It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the brazen hypocrisy of Sean Hannity and Fox News in calling on Dick Cheney to lecture President Obama about preventing terrorism attacks and being ready to handle attacks such as the one in Benghazi, Libya when they do come. While many may think of the Bush administration as having abjectly failed to protect the country from the original 9/11 – thousands of times worse than what happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 – and for killing thousands in Iraq in a war based on false claims that the country was an imminent threat (and never mind Hurricane Katrina), Hannity and Fox pretended that Cheney had some kind of track record to be proud of when it comes to protecting Americans.
As a banner on the screen read, “Benghazi-Gate?” Cheney called Benghazi “one of the worst incidents that, frankly, that I can recall in my career.” In that case, maybe Cheney is going senile. Even if he just doesn’t count the original 9/11 for some reason, as Media Matters noted, seven embassies and U.S. consulates were attacked during the Bush/Cheney administration. In June, 2002, in a worse attack than the one at Benghazi, 10 people were killed and 51 injured at the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. But maybe Cheney doesn’t count those casualties because they weren’t American.
Cheney also accused the Obama administration of “having ignored messages from their own people on the ground” in Libya. But it’s funny Cheney should mention that because I seem to remember an August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” just a few weeks before he succeeded in doing exactly that. Kurt Eichenwald wrote in a damning New York Times op-ed called, The Deafness Before the Storm that while that particular report is not as damning as the title would suggest, read in conjunction with other reports, it’s even more so:
While those (other) documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.
In fact, Eichenwald described the CIA as “apoplectic” over the Bush administration’s failure to heed its warnings in the summer of 2001. And yet, in nearly nine years of watching and monitoring Fox pretty closely, I have yet to see much, if any, serious attention paid to that failure.
Nor to the Bush administration’s efforts to stonewall the 9/11 investigations. But Cheney told a palsy Hannity, that the Obama administraiton’s “cover up is still ongoing.” This, even after the Obama administration, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, quickly appointed an independent investigation board and then readily accepted each of its recommendations after its critical report was released shortly thereafter.
Nevertheless, Cheney boasted that when he was in the Bush administration, “In my past experience, when we got into these situations, especially after 9/11, we were always …locked and loaded, ready to go on 9/11.”
Sure he was.
By the way, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, originally appointed by George W. Bush, has backed the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attack. As Bloomberg reports, Gates said that "had he headed the Pentagon at the time he wouldn’t have approved sending a small force into Libya as some critics suggested."
But what would a guy like Gates, who has also served in the Air Force and headed the C.I.A., know about that in comparison to "five deferments" Cheney?
UPDATE: The date of the PDB was August 6, 2001, not 2011, as I erroneously typed.
At least Bush has the decency to not comment on Obama’s presidency.
“It’s easy to see where Lizard Liz Cheney gets all of her charm and grace.”
Amen to that — and so does her mother Lynne. Mark my words: both of these women are SO COLD, MEAN AND ARROGANT they make the late “Queen of Mean” Leona Helmsley look like Mahatma Gandhi.
“If only Pres. Obama hadn’t raised Taxes on those terrorists and triggered the protests and Embassy(Consulate) attacks.” -channeling FoxNews and there guests
sheesh.
I certainly wouldn’t want John Edwards to represent our side if the subject was caring for your spouse who is suffering from cancer.
Because this means he’s finally ready to accept some responsibility for his own conduct in the Valerie Plame matter, when he and Karl Rove decided to punish Joe Wilson for publicly defying them about Iraq and WMDs by exposing Wilson’s wife Valerie’s CIA status to the press. I’m glad to know that Cheney is finally going to step up and admit his involvement in this national security matter and stop hiding behind his chief of staff Scooter Libby. This is great news and people should let Cheney know they’re happy to hear it.
It’s also nice to know that Cheney has not taken the time to actually review the Benghazi matter, seeing as how the ARB report has been available for several months already. Maybe if he actually read these materials, he might learn a thing or two about what was going on at the time he thinks that a military team was going to magically appear at one consulate in a region where there were riots and embassy attacks breaking out everywhere. I’m sure that Cheney wasn’t advocating telling all those other embassies that they were on their own while we devoted ourselves to a mop-up effort after the attack had been concluded. Or was he?
And it’s quite relevant how Cheney dealt with the multiple embassy and consulate attacks that happened on the Bush Administration’s watch. Perhaps Cheney would like to explain the loss of life in each of those cases and why he didn’t provide better security.
The thing about Cheney is that he’s always been good about speaking with assurance, usually about subjects of which he knows not much.
Um, Ellen? You might want to make a correction or post an update because that PDB was August 6, 2001, not 2011.
Hell, ‘lil dick — if anybody knows about “ongoing coverups”, it’s you: you STILL haven’t released the minutes from those white house meetings with the energy companies you held in early 2001 . . .
Nevertheless, Cheney boasted that when he was in the Bush administration, “In my past experience, when we got into these situations, especially after 9/11, we were always …locked and loaded, ready to go on 9/11.”
And therein lies the problem, ’lil dick.
If only you and Little Lord Fauntleroy had been “locked and loaded” on the 8/6 PRIOR TO 9/11, there’d have been NO NEED for you to be “ready to go” on any SUBSEQUENT 9/11 . . .
.
But, by all means… let’s hear what he has to say about discord in resolving issues like this!
Allow us to mop the floor with these two clowns. The murders of embassy employees under Bush/Cheney.
16 killed at U.S. Embassy at Yemen, Sept. 17, 2008.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-09-18/world/36780025_1_al-qaeda-yemeni-security-forces-embassy-spokesman-ryan-gliha
12 killed at U.S. Consulate at Karachi, June 14, 2002.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/06/14/karachi.blast/
The Express is telling everyone to call talk shows, locally and nationally, and tell the world of these two events under Bush/Cheney. Tweet this information and post on Facebook. Tell your neighbors, co-workers, strangers, family members, etc. Remind the masses 24/7 until they memorize it.
This Oyster Bay harpie is not the brightest candle in the room, or in the family.
NOTE TO CHENEY
Let’s bring up your records with Bush.
NOTE TO HANNITY
You should have stayed in construction.