This is rich:
Hours before they were to leave office after eight troubled years, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney had one final and painful piece of business to conclude. For over a month Cheney had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush to pardon the Vice President’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Libby had been convicted nearly two years earlier of obstructing an investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity by senior White House officials. The Libby pardon, aides reported, had become something of a crusade for Cheney, who seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship with Bush to the breaking point — and perhaps past it — over the fate of his former aide. “We don’t want to leave anyone on the battlefield,” Cheney argued.
So they guy that perjured himself in the investigation to determine who outed a CIA agent- he’s a soldier. The outed CIA agent? Screw her. Her husband was shrill.
MikeJ
Not pardoning Scooter was the biggest favour Bush could do Cheney. With a pardon Scooter can’t take the fifth.
Bulworth
you’re either with us, or you’re against us.
General Winfield Stuck
LOL. Cheney again with the misunderapproriate hyperbole. Who knew a Federal Judge and Jury were on Cheney’s list of “battlefields”. I’m sure the District Court of the District of Columbiastan was planning a Mushroom Cloud over Greater Wingnuttia. Damn Pinko Terrist Libtards.
Comrade Dread
Not a surprise.
The elite always push for special treatment of their own while advocating the toughest punishments for the rest of us.
Thus the man who argues for indefinite detention without recourse and torture for anyone (without even determining guilt or innocence first), and allow hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens to languish or die over possessing drugs, can without thinking of the hypocrisy or irony plead for a lawbreaking friend to get special treatment.
TenguPhule
Cheney and Battlefield in the same sentence…..
JenJen
Haven’t read the Time piece yet, but I found it interesting that in Richard Wolffe’s book “Renegade”, he writes that President Obama told him that during the ride from the White House to the Capitol on Inauguration Day, President Bush jawboned the President-Elect, in a complaining manner, about Cheney begging for a Liddy pardon, for the entire trip.
ruemara
I’d love to leave Cheney on the battlefield. Or at least in his secluded location.
lovethebomb
As much as it hurts to say it, this is the only thing I think the mass murdrering war criminal retarded monkey puppet boy prez did right, but probably for the same stubborn pigheaded reason he did everything else. I delight in Cheney’s frustration in not getting this flagpin of a final victory. He got Bushboy to sign off on his war, torture, mass murder, you name it, but here the buttboy held his ground. He had a sore ass, and didn’t want another poke.
dj spellchecka
since cheney got more military deferments than libby, perhaps he just wanted scooter to get a taste of action in the imaginary way they wage war…
Lev
I can only imagine this conversation:
“We don’t want to leave anyone on the battlefield,” Cheney argued.
“Where’d get that from, Dick?”
“Heard it on The Unit, Mr. President.”
Warren Terra
How couldn’t even Cheney have so little self-awareness as to say that they couldn’t leave anyone on the battlefield as their term ended … even as they left office with a hundred-fifty thousand or so Americans still on the battlefield?
Rick Massimo
I can’t remember who, but someone once wrote, “You know how in World War II American soldiers would take dead German soldiers, dress them in American uniforms and stuff phony battle plans in their pockets? Well, was that lying? Sure it was. Disrespectful to the dead? Maybe. But are you going to criticize them? Of course not. And that’s really how Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rove et al see themselves.”
It is. And seeing as how they have a) no real experience of war, yet b) a runaway sense of entitlement, they think this is combat.
gypsy howell
Nice to know Bush was a prick right to the end, even to Cheney. Well, best of all to Cheney.
MattF
The Time article is pretty interesting–
1) Bush was, at the very end, getting competent advice. Too bad it took him 7 years to figure out how to do that. In particular, Bush was getting competent legal advice– and not from Meirs/Gonzales.
2) Cheney figured out how to always put his agenda into play without getting his fingerprints on it. He could then give Bush ‘disinterested’ advice. “Oh, look, here’s a good idea…”
3) Everyone agreed that Libby was lying.
geg6
@JenJen:
“in Richard Wolffe’s book “Renegade”, he writes that President Obama told him that during the ride from the White House to the Capitol on Inauguration Day, President Bush jawboned the President-Elect, in a complaining manner, about Cheney begging for a Liddy pardon, for the entire trip.”
(and, yes, I know I could have done the blockquote in html, but that would assume I remember html from grad school days)
I read that, too. And laughed my ass off. Imagine what Obama must have been thinking.
The Grand Panjandrum
You left out the credo, my man. This is from memory so if it’s not quite right don’t rag on me.
And if the account in Time is correct it sounds like he was the last man standing in Scooter’s corner. Scooter? I just can’t quite get past that nickname.
(OK, it’s only the last stanza.)
JGabriel
@MikeJ:
Exactly. This storyline about Cheney wanting a pardon for Libby is pure propaganda for the base. Unless Cheney believes that a Democratically controlled Congress would never question Libby over the Plame matter, which might be sadly true, and while it might fit Cheney’s arrogant streak, it doesn’t match up with his paranoia.
.
Patton
Chairborne. Mmm. Me likey.
gnomedad
Spoken like someone who has never been on a battlefield. And who thinks his political opponents are the enemy.
slag
I heard Bush was going to pardon Scooter, but he had “other priorities” and just never got around to it.
Indylib
@Warren Terra:
“…even as they left office with a hundred-fifty thousand or so Americans still on the battlefield?”
The military aren’t real people to them, they are numbers and propaganda props.
Svensker
The outed CIA agent? Screw her. Her husband was shrill.
No, no, no. Her husband was an elitist and he lied about how he got the job. Therefore, what he said about yellowcake was a lie. Also, he liked to have his picture in the society pages so his wife couldn’t possibly have been seriously covert, also.
Not pardoning Libby is the one good thing Dubya has done.
(Did I mention Al Gore is fat?)
r€nato
@MattF:
actually, Bush did do more than one thing right during his time in office.
The tragic thing is, he did the right thing after he figured out that stubbornly doing the wrong things over and over and over again doesn’t work.
For instance, Bush finally did the right thing in Iraq in 2006 and put the war skeptics in charge, and things got better when we started co-opting the insurgency instead of trying to kill them all, and when we quit alienating every single Iraqi with whom our troops crossed paths.
Bush finally fired Rumsfeld and installed Gates as SecDef… in November 2006. AFTER the GOP got their butts whooped in the election. Most everybody thinks Rummy should have been canned at least two years earlier, and if he was going to be canned at all it should have been BEFORE the election.
Anne Laurie
LOL. But I’m also suspicious about the timing, and TIME-ing, of this sad little trial balloon. Cheney and his remaining minions don’t care about Libby, they just want to run out the clock to avoid further federal investigation. Of course Dubya ain’t in on the Real Story, because honestly, would you trust a brain-damaged says-he’s-dry-drunk to keep his mouth shut?
ed
Worst.
Motherfucking Administration.
Ever.
jonas
I suppose that this small gesture on Bush’s part will ensure that when the time comes, it will be him sitting on Cheney’s head in the pool of boiling excrement in Hell, and not the other way around.
The Grand Panjandrum
OT: Well I now feel like the man who knew too much.
Via Twitter Meghan McCain:
I’m not sure who I am enjoying the most, McCain or Palin. Each has her own charm. Palin’s got that delusional, alternate universe, truther kinda thing going on. McCain–I admire for her lack of inhibition.
Mike G
the guy that perjured himself in the investigation to determine who outed a CIA agent
The guy who lied to investigators to cover Cheney’s ass when Cheney, out of political spite, destroyed an entire CIA spy network combating nuclear proliferation. What an American hero.
Kyle
“We don’t want to leave anyone on the battlefield,” Cheney argued.
In this puerile GI-Joe fantasy world, the Department of Justice, and indeed the entire American people outside the Repuke inner circle, are ‘enemy combatants’. Fucking cowardly assholes.
At least in this case the imperial Bushes disdain for ‘the help’ as serfs to be exploited and discarded at will, worked to frustrate Oily Dick-tator. Bastard deserves to rot in one of his own secret torture prisons.
kth
@The Grand Panjandrum: big dif, Meghan McCain doesn’t think she can be President of the United States.
As for Cheney: at least he wasn’t tone-deaf enough to share with the public his loathsome and fatuous comparison. To be that dumb, you’d have to be Fouad Ajami.
bobbo
I don’t buy this at all. Since when did Bush not do what Cheney told him to? In what universe is Bush valiantly resisting Cheney’s pleading to do a favor for a friend because he prefers to do the right thing? I think this is part of the Bush legacy project. Sure it comes at Cheney’s expense, but when the history books are written Bush is the principled leader and Cheney is his loyal veep.
joe from Lowell
The guy who lied to investigators to cover Cheney’s ass when Cheney, out of political spite, destroyed an entire CIA spy network combating nuclear proliferation. What an American hero.
Yeah, whatever. Just don’t brief Congress. Can’t trust them.
Epicurus
Cheney = despicable
N. Webster
bob h
Cheney attacks Obama in highly dishonest, demagogic, and acerbic terms, has his daughter do the same, and then begs him to extend his Secret Service protection.
I think in Cheney one has elements not only of physical cowardice, but paranoia as well. The man is a head-case.
Paul in KY
I agree with MikeJ in 1st post. If Libby had been pardoned, he could not take the 5th when testifying.
I wish they’d pardoned the little creep. Then maybe he’d have to lie his ass off in testimony (rather than take 5th) & we could have put him back in jail or got him to flip.