Dick Cheney gave an interview this morning on Fox in what clearly was an effort to stem the onslaught against the administration's Middle East plans. The White House must be feeling the heat from Congress, to risk sending a deeply unpopular Vice President out on such a mission. You get the impression that they're now worried about holding onto their base.
Cheney botched the job even worse than might have been predicted. Unprepared perhaps for a surprisingly aggressive line of questioning from Chris Wallace, Cheney came across as surly, evasive, and delusional.
What's worse, while barely trying to conciliate the administration's critics in Congress, again and again Cheney essentially dismissed their relevance and insinuated that they were incapable of challenging Bush's policies. He couldn't even resist claiming that they were undermining the troops in Iraq.
Cheney's intervention is such a colossal failure at so many levels that it may provoke Congress to take a tougher stance than it might otherwise have done.
Trust me, you'll want to read the entire interview to get the full sense of this fiasco. I'll just highlight some of the more garish blunders by Cheney.
Near the outset, Wallace established that Cheney was still talking out of both sides of his mouth.
WALLACE: Over the last 46 months, the president and you have repeatedly said that you are on the path to victory, sometimes proposing exactly the opposite policy of what the president did this week. Let's take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight.
BUSH: Not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq.
BUSH: Will we be nimble enough? You know, will we be able to deal with the circumstances on the ground? And the answer is, yes, we will.
BUSH: Absolutely we're winning.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
WALLACE: Mr. Vice President, why should we believe that, this time, you've got it right?
CHENEY: Well, I think if you look at what's transpired in Iraq, Chris, we have, in fact, made enormous progress....
WALLACE: But the fact is, some of these policies that you've proposed, that we talked about there, haven't worked. Why should we believe this policy will?
Cheney doesn't even have an answer prepared for this most obvious of questions. Instead, he pretends that the US strategy was going well right up until the Mosque of the Golden Dome was blown up.
The next question leaves Cheney gasping for air:
WALLACE: Throughout this war, the president has said that he listens to the generals on the ground and he gives them what they want.
But in November, General Abizaid, the commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, spoke before the Senate committee and said that, after meeting with every divisional commander, that sending more troops into Iraq would prevent the Iraqis from taking on the responsibility they should take....
[VIDEO CLIP]
WALLACE: Mr. Vice President, why did you and the president decide to overrule the commanders?
CHENEY: Well, I don't think we've overruled the commanders. The fact is the plan we've got here now has been embraced by Abizaid, by General Casey, by...
WALLACE: But how do you explain what he said right then, less than two months ago?
CHENEY: Well, it was two months ago.
And from that point, the because-I-said-so Cheney emerges in all his glory. He repeatedly dodges the questions of whether the administration has any fall-back plan in the event that Maliki's government fails to achieve anything, and whether the White House clings to an open-ended commitment. Then comes the question of Congress' powers to influence the war, which Cheney tramples all over.
WALLACE: Does Congress have any control over how you and the president conduct this war?
CHENEY: Well, Congress certainly has a significant role to play here. They have clearly been instrumental and a major player, in terms of appropriating the funds to support the force and the activities in the global conflict as well as our operations in Iraq.
We talk to the Congress a lot. We consulted with over 120 members of Congress before the president made his pronouncement.
We agreed to set up an advisory group, if you will, that draws on the chairman and ranking members of the key committees of the House and Senate, as we go forward.
So Congress clearly has a role to play. It's an important...
At first, nothing more than condescension toward Congress from Cheney. But when the question becomes one of actual power, he goes semi-berserk.
WALLACE: But that's a consultative role. The question I'm asking...
CHENEY: It is a consultative role.
WALLACE: ... though, is, if they want to stop it, can they?
CHENEY: The president is the commander in chief. He's the one who has to make these tough decisions. He's the guy who's got to decide how to use the force and where to deploy the force.
And the Congress, obviously, has to support the effort through the power of the purse. So they've got a role to play, and we certainly recognize that.
But you also — you cannot run a war by committee, you know. The Constitution is very clear that the president is, in fact, under Article 2, the commander in chief.
WALLACE: So let me ask you a couple of specific questions. If Congress passes a resolution opposing increasing the troops in Iraq, will that stop you?
CHENEY: It would be a sense of the Congress' resolution, and we're interested in it and what Congress has to say about it. But it would not affect the president's ability to carry out his policy.
In his view, Congress "has to support the effort" by appropriating funds. They can say anything they want about the war, which would be quaint. But Congress cannot interfere in Bush's "ability to carry out" his harebrained scheme. In case you suppose that Cheney did not really mean to say that Congress must support Bush's plan, there was this:
WALLACE: What do you say to members of Congress who may try to block your efforts, your policy in Iraq? Would they be, in effect, undercutting the troops?
CHENEY: Well, I think they would be.
And then just to compound the stupidity of that statement, Cheney adds...
Congress clearly has every right to express their opinion and to agree or disagree with administration policy
After Cheney tries to paint the Democrats as the troublemakers for the administration, Wallace injects some reality:
WALLACE: Mr. Vice President, it's not just Democrats, though, who oppose the plan. This week there were a number of leading Senate Republicans who also came out against it. Let's watch.
[VIDEO CLIP of criticims by Sen. Coleman, Vitter, and Hagel]
WALLACE: Aren't you losing a lot of support in your own caucus?
CHENEY: Well, I don't think Chuck Hagel has been with us for a long time.
Having dismissed all Congressional critics, Cheney proceeds to dismiss the voters' views on Iraq.
WALLACE: Iraq was a big issue in the November election. I want you to take a look at some numbers from the election. According to the National Exit Poll, 67 percent said the war was either very or extremely important to their vote, and only 17 percent supported sending in more troops.
By taking the policy you have, haven't you, Mr. Vice President, ignored the express will of the American people in the November election?
CHENEY: Well, Chris, this president, and I don't think any president worth his salt, can afford to make decisions of this magnitude according to the polls. The polls change day by day...
WALLACE: Well, this was an election, sir.
CHENEY: Polls change day by day, week by week.
I won't devote any space to Cheney's lengthy but nearly incomprehensible mutterings directed against Iran. He did, in any case, confirm the NYT story that the Defense Department is engaged in warrantless domestic surveillance.
WALLACE: There's a report in the New York Times today that's been confirmed by administration officials that the Pentagon and the CIA have been obtaining financial records about hundreds of Americans suspected of involvement in either terrorism or espionage.
Why involve the CIA and the Pentagon in domestic intelligence- gathering?
CHENEY: Well, remember what these issues are. This is a question, as I understand it, of issuing national security letters that allow us to collect financial information, for example, on suspected — or, on people we have reason to suspect.
The Defense Department gets involved because we've got hundreds of bases inside the United States that are potential terrorist targets. We've got hundreds of thousands of people, innocent Americans...
WALLACE: But why not let the FBI do that, sir?
CHENEY: Well, they can do a certain amount of it, and they do.
But the Department of Defense has legitimate authority in this area. This is an authority that goes back three or four decades. It was reaffirmed in the Patriot Act that was renewed here about a year or so ago.
It's a perfectly legitimate activity. There's nothing wrong with it or illegal. It doesn't violate people's civil rights. And if an institution that receives one of these national security letters disagrees with it, they're free to go to court to try to stop its execution.
Nobody's civil rights are violated because a third party who, unknown to them, is pressured to hand over private records may choose to go to court to uphold their rights. Cheney's comments will do nothing to prevent this latest revelation from exploding into a major confrontation between the Democratic Congress and the White House. And on the subject of looming Congressional investigations of Bush Co., here is what the Vice President had to say about cooperation:
WALLACE: A number of the new Democratic chairmen say that they're going to conduct investigations of various things that have gone on over the last six years in the Bush administration and are going to go on.
And you're considered something of a hard-liner when it comes to executive authority. What's the White House position going to be when it comes to requests for either documents or witnesses from the administration?
CHENEY: Well, we've been, I think, very responsible in that regard. And when there is a legitimate need for those documents to be presented to the Congress, and they have a legitimate constitutional or statutory reason to have access to them, we try to accommodate them.
Sometimes requests have been made that clearly fall outside the boundaries, clearly trying to get into an area, for example, that is preserved and protected for the president — the president's ability to consult, for example, with people in private without having to publicize or tell the Congress who he's talking to.
We took that case on my energy task force, for example, all the way to the Supreme Court and won on a 7-2 decision. So it depends. We'll do everything we can to cooperate and work with the Congress. We want good relations with the Congress.
But if they come down and seek something that we don't think is appropriate, we'll defend our constitutional obligations and responsibilities. We take an oath just like they do to protect, preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States. And so we have strong feelings about it, and we've operated accordingly.
After all the damage he's done in this interview to the White House's relations with Congress, maybe Mr. Cheney decided to follow the old advice from the days of vaudeville...
Leave 'em laughing.
Update [2007-1-14 20:55:53 by smintheus]: : ::: CrooksandLiars has a clip of the interview (h/t to MO Blue in comments). There's a sudden, unexplicable jump in the middle of the interview which cuts out (to my mind) the most interesting and inflammatory material. (The gap occurs right after Wallace shows the clips of Coleman, Vitter, and Hagel criticizing the "New Way Forward".)
You can see the interview at Fox News as well. I haven't viewed it there, so I cannot say if the strange gap in the C&L tape is due to Fox's editing.
Update [2007-1-14 23:34:17 by smintheus]: : : I can't resist the temptation to add some cringe-worthy material from George Bush's interview this evening on 60 Minutes.
PELLEY: You mention mistakes having been made in your speech. What mistakes are you talking about?
BUSH: You know, we've been through this before. Abu Ghraib was a mistake. Using bad language like, you know, "bring them on" was a mistake. I think history is gonna look back and see a lot of ways we could have done things better. No question about it.
PELLEY: The troop levels . . .
BUSH: Could have been a mistake.
PELLEY: Could have been a mistake?
BUSH: Yeah. [General] John Abizaid, one of the planners, said in front of Congress, you know, he thought we might have needed more troops. My focus is on how to succeed. And the reason I brought up the mistakes is, one, that's the job of the commander-in-chief, and, two, I don't want people blaming our military. We got a bunch of good military people out there doing what we've asked them to do. And the temptation is gonna find scapegoats. Well, if the people want a scapegoat, they got one right here in me 'cause it's my decisions.
PELLEY: Fair to say there are not enough American troops on the ground to provide security for Iraq?
BUSH: Let’s let the historians work it out. But there's not enough troops on the ground right now to provide security for Iraq, and that's why I made the decision I made.
PELLEY: Do you think you owe the Iraqi people an apology for not doing a better job?
BUSH: That we didn't do a better job or they didn't do a better job?
PELLEY: Well, that the United States did not do a better job in providing security after the invasion.
BUSH: Not at all. I am proud of the efforts we did. We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we've endured great sacrifice to help them. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq.
PELLEY: Americans wonder whether . . .
BUSH: Yeah, they wonder whether or not the Iraqis are willing to do hard work necessary to get this democratic experience to survive. That's what they want.
Ok, enough. That's all I can stomach of this train-wreck of a President.
First, does he know what a 'scapegoat' is? How does he suppose he can become a 'scapegoat' if people blame him for his own decisions? Does he really think he can lay the mantle of magnanimity on his own shoulders, by refusing (for today) the chance to blame the military for his own failures?
Perhaps this is the single most revealing statement I've ever heard from George Bush's mouth. He seems to think he has some choice in the question of whether people get to blame him...and that by accepting some measure of his own responsibility, he's doing something extraordinary.
Second, troop levels COULD HAVE BEEN a mistake? But let's not busy our pretty little heads with a question that historians in the future can fuss over? You'll have to be satisfied that I admitted I used "bad language" when I said "bring it on"? Because if I'd just found some other, arrogantly reckless words to express my contempt for the safety of American troops in Iraq and of the Iraqi people, then all would have been well?
And third, the Iraqis owe the US an apology for having permitted their country to be torn to shreds in the anarchy that accompanied the US invasion? At this point, I'm speechless.
From Unbossed