Re: VP *** Cheny -- A Disaster for America

In article <ger78317go98ogi3fa822h1soi72q6sh5p@xxxxxxx>,
John Wesley Asquith <john_asquith6@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Cheney Unbound

By David S. Broder
Thursday, June 28, 2007

Years ago Lamar Alexander, the senator from Tennessee, told me of a
lesson he had learned as a young man on the White House staff: It is
always useful for the president to have at least one aide who has had a
successful career already, who does not need the job, and who therefore
can offer candid advice. When he was governor of Tennessee, Alexander
made sure he had such a person on his staff.

Later, when presidential candidate George W. Bush chose *** Cheney as
his running mate, I applauded the choice, thinking that Cheney would
fill the role Alexander had outlined. Boy, was I wrong.

The role model for Alexander was Bryce Harlow, the diminutive, modest
and universally trusted White House player in the Eisenhower and Nixon
years. Cheney, as described in a breathtakingly detailed series in The
Post this week by reporters Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, is something
else.

What they discovered, in a year of work that reveals more about the
inner workings of this White House than any previous reporting, is a
vice president who used the broad authority given him by a complaisant
chief executive to bend the decision-making process to his own ends and
purposes, often overriding Cabinet officers and other executive branch
officials along the way.

Cheney used his years of experience, as a former White House chief of
staff, as the secretary of defense and as the House Republican whip --
and all the savvy that moved him into those positions -- to amass power
and use it in the Bush administration. He was more than a match for the
newcomers to the White House, and he outfoxed even the veterans of past
administrations when it came to the bureaucratic wars.

He was not the ultimate decision-maker. Bush retained that authority,
and he used it to decide on war in Iraq, the final numbers in the budget
and who got to sit on the Supreme Court. But Cheney shaped all of those
decisions with his recommendations to the president -- often in ways
that were unknown to the other players and unseen by Congress and the
public.

Secrecy was one of his tools and weapons, and his lawyers -- Scooter
Libby first and now David Addington -- frustrated other policymakers by
their willingness to shape or reshape the law to suit Cheney's
arguments.

It is easy to see why former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, who had
been recommended for the job by Cheney, complained afterward that "there
is no policy process," because the decision-making was often
short-circuited by the vice president's private access to the Oval
Office.

O'Neill was not alone in feeling that way. The secretary of state, the
national security adviser and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board
also discovered to their surprise that Cheney had gone behind their
backs to get his way with the president.

What Gellman and Becker have described is a decision-making process in
which Bush has allowed Cheney to play a bureaucratic role inside the
White House that Cheney never permitted anyone to employ when he was
guarding the door as Gerald Ford's chief of staff.

He could exercise this power only with the compliance of the president
and only because he often could bypass the procedures he had put in
place in the Ford administration, procedures meant to protect the
president's interests. He used his intelligence and his grasp on the
levers of power -- and most of all he used secrecy -- to outflank and
outwit others and thereby shape the Bush administration's agenda.

It was not illegal, and it was not unconstitutional, but it could not
have happened unless the president permitted it and enabled it. And
ultimately the president is responsible for what has become, in very
large respect, the resulting wreckage of foreign policy, national
security policy, budget policy, energy policy and environmental policy
under Cheney's direction and on Cheney's watch.

Where I thought, mistakenly, that it would be a great advantage to Bush
to have a White House partner without political succession in mind, it
has turned out to be altogether too liberating an environment for a
political entrepreneur of surpassing skill operating under an
exceptional cloak of secrecy.

Thanks to Gellman and Becker, some of that secrecy has been removed.

and this;

Treason, which begins by being cautious, ends by betraying itself.
- Alphonse de Lamartine

Secrets of Cheney's Energy Task Force Come to Light

JUDICIAL WATCH, July 17,2003
Title: Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Feature Map of Iraqi
Oilfields
Author: Judicial Watch staff

FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS, January 2004
Title: "Bush-Cheney Energy Strategy:Procuring the Rest of the World's
Oil"
Author: Michael Klare

Faculty Evaluators: James Carr, Ph.D., Alexandra Von Meier, Ph.D.
Student Researcher: Cassie Cypher, Shannon Arthur

Documents turned over in the summer of 2003 by the Commerce Department
as a result of the Sierra Club's and Judicial Watch's Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit, concerning the activities of the Cheney
Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines,
refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil
and gas projects, and "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts."
The documents, dated March 2001, also feature maps of Saudi Arabian
and United Arab Emirates oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker
terminals. There are supporting charts with details of the major oil
and gas development projects in each country that provide information
on the project's costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion
date.

Documented plans of occupation and exploitation predating September 11
confirm heightened suspicion that U.S. policy is driven by the
dictates of the energy industry. According to Judicial Watch
President, Tom Fitton, "These documents show the importance of the
Energy Task Force and why its operations should be open to the
public."

When first assuming office in early 2001, President Bush's top foreign
policy priority was not to prevent terrorism or to curb the spread of
weapons of mass destruction-or any of the other goals he espoused
later that year following 9-11. Rather, it was to increase the flow of
petroleum from suppliers abroad to U.S. markets. In the months before
he became president, the United States had experienced severe oil and
natural gas shortages in many parts of the country, along with
periodic electrical power blackouts in California. In addition, oil
imports rose to more than 50% of total consumption for the first time
in history, provoking great anxiety about the security of the
country's long-term energy supply. Bush asserted that addressing the
nation's "energy crisis" was his most important task as president.

The energy turmoil of 2000-01 prompted Bush to establish a task force
charged with developing a long-range plan to meet U.S. energy
requirements. With the advice of his close friend and largest campaign
contributor, Enron CEO, Ken Lay, Bush picked Vice President ***
Cheney, former Halliburton CEO, to head this group. In 2001 the Task
Force formulated the National Energy Policy (NEP), or Cheney Report,
bypassing possibilities for energy independence and reduced oil
consumption with a declaration of ambitions to establish new sources
of oil.

The Bush Administration's struggle to keep secret the workings of
Cheney's Energy Task Force has been ongoing since early in the
President's tenure. The General Accounting Office, the investigative
arm of Congress, requested information in spring of 2001 about which
industry executives and lobbyists the Task Force was meeting with in
developing the Bush Administration's energy plan. When Cheney refused
disclosure, Congress was pressed to sue for the right to examine Task
Force records, but lost. Later, amid political pressure building over
improprieties regarding Enron's colossal collapse, Cheney's office
released limited information revealing six Task Force meetings with
Enron executives.

With multiple lawsuits currently pending, the Bush Administration
asserts that its right to secrecy is a matter of executive privilege
in regard to White House records. But because the White House staffed
the Task Force with employees from the Department of Energy and
elsewhere, it cannot pretend that its documents are White House
records. A 2001 case, in which the Justice Department has four times
appealed federal court rulings that the Vice President release task
force records, has been brought before the Supreme Court. The case
Richard B Cheney v. U.S. District Court for the District of Colombia,
No. 03-475, to be heard by Cheney's friend and duck hunting partner,
Justice Scalia, is now pending. Cases based on the Federal Advisory
Committee Act and Freedom of Information Act which require the Task
Force a balanced membership, open meetings, and public records, are
attempting to beat the Bush Administration in its battle to keep its
internal workings secret.

UPDATE BY MICHAEL KLARE: The issue of U.S. dependence on imported oil
has only become more critical over the past few months as U.S. oil
demand has risen and global supplies have contracted, pushing up
gasoline prices in the U.S., and thereby threatening the economic
recovery now (supposedly) under way. This, in turn, has made oil
prices and dependency an issue in the presidential election, with
President George W. Bush defending the status quo and Senator John
Kerry, the presumed Democratic nominee, calling for dramatic action to
reduce U.S. dependence on imported petroleum.

The contraction of global supplies is due in large part to political
turmoil in the major producing areas - precisely the sort of situation
I predicted in my article. In particular, the pace of overseas oil
production has been moderated by repeated sabotage of oil
infrastructure in Iraq, terrorist strikes on foreign oil firms in
Saudi Arabia, ethnic unrest in the Delta region of Nigeria, and
continuing political turbulence in Venezuela. Together, these
developments have pushed oil prices to their highest levels in
decades. At the same time, the Bush Administration has shown no
inclination to reduce U.S. military involvement in major overseas
producing areas, especially the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea basin
and Africa.

All of this has had one effect: The major news media are beginning to
pay much closer attention to the links between political turmoil
abroad and the economics of oil at home. Most major newspapers,
including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, have
published articles on various aspects of this problem. Still, the
media remains reluctant to explain the close link between the energy
policies of the Bush Administration and U.S. military strategy.

A number of books have come out that bear on this subject., "Blood
and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum
Dependency" Also highly recommended are: "Out of Gas," by David
Goodstein (W.W. Norton); "The End of Oil," by Paul Roberts (Houghton
Mifflin); and "The Party's Over," by Richard Heinberg (New Society
Publishers).

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(707) 664-2500
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when you believe the only tool you have is a hammer.
All problems look like nails.
.