Yet both Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney, Farmer says, provided palpably false versions that touted the military’s readiness to shoot down United 93 before it could hit Washington….Farmer’s verdict: “History should record that whether through unprecedented administrative incompetence or orchestrated mendacity, the American people were misled about the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks.”
History’s verdict so far is that Dick Cheney should be given unlimited media time to air his lies.
slag
Unchallenged, of course.
Cat Lady
Dirty lies from the liebral NY TImes in the tank for Obama Bush kept us safe Muslims WMD why do you hate Murka waaarrghhhgurghhbleh!
/wingnut
Zifnab
Wait, was it Pete Session or Jeff Sessions or someone else talking about this? I thought it was Obama that rammed the Airplane of State into the ground and that we need to “roll out”.
Why does the media insist on picking at poor old Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz? This is just another example of Bush Derangement Syndrome, when it’s blatantly obvious that Obama is surrendering our country to terrorists.
neill
God damn Dick Cheney’s shit-filled soul to hell.
cmorenc
Dick Cheney should be wearing an orange jump-suit and slip-on canvas sneakers the rest of his life in jail for all the soldiers his lies helped kill in needless wars. If I’d inflicted as much damage on the country with my arrogance and incompetence as Cheney did over eight years, I’d spend the rest of my life in a secluded location trying to fade into anonymity, and not trying to publicly piss on the folks now in office who are graciously trying to clean up the enormous toxic mess I left behind without trying to prosecute me for a long list of crimes I COULD be indicted with if they were of a mind to seek them.
AhabTRuler
@neill: Frankly, I think that’s very disrespectful to shit. I mean, it’s natural and it can’t help what it is.
Rhoda
Watch the MSM shut this story down like they did the military commentators story.
geg6
Just when I think that piece of shit Cheney simply cannot sink any lower into depravity, along comes another outrage perpetrated by this subhuman. The fact that this man lives and prospers is absolute proof that there is no god. Or at least that god is an evil piece of shit, too.
cmorenc
@Rhonda:
I’m not really sure the media actively wants to suppress this story so much as they are convinced that it simply won’t draw nearly as many viewers/readers (and is much harder to accurately cover, and much much more work) than giving 24/7 attention to Sarah Palin’s book tour. And they’ll get a much more muted negative reaction to the latter than to the former.
Unfortunately, this is how they think. And they’re lazy bastards, and complicated stuff like the flight 93 story doesn’t lend itself well to their handsome preening on camera as covering Sarah Palin does.
Derelict
Oh, this is just sooooooooo backward looking. Sure, Cheney and Bush lied to us about everything. And their lies resulted in lots and lots of people getting killed.
But let’s not bicker over who killed who. We need to look forward. And to make sure that, once again, the Republican international war criminals are either not prosecuted or completely pardoned. Accountability is for other (little) people, you know.
Mark S.
What the hell does our $1.14 trillion defense budget actually go toward besides fat contracts to defense contractors? If 9/11 happened during the Cold War, we probably would have ended up killing everybody on the planet, all because we cheaped out on making sure we could communicate with our pilots. Unfuckingbelievable.
Jager
Years ago i attended a meeting in Cheyenne, Wyoming. At the cocktail party that evening there was a guy pounding drinks, one after another, I asked my associate “who the hell is the heavy drinker surrounded by other heavy drinkers at the end of the bar?” He said, “thats our Congressman Dick Cheney, wanna meet him? We walked over, chatted him up and somebody asked Cheney if he was staying for the dinner, his reply, “Nah, I’ve got to drive back to Casper.” Immpressive guy, then, moreso now!
eemom
@geg6:
My long-held theory is that Cheney is, in fact, the Antichrist. It would explain many things, including the fact that he remains alive with that broken two-dollar watch he has for a heart.
Just Some Fuckhead
Cheney is President-In-Exile of White America. That’s why he gets unlimited airtime. Imagine if he wasn’t out there giving comfort to Real Murkins. Shit would be blowin’ up left and right. Freedom requires a lot of boom.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@geg6:
Dostoevsky says hello and welcome to the club!
Midnight Marauder
I have to say, “Good News For Conservatives” might have to go down as the best tag of 2009. It just so perfectly encompasses everything that is so absurd and frustrating and terrible and yet somehow, perversely hilarious about this oh-so-misguided little country of ours. It just does not get old, ever. Because it’s just so fucking astonishing that this kind of nonsense is the seemingly permanent “conventional wisdom.”
And yet, the O-Bot in me cannot help but feel that the tide is surely, if not ungodly slowly, turning.
Or maybe it’s the +4.
geg6
ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Yes, we’re all Dostoevsky now.
Midnight Marauder
@Jager:
In what regard,
CharlieJager?Jess
@Midnight Marauder:
+4 at 1:48 pm? Lucky you!
kay
That story was really a central part of the post-9/11 narrative.
It’s a little shocking that it isn’t true.
This is still going on, though.
I can’t find any verification that the Ft Hood shooter yelled anything at all prior to firing, but his invoking God has now entered the narrative as fact. It’s based on an account by one eye witness, and contradicted by others who were there, but I heard Rudy G. repeat it as fact yesterday.
Corner Stone
@Midnight Marauder: I’ve said it before but it bears repeating – I like your style.
joe from Lowell
I am not a Troofer. Flight 93 was not shot down; no fighters were even close to it when the hijackers crashed it into the field. Let’s get that out of the way right now.
OK, moving on: the President, the Vice President, and the National Security Advisor lied to the 9/11 Commission about whether Bush gave Cheney authorization to order the Air Force to shoot down Flight 93.
From The 9/11 Commission Report, page 48, “The Shootdown Order:”
…
…
So let’s look at this. There were three people taking notes in that conference room: the White House secretary in charge of recording everything that happens there, Dick Cheney’s wife, and Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Not a single one of those three made a single note about the President and Vice President having the conversation they both, and Rice, described, about an issue as important as whether the US military should shoot down an American civilian air liner. Nor did Rice, the only person to testify to witnessing the conversation.
At least one person in the room, Josh Bolton, heard no conversation, was worried, wanted to “make sure” the conversation had happened (even after Cheney had told him it had), and insisted that the Vice President call the President to “confirm” that he’d been given the authorization.
There is a record of this “second” conversation happening on the phone log, but not the “first.”
Ari Fleischer noted Bush telling him that he’d given Cheney the authorization after the “second” conversation. He made no such notation after the “first” conversation.
The President felt the need to “emphasize” to the committee that he’d given Cheney the authorization.
Ladies and Gentlemen, these people lied. There isn’t any evidence to back up the testimony that the first conversation ever happened, and there would have been, just as there is all sorts of evidence that the “second” conversation had happened.
The first conversation never happened. The Vice President ordered the US military to kill Americans without authority. Then he lied to the people in the room, some of whom doubted him – his own White House colleagues. Then he, and Bush, and Rice, lied to the 9/11 Commission.
geg6
kay: Well, if America’s Nosferatu Mayor says it, it must be true!
Corner Stone
@cmorenc:
I agree with you and will just add that the most likely tactic they’ll use to brush past this story is the tried-n-true “he said, he said” method.
They’ll “balance” this info with some former Bush admin who says something vague, they’ll repeat it, quote it, give it credibility, then they’ll drop the whole thing and ask Levi what he thinks about Obama’s foreign policy. Or maybe ask him about his Johnston.
El Cid
Or via the perfect combination of both !!
PeakVT
What the hell does our $1.14 trillion defense budget actually go toward besides fat contracts to defense contractors?
A politically incorrect joke around DC is that defense contracting is welfare for white people.
I think most politicians don’t really care if the money is well used as long as a portion of it is spent in their district, and some of it comes back to them as campaign contributions.
Jager
Ahhh, tongue firmly in cheek, Midnight
geg6
Don’t these people ever get tired of lying so continually? They sure exhaust me. So looking forward to some wood fire pizza, beer, and the Pitt/Notre Dame game tonight, just to take a break from all GOP asshattery.
kay
@geg6:
I was interested if it would be pursued or verified when it was first reported, because it sounds a little off. You’d think that would be something people remember, and there would be broad agreement on what he shouted, and it would be central to the big motive question, so worthy to pursue. But, they don’t remember hearing it. There’s a lot of data that says eyewitnesses will hear what is reported after the fact, and “remember” things they didn’t actually see or that didn’t happen, so the assumption would be they’d tend to be biased toward “hearing it”. They aren’t.
I laughed a little because Rudy always relies on his prosecutorial experience to slam Obama.
Pretty sloppy, for America’s self-proclaimed Top Cop.
Midnight Marauder
@Jess:
I guess I’m just living the dream right now. This next one is for you, old sport.
cleek
does a duck ever get tired of swimming ?
licensed to kill time
ex-Vice President Frito Pendejo is a liar, huh? I am shocked, just shocked to find out lying was going on in the Idiocratic White House.
And I am tired of “the American people were misled “. We were LIED to, over and over again.
bayville
John Farmer is a very unserious guy, though.
He is only a former Attorney General, former Acting Governor, former contributing columnist, founder of a law firm in North Jersey and the current Dean of one of the top law schools in the country.
And he is a Republican.
In other words, he doesn’t possess the gravitas of intellectuals like John Bolton or Liz Cheney.
Midnight Marauder
@geg6:
This is what I’m talking about. I’ve got a fridge full of Rolling Rock and PBR (left over from a party, of course), the USC-Stanford game in a little bit, and a delicious little number called “Afghani Haze” that I’ve been waiting to enjoy.
I can maybe haz midday college football open thread?
Mike in NC
The Dick will get at least 3-8 years of unlimited airtime to spew his lies, then at some point the bad ticker will kill him and he’ll get a great Reaganesque sendoff by the media.
Max
I find Richard Head Cheney to be a good litmus test for if I care to know someone or not.
I ask their opinion of Darth Cheney and if they say “war criminal” or “evil fucker” then I care what this person thinks and am interested in getting to know them.
If they say their opinion of him is “misunderstood” or “kept this country safe since 9.12.01” then I know me and that person have nothing in common and I move along.
I can get along with, and love many republicans, however, if they are in anyway buying the Cheney family crest of bullshit, there is no quarter for them with me.
There is no grey are when it comes to the Cheney Klan.
Dr. Loveless
Just keep walking, people. Keep walking.
We are all Peggy Noonan now.
Roger Moore
@PeakVT:
And they, their relatives, and their friends can have cushy jobs at defense contractors if/when they ever leave office. Some of the demonstrably care mostly that some of it come directly back to them in the form of bribes and kickbacks.
Roger Moore
@bayville:
Fixt.
Comrade Kevin
@geg6:
If there is a god, he is a malign thug. – Mark Twain
Corner Stone
@Midnight Marauder:
Careful there Icarus.
Reminds me of the old cowboy saying, “All I want is a rope that never breaks, a horse that never bucks and a gun that never sticks in the holster.”
And the response is, “But amigo, if we had these things we would never die.”
sloan
DougJ, yesterday: “I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty damned happy that all the fevered discussion of Lady Starburst’s new book is drowning out some of the screaming that Obama is letting a super-genius criminal set foot on American soil.”
I was thinking the same thing at the time. The Right is going 100mph, from one OUTRAGE to the next so quickly that they barely have time to breathe. If you check out memeorandum right now the top story is still not the KSM trial – it’s a picture of the President meeting the Emperor of Japan and OMFG he bows to him. Top story!
The usual gang of global etiquette advisors are weighing in with nuanced critiques of the bow (because they remember how to do it from the last time they met the Emperor). And I haven’t seen it yet, but “global apology tour” headlines should be hitting the winger blogs any minute now.
Long story short – the KSM news will be buried in a sea of bullsh*t, because the Right can’t tell the difference between a real story and fake outrage. It sort of reminds me of the McCain campaign.
Midnight Marauder
@Corner Stone:
A new keyboard. You owe me one.
General Winfield Stuck
At least Cheney didn’t grovel to the cheese eating surrender Ninja. How low will Obama bow to our enemies, Here is how low.
Strike up the band, we’re all gonna die. I read it on a wingnut blog.
Martin
It’s a perpetual jobs program.
Let’s take a little step back. We all decry supply-side reasoning, yet we have long insisted that everyone working age put in 40 a week to be fully employed – which from the standpoint of the nation’s economy is a supply side argument. Right now we’ve got 16% of those people not putting in 40 a week, yet the country is running just fine – everyone has food, houses enough for the nation are being built, lots of TVs to buy – and we’ve got a shitload of people building planes and destroyers and whatnot.
Get rid of the defense industry (hell, just the industry we really don’t need) and that unemployment rate jumps up to 20% or more.
So long as we insist on aiming for about 4 billion man-hours of work per week out of this nation, while increasing productivity through automation, robotics, computers, etc. then we *have* to force consumer consumption, massive exports, or government support.
Something has to give.
calipygian
I seriously doubt that fucker will get the full send off with the caisson down Independence Ave, the laying in state in the Rotunda, etc. cuz there are too many enraged fuckers like me who will be lining up two days early to stand in line to piss into that cocksuckers casket.
I see any attempt at a dignified funeral procession for that cocksucker being turned into a riot.
geg6
calipygian: Just another reason I envy males for the amazingly verstility and usefulness of their genitalia. Instead, I’ll be forced to fling shit instead.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@calipygian:
The line forms to the left…
The worst part of it is that I used to feel the same way about Richard Nixon. I thought I could fix myself up for retirement selling bags of rocks for people to throw at Nixon’s funeral, just like the lady at the stoning scene in Life of Brian.
The problem is, along came the W administration and suddenly I found myself missing ole Tricky Dick, in a John Rogers ‘I miss Republicans‘ sort of way. So now my worst nightmare is that someday the GOP is going to cough up somebody much worse than Cheney, and by some bizarre twist of fate (and starbursts, also) actually get them into power, and deargodhelpme about 20 years from now I’ll be sitting around thinking ‘you know, compared with what we have today, Dick Cheney wasn’t so bad – I’d swap the current crew for him in a heartbeat‘.
freelancer (itouch)
@Midnight Marauder:
Do you always channel Gatsby when you’re tipsy?
Corner Stone
Protip – Lane Kiffin should stop talking much smack until he gets his team prepared to back it up.
calipygian
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Nixon lived too long after he left the presidency and the young people that would turn out for a good old fashioned funeral riot weren’t old enough to know how bad Nixon was at the time. Plus, Nixon rehabilitated himself into the dreaded “Elder Statesman”.
How long do you really see Dick and his black, shriveled heart lasting? He really doesn’t look good, and really has never looked good.
He’ll kick off soon enough for the wounds he opened not to have been healed. That calls for a good, old fashioned, cathartic funeral riot!
Midnight Marauder
@freelancer (itouch):
Ha! I honestly have no clue, but I’m certainly going to be on the lookout for this new phenomenon from here on out.
+5
Svensker
As well, Nixon was a complex person. A paranoid asshole and a creep, but I know people who worked in his administration who said he was always gracious and polite to lower level workers, never went high and mighty on them. He made peace with China and was very intelligent and thoughtful about policies that he was interested in — not always right, but at least he had knowledge and tried to think things through, unlike the “from the gut” cowboys of the Dubya administration.
Nixon was often a bad guy, but he wasn’t a joke.
calipygian
@Svensker: There is a lot of “yeah, but…” with Nixon, a mixed record if there every was one.
I fail to see one positive effect that Dick Cheney had on the country and the world. He remains a malevolent force, that’s for sure.
Midnight Marauder
@Corner Stone:
You are so right. And Dexter McCluster is the truth. That kid is so fucking quick.
sloan
@General Winfield Stuck: The Right really does not know how to deal with Obama being President. They’ll spend the next two days trying to hurt him with this image, just like they’ve done so many times, dating back to the Presidential campaign.
It’s like Josh Marshall’s bitch slap theory on steroids. The campaign is long over, but they’re still trying do defeat Obama by mocking him. This totally failed in ’08 because he laughed right back in their face, which a Democrat is not supposed to do. Dems are supposed to offer weak explanations and apologize, which proves the criticism is justified.
Obama does not do this. He knew full damn well that his meeting with the Emperor would be photographed and that the Right would squeal and laugh, but he doesn’t care. Good.
Let them laugh. Let them scream and yell about arugula and tire pressure gauges and deli mustard. It makes them crazy that they can’t sucker the President into a petty fight on their terms over some non-issue of their choosing. They are trolls, desperate for attention and they will be ignored by the President. It lets the trolls know they’re so insignificant, they’re not even worth a response. And the non-response is the most devastating response of all. Nothing makes a troll angrier than being ignored.
MikeJ
Never underestimate the value of a bad example.
Mike in NC
Make that “Global Apology Tour – Pacific Version”, with plenty of spittle flying about how Obama’s trading fist bumps in Beijing with ‘fellow Maoists’. Krauthammer is probably pounding the keyboard at this very moment.
loretta
I’m still waiting for someone to explain how our $Infinity Trillion military let a 767 hit the Pentagon.
Martin
@Mike in NC:
My guess is that they’re paralyzed, overwhelmed with material:
Martin
@loretta:
It didn’t look like a 1960s era Soviet ICBM. That’s all we’ve actually prepared for.
General Winfield Stuck
@sloan:
This.
valdivia
OT but what the heck is up at HUffPo? they are flogging the terrible dangers of having the trial in NY on the front page. disgusting.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@sloan:
Hey, bowing to the Jap is ten times worse than kissing the Saudi royalty. Amirite?
Okay, maybe there was no tongue in the Bush-Prince kiss. That makes it okay, I think.
dmsilev
@Svensker: When Nixon kicked the bucket, I remember seeing an editorial cartoon showing St. Peter sitting at a desk, contemplating two overstuffed folders labeled ‘Good Dick’ and ‘Bad Dick’, and saying into an intercom “Hold all of my calls; this one’s going to take a while”.
When Cheney dies, I expect the reaction to be roughly 90% “Ding dong, the witch is dead”. There’s still the 10% who actually like the guy, but they’ll be drowned out.
-dms
Xenos
@valdivia: I was going to go express my disgust, but there already are 3,901 comments posted on that HuffPo article. Nevermind.
General Winfield Stuck
@dmsilev:
Just the right amount to fit in my bathtub/
Midnight Marauder
@sloan:
On the days when We Are All Mayans Now, this is what gets me through. Incredibly well said.
gogol's wife
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
That’s Ivan Karamazov, not Dostoevsky.
MikeJ
Ahh, memories. You just had to remind me of Hefner:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4BCUWopQQ4
valdivia
@Xenos:
I know. The thing I don’t get is how it went from being a slightly yellow journalist place to an all sirens blaring anything to get the page hits place–even make the specious arguments of the right as if they have any meaning.
Midnight Marauder
@valdivia:
I’m convinced now that the lower and lower you scroll down the front page of HuffPo–as you bear witness to the increasing levels of astonishing stupidity–is somehow a representation of the epic death spiral of the USA the past few decades.
jcricket
@dmsilev:
Not if the MSM have anything to say about it. It’ll be all, “serious people disagree whether Cheney-encouraged enhanced interrogation techniques saved 1 million lives, 100,000 lives or were just neutral. There were some DFH who thought something else, but they hated America.”
People like Sarah Palin and Betsey Mcaughey are the ultimate versions of this narrative – where it matters not what they say, nor the impact of their actions, just whether or not they say things with conviction.
We suck!
Corner Stone
Go Cocks!
Corner Stone
@valdivia: Business model.
Arianna is nothing if not a master capitalist. Her and Kos both know how to cash in.
valdivia
@Midnight Marauder:
excellent metaphor. still freaking drepressing.
Thadeus Horne
@eemom: I know people that would gleefully remove his two dollar heart with a Husqvarna 55 chainsaw. It probably wouldn’t cost much, either.
Svensker
@General Winfield Stuck:
LOL
Roger Moore
@calipygian:
I expect his undead existence to continue as long as he can continue to feed on the blood of the living. SATSQ.
peter john
The republican party already have a few candidates for president that would be worst than Cheney: Palin and Huckabee. Because the only thing worst that a greedy soulless person is a hyper religious greedy soulless person. With the right wing propaganda machine running full out for the next four years and the republicans in congress doing everything possible to keep the economic from recovering I think there is a good chance that a republican will be president in four years. And even worst they will control Congress. They will make Bush and Cheney look good in comparison.
licensed to kill time
Another Very Serious Person is Facebooking again:
Sarah Palin, Hang ‘Em High
Cheney For Fun
i So SO SO want to see Dick Cheney strung upside down like Bennito Mussonilini. Otherwise I will just have to hope he’s not cremated so I can piss on his grave. There needs to be video of the stake through the heart so we can all be sure :^)
Corner Stone
@Corner Stone: Go Cocks baby!
Maude
The thing about Cheney on 9/11 is that there was no reason for Bush to hand over any control to the Veep. Bush was not incapacitated, that is, any more than usual. The order to give the veep powers has to be in writing. They ever hear of a fax machine?
The 9/11hearings were a political nightmare. They weren’t there to blame and Kean got rolled so many times that he didn’t know up from down.
Corner Stone
@Midnight Marauder:
Stanford just taking USC to the woodshed. Thing O beauty it is. Of course, after USC loses by 3 touchdowns they will probably go up one spot in the rankings.
Fucking joke.
Mike G
People like Sarah Palin and Betsey Mcaughey are the ultimate versions of this narrative – where it matters not what they say, nor the impact of their actions, just whether or not they say things with conviction.
This is the mindset of cultists and evangelical Xtians, who exalt blind belief and are contemptuous of education, reason; authoritarian eager followers with weak minds too scared-stupid to question authority.
“Unlike people from religious traditions with long histories of involvement with politics, evangelicals have no firm foundation in history, theology or experience against which they can judge the words that so easily come out of the mouths of politicians. Sincerity, for them, is everything, which is another way of saying that facts are nothing. The proof of their faith is its credulity”. — Alan Wolfe
gwangung
42-21.
“Allllll right now…”
CalD
I see no reason why you couldn’t have both. In fact it is fairly common occurrence for one of those things to lead to the other.
Enlightened Layperson
I actually don’t hold this one so much against the Bush Administration. When people are caught off guard by the unexpected — indeed, the unthinkable — they tend to bungle. That’s just the way it is.
chrome agnomen
a couple of things should be established beyond doubt by now. one is that any number of people in the last administration were corrupt to their very core, and nothing whatsoever that they said, did, or thought should be regarded with anything but contempt. another is that there is the barest, and i mean the barest chance that they will ever be called to account for any of it. this is just a cold hard bitter fact.
i don’t mean to imply that we should just ‘keep walking’, but realistically the best i think we can hope for is that some portion of the populace will take a lesson away from this. i have serious reservations about even so little as this coming to pass.
i guess what bothers me about being constantly reminded about the newly revealed perfidies of those people is that i all ready knew in my heart of hearts that they were the lowest of life forms, and that no revelations do anything but reaffirm what i all ready knew.
i have never been able to find in myself any faith in a life after this one in any form, whether it be physical, mental, or spiritual. i believe that this is a one shot deal, and you do the best you can to get it right this time. no do overs. but if there is any one thing that makes me wish for an after life, it is so that these people can suffer in turn for the sufferings they have brought to so may millions of people.
sometimes my disgust with elements of the human race is so great that it just chokes me. not with rage, thankfully, or i would be the guy you read about in the papers, just with a despair that i can’t even find words for, a disgust i can’t describe, an awful coldness in me that i can’t bear to look at without fear for my well being.
if i could believe in the personification of evil, it might look quite like dick cheney.
+9 (but i’m not sure that’s a factor)