilege in our nominally democratic republic.

At bottom the film is a morality tale, the story of two Yale students (played by Harvard men) who seek their opportunities upon graduation. As the renowned essayist, author and longtime Harper’s magazine editor Lewis Lapham conducts them through the corridors of power: Pentagon press briefings, the World Economic Forum, philanthropic foundations, Washington law firms, corporations, banks, the Council on Foreign Relations, and New York society dinners–our two representative graduates “one rich and the other not so rich” must struggle with their responsibilities in “a world collaterally damaged by the magic of money and the miracles of science.” The real-life luminaries they meet on their journey become characters in a story about power, its responsibilities and abuses.

All the while “the Mighty Wurlitzer” plays on, a reference to the massive propaganda apparatus invented by the CIA’s Frank Wisner, here used to signify the nocturnal philosophy of acquisition and imperial hubris which continually calls to the young men, the siren song of careerist myopia that was bred into their bones at school.

As we watch these two young men wend their way through what is only a slight fictionalization of their actual lives and choices, as we meet former Secretaries of State and Defense, directors of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, the publisher of The New York Times, Kurt Vonnegut, Howard Zinn, Barbara Ehrenreich, Robert Altman and a host of others, we have to ask along with Mr. Lapham: “To what end the genius of the Wall Street banks and the force of the Pentagon’s colossal weapons? Where does America discover the wisdom to play with its wonderful toys?” The possible answers move beyond the empty distinction of party affiliation and into the heart of American Oligarchy itself. By film’s end, the young men must decide: Should they seek to rule the world, or to save it?

George:

This is how the world really works. But you will never come across an analysis like this on the The Roundtable!!!

More like weapons-grade domestic propaganda. VP for Torture for Life Cheney and his pal Rummy have been using black psy ops on us for almost a decade now.

From Scott Horton’s blog No Comment back in February of this year:

Answering questions from his audience of about 160 people, Curley said AP remains concerned about journalists’ detentions. He said most appear to occur when someone else, often a competitor, “trashes” the journalist. “There is a procedure that takes place which sounds an awful lot like torture to us,” Curley said. “If people agree to trash other people, they are freed. If they don’t immediately agree to trash other people, they are kept for some period of time–two or three weeks–and they are put through additional questioning.” His remarks came a day after an AP investigation disclosed that the Pentagon is spending at least $4.7 billion this year on “influence operations” and has more than 27,000 employees devoted to such activities. At the same time, Curley said, the military has grown more aggressive in withholding information and hindering reporters.

The Associated Press’s special report on Pentagon “influence operations” can be read here. The Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office has been one of the last redoubts of the Neoconservatives. Burrowed Bush era figures remain in key positions in the office, which had responsibility for implementation of some of the Rumsfeld Pentagon’s most controversial strategies in which the American public was targeted with practices previously associated with battlefield psy-ops.
Pentagon Targeted and Mistreated Journalists, AP Head Charges

From the AP report: (note that I updated the link to the AP’s report in the quote above; the link on the Harpers.org page is broken.)

“LAWRENCE, Kan. – The Bush administration turned the U.S. military into a global propaganda machine while imposing tough restrictions on journalists seeking to give the public truthful reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Associated Press chief executive Tom Curley said Friday [February 6, 2009].”

Dick Cheney and Lil’ Liz, along with Karl Rove, are knowingly making use of the power of carefully crafted myths, to jack us to hell and back, sticking us with the bill both ways. There’s a very powerful method in their only apparent madness.

See also this 11/11/2009 podcast on Sibel Edmonds’s site, Boiling Frogs:

[Wife and husband team Elizabeth Gould & Paul Fitzgerald] are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. The Boiling Frogs Presents Elizabeth Gould & Paul Fitzgerald

“Twit” is one of those words you just gotta hear being said…….doesn’t translate well in an on-line venue. Trust me; if you’ve never heard it come out of my mouth, you have absolutely no idea the amount of loathing that an inflection can provide. *g*

Why are they allowing her all this airtime? Her neocon platform should be retired as quickly as possible. No more Cheney’s in the WH.

So Liz, when are you going to [Edited by Mod. Not even any as fantasy, please] for letting the guy that helped plan and pay the terrorists, when our soldiers had him at Tora Bora?

When is somebody going to say a lot of these comments to her face on these Sunday Talk Shows instead of them being written on a blog.

When the hell are these Sunday shows going to get a person from the far left that won’t have any problem slamming the people on the right?

Liberal Media? WHAT Liberal Media.

Book Salon a couple of flights upstairs with Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America hosted by Tom Franks

This is nothing new for La Liz. She received her bachelor’s degree from Colorado College, where she wrote her senior thesis, “The Evolution of Presidential War Powers”.

She has 3 daughters and 2 sons. When the time comes, will she give children to the military? Or will she get them deferred like their infamous grandfather.

Check history Liz. No Country has “won” in Afghanistan ever, though many have tried.

No doubt!!!

Again, this is some of the stupidest analysis on the web. Listening to a Cheney give advice on Afghanistan is pointless? Really? So what her father did means no one should listen to her on the subject? That is complete and utter bullshit. I guess this site is big into “sins of the father” and guilt by association. Futhermore, regardless of what Bush and Cheney did, their actions are not defenses for Obama’s inaction. It is fucking amazing that anyone thinks “well Bush and Cheney did it too” is some sort of brilliant fucking argument.

The people trying to use history as some sort of argument against getting involved in Afghanistan are ignorant morons. Today’s Taliban doesn’t have the support of the majority of the population as their precursors did after THE SOVIETS INVADED. There is no comparison to the current situation. The Taliban now is not being funded with billiions and billions and being provided with high-tech weaponry by the US like the Afghani fighters were during the Soviet occupation. The Soviets lost thousands and thousands of troop. The casualty figures for the US are nowher near as high. Furthermore, the US has NATO aid, and the Taliban does not have the support of the population; in fact, the Taliban is hated in large portions of the country.

There is absolutely no historical similarity between the current situation in Afghanistan and the situation that existed there from 1979-1989. Anyone who claims there is an ignorant idiot.

We have an all volunteer military jackass. Liz Cheney’s kids are like everyone else’s. If they don’t want to join the military, no one can force them. Parents don’t “give” their children to the Armed Forces.

And it is fucking hilarious (even more so than the asinine notion that you can give your kids to the military) that anyone would even mention deferment for her three daughters (or her sons for that matter). FEMALES ARE NOT ELIGIBLE FOR SELECTIVE SERVICE, thus the whole notion of a deferment is absolutely silly. Of course it is silly when discussing her sons as well, because the US won’t be reinstituting the draft anytime soon.

Some of you people are so fucking ignorant it is amazing you know how to type a damn sentence.

And if Obama doesn’t like being criticized for fiddling while Kabul burns, he should have fucking thought of that before he spent the entirety of his campaign and the first eight months of his “presidency” telling the American public how this is a necessary war that has to be won. He hoisted himself on his own petard, and it is a fucking shame soldiers have to die while to tries to get down.

I don’t think tv news “prefers” Republicans, and God knows, if you ask a Conservative Rep he will likely unload on you about the “liberal” media. It just seems that, to appear even handed, some generally reasonable moderators are letting a lot go, and man, letting Liz Cheney’s bizarre intepretation of events pass without exception is just too politically correct.

There is a very very good reason that Cheney does not talk to Rachel Maddow. Rachel is always cordial and courteous but she is blunt and she will not let revisionism go unchallenged. So, I will make a point of being home when Liz Cheney got to the mat on that, but I won’t hold my breath in anticipation.

Seriously, if we are so far beneath you intellectually and in our knowledge of all things Cheney et al, I, for one, will not hold it against you should you seek out your intellectual equals. In fact, I would encourage it. Namaste

Good point. But then Obama has broken so many campaign promises, what’s one more. Right?

And Obama has only been fiddling in Kabul now for 10 months. Bush and Cheney fiddled there for 7 years. Afghanistan is just one of many fiascos they dumped on Obama’s plate.

And how many American soldiers died in Afghanistan on the Republican watch because of Republican incompetence? Not to mention the thousands who died in Iraq, right?

Here, let me introduce you to what really motivates America in Kabul:

Colin Miller from the Webdiary web site [9/24/09]:

Initially the Taliban enjoyed the support of Bill Clinton’s administration for a campaign against Iran, but the most strategically important goal was to secure the region’s oil and gas. In 1996-98 the US government supported the (US) Unocal oil company’s plans for a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan.

What was support (or indifference) toward the Taliban in the Clinton years, has turned to antagonism and a goal of elimination, whatever the cost, today. So many near neighbours have meddled in Afghanistan’s affairs over decades – notably Pakistan and Russia, and to a lesser degree Iran and Saudi Arabia – that the region has rarely been free of conflict. And never more so than now, with the resurgent Taliban being fought vigorously with the stakes raised to dizzying heights in the interests of oil, and oil interests.

Prior to September 11, United States’ policy toward the Taliban was largely influenced by oil. In their book, Ben Laden, la verite interdite, 2002, (Bin Laden, the forbidden truth), former French intelligence officer Jean-Charles Brisard and journalist Guillaume Dasquie document the “oil” connection between George W. Bush and the Taliban.

The United States’ dependence on Middle East, and soon Central Asian, oil and gas has led the US government to intervene militarily under a variety of pretexts, which change to suit the domestic political mood at any given time. The development of a coherent U.S. energy policy would obviate the real (or perceived) need to dominate other countries.

If My dad was Dich Cheney I’d be hiding in a cave so people couldn’t find Me, not out flapping My lips at every chance.

You know, I am going to respond to you with some real candor: I make every effort not to attack anyone personally with denigrating language. I prefer not to let my “opinions” overwhelm my reason because in my own belief system, that diminishes me. Sometimes that is very very hard, ie with the Cheneys, but it is crucial to my own sense of integrity.

In Christian Metaphysics there is an axiom: You are only as close to God as you are to the person you hold at the farthest distance. Sit with that for a while and it will work on you.

But yes, Liz Cheney seems to, quite seriously, be lacking some conductor in her reasoning capacity and she just insists on drawing attention to it every time she opens her mouth. Or maybe she just never got past being Daddy’s little girl so she can’t stand the idea that if she stops promotion his point of view he might turn out to be irrevocably wrong. Who knows…