Cheney Defends the "Nobody Could've Predicted" President
By Jon Perr Sunday Jan 11, 2009 9:00am
In an interview Thursday with the AP, Vice President Cheney neatly summarized the failed Bush presidency. Comparing the financial meltdown and implosion of the American economy with the 9/11 attacks, Cheney insisted, "I don’t think anybody saw it coming." As it turns out, from 9/11, sectarian conflict in Iraq and the election of Hamas to the Bush recession and the drowning of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, the leading lights of the Bush administration claimed they never saw it coming. Call it the "Nobody Could've Predicted Presidency."
As ThinkProgress detailed, Cheney deflected blame for the calamity on Wall Street and the deepening recession by declaring, "nobody anywhere was smart enough to figure that out" and "I don’t know that anybody did." Then, Cheney magically converted failure into a virtue and ignorance into a shield in explaining away the Bush presidency:
"No, obviously, I wouldn’t have predicted that. On the other hand I wouldn’t have predicted 9/11, the global war on terror, the need to simultaneous run military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq or the near collapse of the financial system on a global basis, not just the U.S."
At every turn, of course, voices both inside and outside the government warned a Bush administration asleep at the switch.
Starting with the prospect of terror attacks on the U.S. homeland. As George W. Bush was taking office in early 2001, the Hart-Rudman Commission on U.S. National Security issued its report declaring "The combination of unconventional weapons proliferation with the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack" and cautioning "many thousands of American lives" are at risk. At a transition briefing in the White House situation room during the first week of January, Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger warned his successor Condoleezza Rice, "I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject." And on January 25, 2001, counterrorism czar Richard Clarke (who helped lead the 1996 effort to protect the Atlanta Olympics from, among other things, threats from hijacked aircraft) handed the Bush national security team the famous Delenda plan for attacking Al Qaeda.
But in the aftermath of the horrific 9/11 attacks, Condi Rice has played the role of a reverse Nostradmus, detailing the myriad foreign policy and security disasters she failed to predict. Confronted by 9/11 commissioner Richard Ben Veniste about the August 6, 2001 PDB (Presidential Daily Brief) which warned of "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks," national security adviser Rice responded:
"I believe the title was 'Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.'"
Two weeks later on April 24, 2004, Rice took to the op-ed pages of the Washington Post to argue, "No al-Qaeda threat was turned over to the new administration." And in an argument she would later make repeatedly, Rice first introduced the now ubiquitous "nobody could have predicted" defense on May 16, 2002:
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking."
Even before this week's regurgitation by Dick Cheney, White House spokesman Tony Fratto showed that Rice's talking point had legs. Spoon-fed last month by Fox News anchor Jon Scott's suggestion that "nobody was thinking that there’d be terrorists flying 767s into buildings at that point," Fratto reliably coughed up the laughably discredited sound bite:
"That’s true. I mean, no one could have anticipated that kind of attack - or very few people."
Then there's the war in Iraq. The chaos that followed the U.S. invasion – the looting and the breakdown of security, the impact of disbanding the Iraqi army, the explosion of sectarian conflict, the prospects for a Sunni insurgency – was presciently predicted by the CIA and State Department long before the war began.
But for President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others in the administration, these disastrous setbacks for the American people were the unfortunate – and unknowable – results of a smashing victory for the United States. As the looting and ransacking of Baghdad spun out of control in April 2003, Rumfeld portrayed the administration's utter lack of foresight as a positive development:
"Think what’s happened in our cities when we’ve had riots, and problems, and looting. Stuff happens! … Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that’s what’s going to happen here."
A year later as the insurgency was taking a terrible toll of U.S. forces in Iraq, President Bush on August 30, 2004 offered the purest articulation of the uniquely Republican theory that nothing succeeds like failure (especially unanticipated failure):
"Had we had to do it [the invasion of Iraq] over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success - being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day."
As it turned out, the President's "catastrophic success" extended to his Bush Doctrine of expanding freedom and democracy throughout the Middle East. Sadly, when voters in the Palestinian territories went to the polls in January 2006, they much to surprise of Team Bush overwhelmingly chose Hamas.
That result (one coincidentally not reflected in the State Department's official timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process) came as a complete shock to Secretary of State Rice, if few others. As the New York Times reported:
"I've asked why nobody saw it coming," Ms. Rice said, speaking of her own staff. "It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse."
(Making matters worse, Vanity Fair and others detailed how subsequent covert U.S. backing of armed Fatah units helped spark the bloody civil war that left Hamas in control of Gaza.)
Of course, the Bush administration's refusal to acknowledge that which multitudes had foreseen extends to domestic policy as well. Nowhere is that more true than the devastation wrought on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina.
FEMA and other federal agencies had long fretted about the danger of a major tropical storm inundating New Orleans, as a 2001 study made clear. As Hurricane Katrina approach the city, Dr. Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center briefed President Bush, DHS Secretary Chertoff and FEMA's Brown on Sunday, August 28th, noting later, "It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped." That afternoon, the National Weather Service warned, "Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer," adding, "Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards."
And yet, George W. Bush insisted in the days after the catastrophe, no one could have foreseen the death of New Orleans. As the Washington Post put it:
President Bush, in a televised interview three days after Katrina hit, suggested that the scale of the flooding in New Orleans was unexpected. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm," Bush said in a Sept. 1 interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Which brings us to Vice President Cheney's pathetic claim Thursday about the economic crisis that there wasn't "anybody saw it coming." There was, of course, a legion of analysts, journalists and even members of the Bush administration warning about mortgage-backed securities and the collapse of the housing market. But as ThinkProgress documented, White House officials throughout 2008 denied the recession already underway since the previous December. Again, it was the hapless Tony Fratto who offered up the signature Bush sound bite on January 8, 2008:
"I don’t know of anyone predicting a recession."
There were those among us who back in 2000 predicted that a President George W. Bush would be a disaster for the United States. As for his supporters, they are in denial now as much as ever; an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll revealed that only 33% now admit to voting for Bush in 2000 and 2004.
How predictable.
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Bin Laden determined to...
FEMA prepared for 9/11 Attack.
What about the writings in the PNAC that expressed the need to re-establish US hegemony across the world? Clearly you had some idea of a global war on something. Clearly you were trying to predict and you got it wrong.
All these interviews are staged, all questions pre-screened, even planted. He nor George would never get near a real journalist like this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxsJvO-l5O4
I still don't know how that interview happened.
governments should have continued to repeat the mantra that all was well in the economy. Blasted hourly on the media, fear fear fear and economic doomsday, plummets consumer confidence and makes the entire economy in even worse shape.
I travelled to France, and the English in our group were giving us hell about letting an obvious incompetent steal our election. We explained that we didn't vote for him, but if he kept up like he was he'd be hustled out the door as a terrible President in 2004.
I bet he gets down on his knees and fellates his god every night for 9/11.
...was just how incompetent, arrogant, self-serving, treasonous, destructive, and shameless this administration was.
Seriously - this was the suckiest administration that ever sucked sucktitude.
I usually vote Green or Socialist.
But after I read the book "Shrub" by Molly Ivins - I voted for Gore just to keep the little prick out of office.
It's an interesting read even today, and it goes to show that there WAS disturbing information about W before he was appointed pResident.
He was a disgrace as a businessman and as governor.
the GOP primary in 2000.
A) I could not understand for the life of me how the son of such a horrible president, as Bush the 1st, could be a viable candidate. And that was w/o knowing all the shit I found out about the Bush clan later on.
B) I was not aware then of the sheer political incompetence of the Dem electoral machine. I could not believe Gore was running a campaign in which a complete buffoon like Bush was able to overcome electorally the 8 years of relative peace and prosperity Gore had been part of.
I miss the 90s now...Bush has left such a bad taste that has tainted my life experience of the XXI century. F*ck him... and f*ck Cheney with a hot iron rod. The little f*cker, festering since the days of Nixon. What a f*cking cancer in our society...
And these assholes will die of old age, and without a shred of regret...
The Bush, Cheney administration is the worst administration in our history that uncaringly sent the United States to the pits of Hell and devastation with all the Reslugs help.
That one was bs. They made a documentary showing what NO would look like in the event of a big hurricane. Same with Rita and Ike.
Iraq.
Economy.
jeeeezzzz, there's so many, I can't remember them all.
There's a huge freakin' hurricane taking its time in the Gulf and headed towards NO and now they claim they "didn't see it coming"? I remember watching that sucker brew for at least 4 days and wondering why the feds weren't gearing up on the perimeter so that area would have assistance ASAP. Hell, the whole country watched. Not one step was taken and the city was left entirely on it's own. I won't even go into the half-assed job FEMA did when it was pretty much too late. That one pisses me off to much to even go there anymore.
Katrina and New Orleans marked the end of Jr`s undeserved approval.People began waking up and recognizing the festering maggot for what he is, as I said at the time, if Hurricane Katrina had hit exactly one year prior, we`d be marking the end of President Kerry`s first term. Katrina and Jr`s response to it was the first nail in the coffin of his worthless legacy that turned public oppinion against him and there is nothing he can do to change that.
BTW,
You're under arrest.
Diseased Dick has proven to have zero redeeming value as a human. Some poster the other day called Cheney and Dumbya "violent white trash".....exactly.
The Shock Doctrine explains exactly why they don't predict this stuff. Because they plan on benefiting from disasters they create or that happen due to their negligence.
PNAC benefited from 9/11. The bankers benefited from the bailouts.
Goddamn right.
My guess is the economic disaster was planned in order to distract the incoming gov't and the public from investigating the crimes committed by the Cheney Administration.
They saw everything coming because it was part of the plan.
All those people who can't rebuild are forced to sell out to development companies who have wanted some of those properties for decades. Someone has some friends in real estate who will eventually make some incredibly sweet deals.
I've heard about it once or twice but after that only *crickets*.
yeah.
spent BEHIND the curve. I stated to friends in Nov. of 2006 that if I had a house then I would sell it pronto. I told friends in Dec. 2007 that we were IN a recession. Maybe I can't predict things, but I sure as hell can see the fucking world around me. That's a damn sight better than these DICKS would have us believe (since they never had any intention of stopping the hemorrage in the first place).
Shit and I work in an OR.
One of these days Americans will wake up and look out the window to find that while they sat around watching TV and eating donuts, the rest of the world moved on.
The world should really be educated exactly what sociopaths and psychopaths are, then we will hit the ground running from them, not give them jobs to run the free world. Nine more days and revising history in one interview. The Who Knew govt, that had it planned all along.
Yes, nobody could have predicted that the Only Begotten Son of
Satan would become Vice President and proceed to destroy everything this nation has ever stood for!
about how and why he was at NORAD, directing the jets to the western US while the Eastern US was 'under attack'!?
I didn't like it when I found out, but at least I took the time to try to understand it. People are really letting me down on this issue. I don't know if they're scared, ignorant, or too damn happy with the way things are, but something is wrong when something so obviously devastating occurs and not enough people are asking the questions that need to be asked.
The nobody gives a shit president!
Someone someday may record how Dick Cheney, the nominal Vice-President, with the assistance of the Neo-Con/PNAC cabal (in govt since Nixon, many of them), and with the silent complicity of the putative "opposition," staged a silent coup d'etat, assumed the role of rule-makers, and kept themselves in power (when ANY others would surely have been shorn of power at the first opportunity) for the last 8 years, and for almost 30 of the last 40 years.
That's not incompetence. That's MAD "skill."
These guys will go down in history as some of the greatest criminals of all time if we don't find the courage to collectively confront them and stop them and make them pay.
All they had to do is read the PNAC documents and the PDBs. Someone wake the fuck up and counter these lies.
any major news outlet mention the PNAC. I mention it to my conservative friends and family and they think it is a conspiracy theory.
The press has been exceptional in squashing references to this organization.
hired founding member KKKristol. You really don't think they will actually expose a conspiracy now, do you?
I did not think so.
Now, now, let's not be a "conspiracy theorist".. We have all seen just how far that has gotten us.
No one wants to admit their government would ever do anything to hurt the people.
but I clearly remember saying back in 2000, after the Supreme Court appointed Bush, "How could they choose the dumb one?" It was clear that he is too small-minded and defensive to be a national leader, especially under the influence of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al, who wanted to loot Iraq from the beginning.
"nobody anywhere was smart enough to figure that out" and "I don’t know that anybody did."
Except Peter Schiff. He seems to have done a pretty good job predicting it would happen.
At best, Obama's going to be deemed a failure, rightly or wrongly.
He's gotten dealt a lousy hand, and he's showing inclinations of playing it pretty much all the wrong way.
Congress will do nothing to help.
The country will continue along the wrong paths, domestically and abroad.
By 2012, there will be great domestic discontent.
At which time a savior will arrive, riding a white stallion, promising strong and effective leadership.
And the American People will turn to this leader, and hand him or her all the power G.W. Bush has claimed, plus a lot more.
to remark that when America adopted fascism, it would have its hand on the Bible and be wrapped in the flag. Both Upton Sinclair and Huey Long made similar statements.
Not sure.
n/t
Get thee to a monastary/nunnery to rid yourself of sinful cynicism and to contemplate a positive future for the world.
I'll take the nuns.
wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up the most.
I see why you divorced her.
Was that her response to your pleas for sex?
No, we had all our sex before we got married.
(It was over money and child rearing...the usual stuff.)
I always thought child rearing was a funny term. Kind of like learning at your mother's knee.
Does it sound like they are in the business of predicting events?
Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:
• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global
responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;
• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
So 12 years later how'd we do? Much safer sayeth Cheney.
No one could have predicted just how mean and incompetent Bush, Cheney, Condi, etc., would be, nor how evil Rove would be.
Look at their history. A good way to predict.
If this administration is looked at objectively it is the most incompetent government that could be imagined. Worse that that actually. Now these sons of bitches are out there saying black is white and up is down and their followers, the Fox watchers, believe them.
I saw a little bit of Obama on ABC's "This Week" this morning and I was feeling what a breath of fresh air. Then my 14 year old son says "Obama just seems so much smarter than Bush." Yup.
to the PEOPLE is concerned.
You're just not looking at it from the proper perspective.
In terms of their service to their "base" (the globalists, the hawks, the rich/super-rich), they have been paragons of responsibility.
They've been wildly successful at accomplishing their goals. The question is will the American people, the blogs, the media, etc. let them get away with it.
I think they may have even failed most of them. sure some of the smarter ones took their money out of the stock market in time but most of them didn't. There are a lot of these assholes that lost a huge amount of their money. Remember Jim Cramer telling everybody that Bear Sterns was safe and good a week before it went to zero? Same with Lehmann. And Citi was $25 right before it was $5 and Goldmann Sachs was $200 not long before it was $85. You can bet that their leader Bush cost a lot of his "yes men" a lot of cashola.
Sure they had advance warning of everything. They chose to ignore all the advise, memos, etc. They knew about Bin Laden was determined to attack, they knew the precarious environmental situation in New Orleans, they knew a major hurricane was approaching the gulf coast, they knew unsupervised, greedy corporations will implode, they knew 2 wars were not sustainable economically, they knew the stock market plummets periodically, they knew that torture was not the best way to gain intelligence, they knew they were spying on Americans, they knew they were violating the constitution--they knew it all but did not care.
They knew it would take a Pearl Harbor jncjdent.
pants on Fire!! (I wish!!) I stumbled upon the PNAC website and read their documents for a 21st century US "defense" strategy shortly after they had been posted on line ('99 or 2000?). What has transpired during the last 8 years was pretty much laid out in that strategy, including 9/11 (their New Pearl Harbor), the preemptive war in Iraq, and the permanent occupation so we can steal their resources and have military bases to move on through the rest of the ME.
I'm thinking this current Israeli invasion is just another part of their move to control as much of the ME as possible - don't be surprised if the IDF surprises Tehran before the 20th.
... and this would mean Israel has a raging case of Bush-style stupids, starting TWO wars.
you just invited tubie in.
When you click on "What's New", the last update is December 2006.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/whatsnew.htm
Is that "Mission Accomplished" or "we've abandoned this ideology ourselves over two years ago"?
The AP and most news organizations did the American public a grave disservice by editing down the video of Bush's performance in the pre-Katrina teleconference:
"It ... uh ... looks like you're prepared for this ... um ... this this uh ... this um .... ah .... really big storm."
Our 'Commander in Chief' sounded like he was drunk, and he couldn't remember the word HURRICANE during a briefing on a Category 5 hurricane.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q6qFglCF6M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWT2jCheP8c
Even if he's not actually drinking, he has a truckload of character defects associated with alcoholism.
And my big problem with the 'God Done Cured Me' routine Bush likes to play is that according to a good friend*, Bush went to a Bible study meeting, and determined he could 'accept God, and get to keep Laura and the girls!' - that is, Laura was ready to leave the drunken bastard.
But I've always seen that first step as not just giving up booze, but giving things over to the care of your higher power (no, it doesn't have to be Buddy Christ). Bush gave NOTHING. The deal was all about what George could get or keep, therefore, I don't think he was being honest with himself or with God.
* Frontline: The Jesus Factor
he's slow but....
When you're running not just one, but two wars (in practical terms), simultaneously with tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, stagnant wages for the rest of us, and under-budgeting regulatory agencies, what can you expect?
I've been saying this all along.
And I don't have a MBA.
Shortly after the "Gimme Back My Plane!" tantrum Bush threw in 2001, I said, "We're going to have a domestic terrorist incident in the first six months, and be at war within a year."
I missed the call on 9/11 by three months (though, if you count the truck driver who crashed into the California State Capitol Building, I was correct), and right about the war.
Now, when a group of liars all use the same words, it's not just a sign that they're lying ... it's a show of contempt. They don't fucking care that we know they're incompetent thugs - they've got their billions, and we've got the bill.
Seems to have happened sometime in early 2007...
I don't have the link.
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/200...
The site was down for over a year because no one paid their bill?
Sure they got what they came for!
What they wanted was a permanent republican majority to be able to carry out their fascist takeover.
...that the neo-cons need a permanent Repug majority to move us into full-blown fascism - it's pretty obvious that there are a whole bunch of Dems who are more than happy to assist.
Does The Government Manipulate Social Media?
The U.S. government long ago announced its intention to "fight the net".
As revealed by an official Pentagon report signed by Rumsfeld called "Information Operations Roadmap":
The 'agreement' between the RIAA and ISPs to turn over records of users who conduct massive downloads (i.e. music, videos) circumvents net neutrality and makes the ISPs the tools of a Chekist infrastructure.
as deputy attorney general?
We're so f*cked it is not even funny....
and since when does a lawyer automatically share the viewpoint or politics of his or her clients? That's just silly.
The man also represented actual musicians, does that mean he's in the pocket of 20-something pot-smoking slackers?
Sorry, but I always doubt the sincerity of the 'fascism-fearing' people who just coincidentally want to steal other people's created work.
"OH NO...if I can't download 'Saw 6' for free, the Nazi's have taken over!!!"
Gimme a break
minor correction; the deputy AG is a Disney lackey. The 3rd in command, is the RIAA guy.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10133425-38...
There is a subtle difference between defending artist's rights, although the RIAA just defend's producer and distribution interests they care little for the artist themselves, and using mafia-like techniques of intimidation.
If you have no problem with people assuming that you are criminal until you can prove otherwise, and having to surrender your privacy to cater to the entitlement of a bunch of idiots who are clinging to a dying business model. Then go ahead, but don't expect other people to go down quietly. Not everybody is a sheep out there...
From your link:
If they have concerns about full disclosure and accurate information, they'd better "engage" the MSM. The net may have its goofball blogs and many that are dead-on, but many Americans will believe the MSM if their reports differ from the blogs.
Many of us are waiting for full disclosure and accurate information about a host of military matters, so CENTCOM needs to get its own house in order.
No Leader is Above the Law.
If history is a gauge...
Pursuit will be Relentless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSJcXPCxlzI
But it's going to take a lot of work and a lot more people doing what needs to be done.
The responsibility of any president and his administration is to deal with exactly what cannot be predicted. Isn't it ODD how many horrible "unpredicted" events happened during your time in office? But, you don't get off the hook by claiming you weren't warned about every single bad thing that happened during the last eight years. They were ALL predicted, Dick, so stop whining. It's not gonna work this time... A song for you from most Americans:
I Know
I can recognize the symptoms
You should know I've changed my mind
I know what you're doing
And it's not gonna work this time
Hey hey hey, said it's not gonna work this time...
I know what you're doing, baby
I know why you call my name
I know why you say you love me
but I can't say the same
It's not gonna work this time...
... then the argument that Bush has kept us safe is hooey. More like 'We've bumbled our way through seven more years and haven't gotten caught."
Cheney may claim "they" didn't know and nobody could have predicted all these catastrophes, but they were all self-caused, as others have said. They got caught, all right, time and time again with their pants down.
For some reason, Katrina stands out vividly among all the others to me. Maybe when Bush's new Texas residence is smashed and flooded by a hurricane, he can get as much help as the Katrina victims did while he's pushing somebody else underwater to stand on them. Then Cheney, Bush's visitor, would shoot him in the face in a repeat of history.
His new home unfortunately is in Dallas, and we don't get hurricanes like South Texas near the Gulf of Mexico. The worst we get is tornadoes.
And that'll blow me off the map too.
It would need to be a grandaddy of a hurricane, like Floyd was. I was living in NC at the time, and the entire state up to the Piedmont hills was flooded from all the rain. Sewage, chemicals, agricultural waste (hog farm faeces that were washed over the tops of holding ponds), gasoline from service station tanks, dead animals bobbing in the water, uprooted trees, everywhere people on rooftops, it was a widespread disaster. I drove by a churchyard and there were very old coffins washed out of the graves, tumbled on the earth and bobbing in the ditches.
Let me dream, okay? Tornado's okay, too, but he might be hard-pressed to associate it with the help the people in New Orleans received after Katrina.
"Obviously, we did not predict all this shit -- we simply CAUSED it. Now, go fuck yourselves."
FUCKING PEASANTS! Damn! What's with these people? They're supposed to be loyal, obedient slaves!
I don't understand how they don't see these statements as troubling.
Let's say this administration did nothing wrong and isn't twisting facts here.
Even in that situation, these statements are still absolutely ridiculous. They should be surrounding themselves with the smartest people in the country for decisions such as this. At no time did anyone suggest any negative possibilities about anything they were considering? Never?
I mean, we have random people on blogs and whatever else predicting some of these things far ahead of time. We have memos these officials are getting predicting the very things that happened. We've heard concerns from several politicians about this stuff far ahead of time too.
They never put any of this together? Seriously?
That's as scary as them deciding to ignore it entirely. Add in how nonchalantly they throw this statement around and it's just plain disgusting.
They are either admitting that their intelligence is completely unreliable, or that they are massively incompetent, or both. That being the case, should it not be time then for sweeping changes in the intelligence community, and in Congress? If these people were that incompetent, then all that were in power in 2001 should resign (basically the same fatcats that are in Congress now).
... those among us who pay attention and have made accurate predictions (or at least listened to voices of reason when they offer sound advice) wouldn't take a job working for someone like Bush (or necessarily even Obama) because we're not wired as power-junkies.
I also have more skeletons in my closet than Jeffrey Dahmer.
And I think their motive is to convince conservatives not to listen to the growing outcry against the Bush administration, including Cheney right alongside Bush. He's giving them talking points to use in his and Bush's defense.
God, I hope these evil people end up at the Hague.
Man one of these talking heads needs to grow some balls and challenge Cheney on these ridiculous statements. "So Mr. Vice President, are you saying that your administration was so incompetent to not read any of the warning signs? Is that what you're saying?"
No, I don't believe that for one second.
That would be awesome.
The Bushies were NOT asleep at the wheel. They planned it all. The looting of the US Treasury, give aways to their friends, family and supporters, drowning the African American population of New Orleans, 9-11, the inside job, all the rest. They knew well what they are doing.
This is why they have to go on trials for war crimes and other crimes against the people of the WORLD.
No excuses Joe Biden (check the most popular question on www.change.gov), no "looking toward the future" and excusing this 8-year reign of terror. There is NO FUTURE right now, except suffering.
At the very least Joe Biden, GET THE MONEY THEY STOLE FROM US BACK. If you are too much of a coward to actually make them accountable, at the very least, GET OUR MONEY BACK, from Halliburton, KBR, Cheney, Bush, all the crime junta. Get it back from the Iraq contractors, the Katrina contractors, the Afghanistan contractors, the 9-11 contractors, the prison industry that Cheney has investments in, the oil and energy companies that Bush and Cheney are owned by.
GET IT ALL BACK OR DON'T COME BACK IN 4 YEARS ASKING US TO VOTE YOU ANOTHER TERM!!!
that goes for Obama, too.
But you know they won't. Hell, I'd be glad if the Obama administration just prosecuted the Bush administration for war crimes and other felonies -- most of that money they gouged from us is long gone and the rest is hardly worth the paper it's printed on.
Of course it would give me boocoo pleasure to see the government go after the personal fortunes of Bush/Cheney and their crime junta to take it all before saddling the taxpayer for the rest of the bill.
But that won't happen either.
I have a feeling that many of us won't feel like the story has changed much after the page is turned on January 20th. I hope I'm wrong, but I've hoped I was wrong on many things lately and instead was right.
"On the other hand I wouldn’t have predicted 9/11, the global war on terror, the need to simultaneous run military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq or the near collapse of the financial system on a global basis, not just the U.S."
I can't understand why they (Cheney and Bush) didn't see the need to run simultaneous military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. They moved the focus FROM Afghanistand TO Iraq! THEY created the need for two fronts.
Such crooks and liars!
cheney has actively been involved in all the
disasters we have endured for the last 8 yrs.
a special prosecutor is the only way to find
the shit cheney IS HIDING.
if the obama administration is not willing
(and i hope they are) to investigate and
indict cheney/bush, then step aside and let
the world court in germany..try these two
bastards and put them so far away that
the only light they will see will come
out of their asses.
...just how many millions Halliburton, KBR, etc. will be transferring to Dickie's offshore accounts on the 21st.??!!
It's been said that America got the president that it deserved. Finally one stupid and criminal enough to wake people out of their CNN and FOX induced stupors.
that they voted for the guy they would like to have a beer with. And I always wonder that one has to be a supreme prick to put a recovering alcoholic in a position of having to be your drinking buddy.
So these pricks got the president they deserved: a complete and utter prick like Bush.
Nobody (Hart-Rudmann Commission) could've predicted (August 6, PDB: http://edition.cnn.com/2004/images/04/10/whit...) that terrorists ("Bin Laden Determined to Strike") would use airplanes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Eugene_Corder) for an attack on American soil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bo...).
So bloody tired of this meme.
That proves that I'm a nobody.
WTF?
On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States.The case was so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.
On August 6, 2001, the Bush administration received a President’s Daily Brief entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S."
Yeah DICK no one could have possibly seen that coming!!
Cheney also loves to remind us that there have been no further attacks on U.S. soil, but he seems to forget that about the anthrax attacks which, like the attack on 9/11, also happened on his watch and have never been proven to be solved. Bush nor Cheney ever talk about the anthrax attacks because it would interfere with their revisionist view of history!
.
... That the NeoCONs could have stolen the 200o elections?
... That the NOLA levies would fail?
.
Certainly, there are happenings in every presidency, every person's job, and every person's life that cannot be reasonably predicted. There are also issues that you can identify that "have a reasonable probability of becoming a problem." No person or administration can possibly safe-guard against all situations that might happen.
However, the major issues outlined in the above post were certainly predictable. We could predict 9/11 (some did), but even if we had acted more proactively we may or may not have been able to stop the tragedy.
The current financial crisis, the blundered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Katrina were highly predictable (were predicted by many) and preventable situations. It certainly is not a shock that we have faced horrific problems in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of power vacuums we created. It is not a shock that a financial system that was a house of cards crashed. It was not a shock that a hurricane-prone city with a faulty levy system was devastated. Each of these big problems will have repercussions for decades and could have been avoided if our government would have acted with courage and foresight.
The fact that Cheney and the Bush administration at large did not see these problems coming is incredible and frightening. “I don’t think anybody saw it coming." Mr. Cheney, I hate to tell you that a lot of us did see these things coming. Unfortunately, the American people elected, for a second term, an administration that has had all of the foresight of road kill in Amish country. 9 more days!!!!
http://www.toourleaders.blogspot.com/
Are crystal balls anything like glass jaws?
Yep, nobody could have predicted that Americans would have elected such an incompetent fool twice.
Because I predicted he would be a disaster as President and he was!
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