‘The President bears the major part of the burden’

May 11, 2007

Dick Cheney sat down with Fox News’ Bret Baier yesterday for a fairly lengthy interview, focused almost exclusively on the Middle East and the war in Iraq. There were a few interesting exchanges, but this was my favorite:

QUESTION: You are portrayed by your opponents and some in the media as this sinister figure, as this cold-blooded warmonger who doesn’t care about the number of body bags going back. I know you read the casualty reports every day. I know you and Mrs. Cheney visit wounded troops privately. And I saw you in Iraq with troops in Iraq. But how do you feel about the cost of this war in blood and treasure four years later? And I guess the question most Americans have is how much is enough.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, obviously, any casualty is to be regretted. Nobody likes to be in the position where they have to make those kinds of decisions. Obviously, the President bears the major part of the burden.

There’s that “burden” talk again. Two weeks ago, Laura Bush said no one suffers more than the president, which, given the circumstances, seems pretty ridiculous. (Bush told a reporter in December, “I must tell you, I’m sleeping a lot better than people would assume.”) For that matter, Cheney never got around to actually answering the question: How much is enough?

A few other gems that caught my eye:

* “If you go to Baghdad, obviously, the problem has been Sunni-Shia conflict in the past. You’ve got al Qaeda woven in various places through the area, which is primarily a Sunni organization.”

More than five years after 9/11, and the VP thinks al Qaeda is “primarily” Sunni? Note to Cheney: it’s exclusively and profoundly Sunni. As CQ’s Jeff Stein recently explained, “If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.” You’d think Cheney would know that by now.

* “The real threat we face today is the possibility of an al Qaeda cell in the midst of one of our cities armed with a nuclear weapon, and if they ever were to achieve that, and we know they’re trying, but if they were ever to pull that off and detonate a nuclear weapon in one of our major cities, it would rival all the casualties we’ve suffered in all the wars in over 200 years of American history.”

This was in answer to a question about Iraq. A cynical person might think Cheney was trying to scare people by tying a withdrawal policy to a domestic nuclear attack. Dick wouldn’t do that, would he?

* “We didn’t get elected to be popular. We didn’t get elected to worry just about the fate of the Republican Party.”

Well, I guess this part worked out well, didn’t it?

* “I think victory in Iraq looks, as you’ve just touched on it, it’s an Iraq that’s self-governing, that is basically democratic, reflects the will of the Iraqi people and is capable of providing for its own security, at which point we’ll be able to significantly reduce our activities in the region. We don’t want to stay a day longer than we have to, but we’ve got to get Iraq to the point where they can take care of their own affairs and protect themselves against the conflict that they’ve been subjected to. So it’s a fairly straightforward proposition. It’s not likely ever to be a violence-free society.”

So, we might reach a point in which there’s an acceptable level of violence? Funny, Cheney thought John Kerry was weak for even suggesting such a thing three years ago.

* “[W]hen we talk to [Iraqi officials] about consequences [of benchmarks] in some kind of bureaucratic sense or threatening them with a cutoff of funds, for example, if they don’t do A, B and C, it strikes me as, you know, that’s Washington talk but it may not have all that relevance on the ground out there. They’ve got a job to do. They’ve got to meet those requirements.”

And if not, nothing happens. It’s quite a system Cheney has there, isn’t it?

quite a guy, our vice president……quite a guy…..one hardly knows where to begin.

  • I thought you were going to take the Cheney quote in a different direction, actually.

    Notice that, in response to a direct question about how he feels about the real human costs of war, Cheney says nothing about himself. He doesn’t say what if anything he regrets, he uses the passive voice to indicate that, yes, somewhere, casualties are in fact regretted. This is amazingly telling. Intentional or not, Cheney actually confirmed what the interviewer was inquiring about: that he is detached, unfeeling, and cold-blooded.

  • “If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.” You’d think Cheney would know that by now.

    But of course the Vice President knows that. He’s not a stupid man. He just continues to believe that the American people are stupid. And thus, he continues to try to conflate Sunni and Shi’a, because it fits what he wants, which is a grand war on Islam.

    Fortunately, he’s not going to get it.

  • re: Anne @ 2. Either that or the writers of 24 have been using Dick as a consultant.

    “The real threat we face today is the possibility of an al Qaeda cell in the midst of one of our cities armed with a nuclear weapon…”

    What? From what I understand it’s not that easy to smuggle a nuclear device into an American city. It is not the “real threat” we face today and even if it was, nothing George and Dick have done in Iraq would have thwarted it. It’s just more fearmongering to rally the base into staying the course.

    (Nice catch on the pasive voice, Greg)

  • “Obviously, the President bears the major part of the burden.”

    One long-lasting result of Bush’s presidency will be the watering down and ironic transformation of phrases that used to have some meaning.

    “I will bear the burden” now means “I feel bad for all those people who have to carry me and my failed policies around.”

    Oh, and “I will accept full responsibility” means “Go f#@k yourself.”

  • I had a different read of the “burden” comment, to whit: “It’s his fault, not mine!”

    “It’s not likely ever to be a violence-free society.”

    “The real threat we face today is the possibility of an al Qaeda cell in the midst of one of our cities armed with a nuclear weapon…it would rival all the casualties we’ve suffered in all the wars in over 200 years of American history.”

    So shit blowing up in Iraq = acceptable. But a highly improbable scenario that involves a bunch of loons assembling a bomb powerful enough to take out more than 700,000 people must make us clench our spincters in fear!

  • Did Dick Cheney just make George Bush the fallguy for Cheney’s neocon atrocities? Sounded like it to me.

    And it also sounded like Cheney admitted to using the Republican Party as a mere tool to advance his shadowy goals which are apparently something separate and apart from the party he claims to belong to.

    Thanks for letting us know, Dick.

  • Oh yes, I suspect Dick’s uncertainty about the composition of A-Q stems from a fear of being summoned back to Saudi Arabia for another bout of kissing the king’s Guccis.

  • “Obviously, the President bears the major part of the burden.”

    Shouldn’t be rather –

    The President bears the major part of the RESPONSIBILITY.

    Rumsfeld, Condi, and I bear the remainder of the blame.

  • Cheney (the vice-idiot): “The real threat we face today is the possibility of an al Qaeda cell in the midst of one of our cities armed with a nuclear weapon…”

    Whenever I hear these clowns talk about nuclear weapons, I think of how much unsecured nuclear material is just sitting around in the former Soviet Union, and how little the Bushies have done to secure it. Hell, for the half-trillion dollar cost of the Iraq war we could probably just have purchased most of the loose nuclear material outright. Instead, five years after 9/11 we’ve got to hear Cheney spout the same talking points he was making two days afterwards.

    These right-wing idiots never seem to realize that, even though the U.S. is the most powerful nation on Earth, we still have a finite amount of resources. Money that goes into a useless war is money that could have been used to fight a real threat. I’d love to hear reporters start asking Cheney what he’s been doing to secure loose nukes.

  • I’d love to hear reporters start asking Cheney what he’s been doing to secure loose nukes. –Comment by gg

    So would I love to hear an explanation of what these jerks have been doing with the public trust, so that is why Cheney chooses FOX to spew his garbage. He knows they won’t ask any tough questions. It is like a mantra for me these days: Impeach them all!

  • Some breaking news on the dick.

    BRUSSELS, May 11 — Vice President Dick Cheney used the deck of an American aircraft carrier just 150 miles off Iran’s coast as the backdrop today to warn the country that the United States was prepared to use its naval power to keep Tehran from disrupting off oil routes or “gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.”

    Vice President Dick Cheney on board the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf today.

    Little of what Mr. Cheney said in the cavernous hangar bay of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. John C. Stennis was new. Each individual line had, in some form, been said before, at various points in the four-year-long nuclear standoff with Iran, and during the increasingly tense arguments over whether Iran is aiding the insurgents in Iraq.

    But Mr. Cheney stitched all of those warnings together, and the symbolism of sending the administration’s most famous hawk to deliver the speech so close to Iran’s coast was unmistakable.

    […]

    When President Bush ordered the two carriers into the Gulf late last year, senior administration officials said it was part of an effort to gain some negotiating leverage over the Iranians. At about the same time, American military personnel began capturing some Iranians in Iraq, and some of them are still held there.

    American officials have also been pressing Europeans banks and companies to avoid doing business with Tehran, in an effort to make it more difficult for the country to recycle its oil profits.

    Oil seemed to be on Mr. Cheney’s mind today, when he told an audience of 3,500 to 4,000 American service members on the Stennis that Iran would not be permitted to choke off oil shipments through the waters of the region.

    “With two carrier strike groups in the Gulf, we’re sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike,” he said. “We’ll keep the sea lanes open. We’ll stand with our friends in opposing extremism and strategic threats. We’ll disrupt attacks on our own forces. We’ll continue bringing relief to those who suffer, and delivering justice to the enemies of freedom. And we’ll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.”
    […]

    The symbols of coercion were part of the backdrop on the Stennis: Mr. Cheney spoke in front of five F-18 Super Hornet warplanes.

    But mindful of the lasting imagery of President Bush on another carrier a little more than four years ago, there were no signs proclaiming success, much less “Mission Accomplished.” Instead, Mr. Cheney repeated his arguments about the danger of early withdrawal from Iraq.

    “I want you to know that the American people will not support a policy of retreat,” Mr. Cheney said. “We want to complete the mission, we want to get it done right, and then we want to return home with honor.”

    Mr. Cheney is on a weeklong visit to the Middle East, and made Iraq his first stop on Wednesday and Thursday. He spoke to American troops stationed near Saddam Hussein’s birthplace, Tikrit, telling them in somber tones that they still had a tough fight ahead of them.

    His assessment stood in stark contrast to the one he made two years ago, when he declared in an interview with CNN that the insurgency in Iraq was in its “last throes.”

    The United States remains at odds with Iran over its uranium-enrichment program, which Iran says is for peaceful nuclear energy, but which America and its Western allies say is intended instead to produce atomic weapons.

    Administration officials have also said that weapons are being smuggled into Iraq from Iran and that insurgents may be getting training in bomb-making and bomb-placing techniques in Iran. The Iranian government denies sponsoring or encouraging terrorism.

    Mr. Cheney visited the U.S.S. John C. Stennis before, in March 2002, at a time when he was trying to build support for the invasion of Iraq.

    He also visited Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, where the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is expected to arrive in the next few days. Mr. Cheney’s tour is also scheduled to include visits to Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

  • The Vice-Idiot: “We’ll continue bringing relief to those who suffer, and delivering justice to the enemies of freedom.”

    Considering Cheney’s screwed up and usually skewed definition of “the enemies of freedom”, whenever I hear a statement like this I have to go peep out my window to see if a predator is circling my home…

    Considering the state of Iraq, he’s also got a messed up definition of ‘relief’.

  • Well, I thought the comment “Obviously, the President bears the major part of the burden” was a Freudian slip because he believes he’s the one running the country.

  • […] the President bears the major part of the burden. — indeed so :: the karmic burden, and it is ginormous (poor devil).

    It’s kind of satisfying to have Cheney’s take on ‘victory’ in Iraq in black and white. Gives us a reference point and something to pick apart.

    * “I think victory in Iraq looks, as you’ve just touched on it, it’s an Iraq that’s self-governing, that is basically democratic, reflects the will of the Iraqi people and is capable of providing for its own security, at which point we’ll be able to significantly reduce our activities in the region. We don’t want to stay a day longer than we have to, but we’ve got to get Iraq to the point where they can take care of their own affairs and protect themselves against the conflict that they’ve been subjected to. So it’s a fairly straightforward proposition. It’s not likely ever to be a violence-free society.”

    “[…] but we’ve got to get Iraq to the point where they can take care of their own affairs and protect themselves against the conflict that they’ve been subjected to.” — Seems a pretty good description of Iraq before the Cheney gang stormed in and messed it up.

    Also, what’s this passive voice “.. the conflict that they’ve been subjected to “? The conflict that America, driven by Cheney, has inflicted on them, perhaps? It’s great how these guys can dissociate themselves from the atrocities they’ve created when they want to appear above and beyond it all.

    They have not one jot of sympathy from me for for any of their burdens, karmic or otherwise. They brought it on themselves. They had plenty of choices, plenty of warnings, and plenty of reliable intelligence, but they chose to ignore it all, squander their inheritance and head down the road of death, destruction, misery and culpability. Shame on them and more’s the pity.

  • How I long for those days in the past where this guy would only be the crank at Thanksgiving dinner. When he would open his mouth & start spewing his brand of nonsense & hatred, the rest of the family would roll their eyes & think to themselves, “What an asshole!”

    Thank you, Republicans, for elevating this piece of human garbage to one of the most powerful positions in the world. I will never forget what you have done to us, and I will explain the situation to every willing ear that I find.

  • “You’ve got al Qaeda woven in various places through the area, which is primarily a Sunni organization.” Of course he’s right that al Qaeda is “primarily” Sunni — the Spanish Inquisition was “primarily” Catholic and the Soviet Union’s government under Stalin was “primarily” Communist.

  • Does anyone doubt that Cheney spends more time worrying about his personal bottom line than he does the troops?

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