This may seem like a minor point in the grand scheme of things, but I’m pretty sure Dick Cheney accidentally explained last night why he’s opposed to the U.S. embargo against Cuba.<\/p>\n
Ifill: Mr. Vice President, in June of 2000 when you were still CEO of Halliburton, you said that U.S. businesses should be allowed to do business with Iran because, quote, “Unilateral sanctions almost never work.”<\/p>\n
After four years as vice president now, and with Iran having been declared by your administration as part of the “Axis of Evil,” do you still believe that we should lift sanctions on Iran?<\/p>\n
Cheney: No, I do not. And, Gwen, at the time, I was talking specifically about this question of unilateral sanctions.<\/p>\n
What happens when we impose unilateral sanctions is, unless there’s a collective effort, then other people move in and take advantage of the situation and you don’t have any impact, except to penalize American companies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
First, Cheney’s attempts to distance himself from his own anti-sanction efforts weren’t exactly true<\/a>. Second, and more politically significant right now, Cheney articulated a policy that is clearly at odds with the Bush administration’s position with regards to Cuba. Considering the reaction<\/a> from South Florida’s Cuban community to the administration’s harsh new restrictions<\/a> on travel and remittances, this offers the Kerry campaign an opportunity.
\n
\nThe New Democrat Network, for example, has been working furiously to rally Dem support<\/a> in the Cuban-American community, after over a generation of loyalty to the GOP. With this in mind, I wonder what the reaction would be if South Floridians heard that Cheney announced on national television that he rejects “unilateral sanctions.” After all, that’s exactly what the U.S. has imposed on Cuba. If Cheney opposes such sanctions, does this mean that the Bush administration, if given another term, might weaken the embargo against Castro?<\/p>\nBy Cheney’s own logic, our embargo isn’t “having any impact” and only serves to “penalize American companies.” It’d be a little fishy, but if Dems played by GOP rules, I can imagine an ad airing in South Florida that says, in Spanish, that Dick Cheney “opposes the kind of sanctions the United States has imposed on Fidel Castro.” It’s technically true and I have a hunch it’d get a pretty strong reaction.<\/p>\n
At a minimum, shouldn’t Cheney be asked to explain why he opposes unilateral sanctions except for when he supports them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This may seem like a minor point in the grand scheme of things, but I’m pretty sure Dick Cheney accidentally explained last night why he’s opposed to the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Ifill: Mr. Vice President, in June of 2000 when you were still CEO of Halliburton, you said that U.S. businesses should be allowed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}