By Mark Mellman
March 14, 2007
Dick Cheney should resign his office.
The vice president should not be banished simply because he has become one of the most unpopular figures in American political history, nor because his incessant vitriol, heaped upon everyone with whom he disagrees, poisons our discourse and divides our country. Rather, the vice president should vacate his office because doing so is the only way to bring an honorable end to a miserable tenure.
By resigning, Cheney could give substantive meaning to Republican calls for personal responsibility.
Snip...
His errors have certainly produced consequences for others — nearly 3,200 Americans are dead, and over 20,000 are wounded, at potentially a trillion dollars in cost to the taxpayers. To what end — to eliminate WMDs that, in fact, had been dismantled more than a decade before we invaded?
Snip...
However, the vice president has not simply made mistakes, he has told lies, repeatedly. While being wrong is not an indictable offense, lying to the country is.
Snip...
The most recent entry on Cheney’s rap sheet is the conviction of his chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for perjury in a trial where the prosecutor was clear about the “cloud hanging over what the vice president did” and the jury itself was demanding to see Cheney in the defendant’s dock. What kind of a person blithely goes about his business while a loyal lieutenant faces a prison term for protecting him?
more...Cheney in 1991 (via
Think Progress):
Well, just as it’s important, I think, for a president to know when to commit U.S. forces to combat, it’s also important to know when not to commit U.S. forces to combat.
I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do? Who would we put in power? What kind of government would we have? Would it be a Sunni government, a Shi’a government, a Kurdish government? Would it be secular, along the lines of the Ba’ath Party? Would be fundamentalist Islamic?
I do not think the United States wants to have U.S. military forces accept casualties and accept the responsibility of trying to govern Iraq. I think it makes no sense at all.linkCheney this month:
"It is simply not consistent for anyone to demand aggressive action against the menace posed by the Iranian regime while at the same time acquiescing in a retreat from Iraq that would leave our worst enemies dramatically emboldened and Israel's best friend, the United States, dangerously weakened," Cheney said.
linkCheney and Halliburton:
Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive from 1995-2000 and the Bush administration has been accused of favoring the conglomerate with lucrative no-bid contracts in
Iraq.
Federal investigators last month alleged Halliburton was responsible for $2.7 billion of the $10 billion in contractor waste and overcharging in Iraq.
Halliburton last month announced a 40-percent decline in fourth-quarter profit, despite heavy demand for its oil field equipment and personnel.
linkHere's is how
factcheck.org defended Cheney in 2004:
Cheney says he takes no part in matters relating to Halliburton, and so far we've seen no credible allegation to the contrary. Time magazine reported in its June 7 edition that an e-mail from an unnamed Army Corps of Engineers official stated that a contract to be given to Halliburton in March 2003 "has been coordinated w VP's office." But it wasn't clear who wrote that e-mail, whether the author had direct knowledge or was just repeating hearsay, or even what was meant by the word "coordinated," which could mean no more than that somebody in Cheney's office was being kept informed of contract talks.
Indeed, a few days later it was revealed that Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby was informed in advance that Halliburton was going to receive an earlier contract in the fall of 2002 -- to secretly plan post-war repair of Iraq's oil facilities. But being informed of a decision after it is made is a far cry from taking part in making it. And according to the White House, Libby didn't even pass on the information to Cheney anyway.
Cheney and Gonzales
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