Posts Tagged Tora Bora
Can Liz Cheney Really Keep America Safe?
Posted by Lance Haley in 9/11, Conservatives, Crime & Punishment, Dick Cheney, Fox News, Legal & Justice, Media & Communication, National Security, Politics, War in Afghanistan, War on Terror, al Qaida, foreign policy on March 11th, 2010
ATTICUS FINCH (Gregory Peck) in “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”
Hardly!
Why? Because she advocates the use of fear that rises to the level of McCarthyism, as demonstrated in the recent video released by her political organization, Keep America Safe.
A significant number of well-respected Conservatives have deeply criticized the video’s characterization of current Justice Department lawyers as Un-American because of their previous legal representation of suspected terrorist detainees. One of the greatest callings in the American legal system is defending both the unpopular and the guilty. This role is epitomized by the lawyer Atticus Finch in the movie “To Kill a Mockingbird“, rated as the best courtroom movie of all time by the American Film Institute.
Liz Cheney is a lawyer. If she attended her classes in law school, she should have a basic understanding of the Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court precedent, as well as the principles of American Jurisprudence, all of which ensure due process for everyone who is charged with a violation of the laws of the United States, regardless of citizenship. Her failure to grasp those most fundamental principles of the American justice system only further undermines any semblance of credibility regarding her legal or political opinion.
One of her former law professors, the esteemed Richard A. Epstein, of the University of Chicago School of Law. said it best: “There’s something truly bizarre about this.” Which only begs the question: Is she a moron, or just pathologically shameless and void of any conscience? Maybe it runs in the family?
Most importantly, however, is the real reason why Liz Cheney cannot “Keep America Safe”.
If she relies on the argument that America was much safer from an attack by terrorists during her father’s tenure with the Bush Administration, one need look no further than the Presidential Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”, in order to completely discredit this notion. Her father publicly admitted in May of 2002 on Fox News that he read the brief, and then attempted in vain to dismiss it’s warnings as inconclusive, while simultanously advocating that the brief not be released for public disclosure. Interesting . . .
As this author has pointed out in the post titled “Failing to Connect the Dots: The Lights Were Blinking Red“, that evidence is the most damning indictment of Dick Cheney’s part in the collective negligence of the Bush Administration’s failure to prevent the attacks on 9/11. No wonder he did not want you to read it’s contents. To compound matters even further was their colossal failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden at the battle of Tora Bora, Afghanistan in December of 2001. Simply put, Dick Cheney obviously has no valid standing to criticize the Obama Administration’s policies regarding terrorism and the prosecution of terrorists.
By extension, as well as by her own volition, neither does Liz Cheney.
Case closed.
Memo To Dick Cheney: Me Thinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much
Posted by Lance Haley in 9/11, Conservatives, Dick Cheney, Politics, War in Afghanistan, War on Terror, al Qaida, foreign policy on February 14th, 2010
Shoe Bomber Richard Reid – Poster Child for Dick Cheney’s Hypocrisy
This morning on NBC’s Meet the Press, Vice President Joe Biden responded to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s attacks on the Obama Administration’s handling of accused Christmas Day terrorist bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. As Biden accurately stated, Cheney is “”not entitled to rewrite history. He’s not entitled to his own facts“, correctly pointing out that the Bush Administration also prosecuted shoe bomber Richard Reid in a civilian court. This author just commented this past week on the duplicity with which you and other Republicans are terrorizing the American people over this nonsense, after your Administration tried over 150 terrorists in civilians courts – including one of the 9/11 co-conspirators.
This blog contains a number of entries addressing Cheney’s constant attacks on the current Administration, and why he has absolutely no standing to criticize Obama; particularly because of the hypocrisy pertaining to the decisions and policies of the Bush Administration – specifically, their failure to prevent the terrorist attacks on 9/11, and the subsequent blunder that led to Osama bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora, Afghanistan ninety days later.
Playing armchair psychologist is fraught with dangers of misdiagnosis, as well as the tendency towards over-generalization of certain symptoms as definitive indicators of a specific pathology. Nevertheless, and admittedly at the risk of the cognitive dissonance in ignoring my own advice to the contrary, I will venture a psychological explanation on why Dick Cheney’s persistent revisionist history reveals the depth of his pathological dissonance. Which may be why Cheney is rated the most unpopular Vice President in modern history – even surpassing Dan Quayle (say it ain’t so Dick).
“If an action has been completed and cannot be undone, then the after-the-fact dissonance compels us to change our beliefs.” What most often occurs in the aftermath of undeniable factual evidence of an action that betrays our personal beliefs or opinions is a growing increase in dissonance in direct relationship to “the importance of the subject to us, how strongly the dissonant thoughts conflict, and our inability to rationalize and explain away the conflict.
In other words, when we cannot reconcile our beliefs and opinions with the undeniable existence of facts that contradicts them, we defend our position even more zealously. Denial of the Holocaust by people like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – who ironically may be Jewish - is a stark example of this behavior.
It is William Shakespeare’s often misquoted poetic commentary [as in the body of the subject line of this entry] that is the most famous historical observation on this human condition:
“The lady doth protest too much, me thinks.”
The Battle of Tora Bora, Afghanistan in 2001 – the Ghost that Keeps on Haunting the U.S.
Posted by Lance Haley in Media & Communication, Uncategorized, War in Afghanistan, foreign policy on December 11th, 2009
Where is the outrage?!?
If this blogs’ coverage of what happened in Tora Bora seems to be getting redundant, there will be no apologies. New information about the single worst foreign policy decision in American history is not something to sweep under the carpet when so many U.S. military soldiers have sacrificed their lives because of this blunder. The American press can ignore this . . . I refuse to let this go until someone is finally taken to the proverbial woodshed over this disaster.
And the hits on Dick Cheney’s credibility just keep on getting handed out on a silver platter . . .
Finally, after eight long years, somebody finally affirms what I have been saying all that time. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, U.S. commander of forces in Afghanistan, and the man who “urged the surge” that President Obama just accommodated, testified before Congress this week, stating that capturing Osama bin Laden is the lynchpin to defeating the al – Qaida terror network.
OK, one more time. Remember, Bush stood on the smouldering ruins of the World Trade Center on 9/12, proclaiming through his bullhorn that ”the men who brought down these towers would be brought to justice”, and days later said he “wanted bin Laden, dead or alive.” Yet, it was Bush’s own Secretary of Defense – Donald Rumsfeld – who created the strategy that enabled bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora in December 2001.
Dick Cheney later downplayed the importance of capturing bin Laden in 2006, and his own outgoing Army Chief of Staff at the Pentagon, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, echoed that same sentiment in 2007, stating that “I don’t know that it’s all that important, frankly.” It should be noted that Shoomaker was previously the head of U.S. Special Operations Command – the unit that was searching for the previous six years for bin Laden after he escaped into the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Battle of Tora Bora. They never found him.
Finally, the biggest indictment of the failure of these men, and a rebuke of these impotent attempts to veil their incompetence by dismissing the primary objective of the U.S. military in Afghanistan , is the report by the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. Before you blame this current Adminstration for ANYTHING that occurs in Afghanistan – have a nice fat plate of crow.
The War in Afghanistan could have been over – you know, “Mission Accomplished” – in December 2001. If it were not for so many lost U.S. lives, one could laugh at the irony. Now there will be more lives lost in pursuit of an objective that was within the grasp of our political and military leaders (I use the term loosely) eight years ago.
How pathetic and unconscionable.
Dick Cheney, I Have Been Patiently Waiting For This Day . . .
Posted by Lance Haley in Conservatives, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, Politics, Uncategorized, War in Afghanistan, War on Terror, foreign policy on October 22nd, 2009
Did you really just tell President Obama to stop “dithering”?
For years I have relished the day that Dick Cheney would step forward and comment about the war in Afghanistan – The Right War. You know, the war that was precipitated by 9/11 and the murder of approximately 3000 innocent Americans. The war that was declared as President Bush stood upon the rubble of the World Trade Center towers and emphatically stated that the men who tore those buildings down would be brought to justice (see post in screwedus.com – Sept 27, 2009, Conservatives have Audacity to be Critical of Obama regarding the War in Afghanistan?). The war that was “thrown under the bus” within a matter of months so you, Dick Cheney and Company, could go after those elusive WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Delusion, a.k.a OIL) in Iraq.
“Stop Dithering on Afghanistan Troops“? Really, Dick Cheney? “Dithering?”
You have a lot of audacity to criticize President Obama for giving careful consideration to send in more troops in a war YOU never finished eight years ago. Shame, Shame, Shame on you!
Let’s look at the facts:
You and your pathetic lackeys at the Pentagon had the opportunity in early December 2001 to finish the job in Tora Bora, and kill Osama bin Laden, as well as the remaining the remnants of al Qaeda and the Taliban. You know exactly what I am talking about. Operation Jawbreaker, led by CIA Operative Gary Berntsen. Rumors leaked out of the Pentagon that not only did you know about the decision by CentCom not to insert a team of American Special Forces at the top of that valley so bin Laden and the terrorists who orchestrated the attack on America could not escape, you were primarily responsible for making that decision “in order to limit American casualties”, along with Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense. But you failed to do so, because you did not know what you were doing. You never did.
And the U.S. lost the opportunity to kill bin Laden, and destroy al Qaeda and the Taliban eight years ago. Now that would have deserved the moniker of “Mission Accomplished”. But for you, in part, there would not be anymore than a modest U.S. military presence in Afghanistan today.
What a colossul failure.
All because you and your brethern, Dick Cheney, DITHERED in December 2001.
“In war, truth is the first casualty,”
– attributed to Greek writer/poet Aeschylus (525BC – 456BC).
Conservatives have Audacity to be Critical of Obama regarding the War in Afghanistan?
Posted by Lance Haley in Conservatives, Government, Politics, Uncategorized, War in Afghanistan, War on Terror, foreign policy on September 27th, 2009
“This will not be quick, nor easy. But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. … This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”
- President Obama
Remember this picture of “W” standing on the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 12, 2001 talking with a bullhorn in his hand – telling the world that the men that “knocked down these towers” would be made to answer for this unforgivable act, and hunted down and brought to justice no matter what it takes? (Gives a whole new meaning to the word “Bullhorn“).
Now, in September of 2009, there seems to be a sudden interest by Conservative pundits and Republican politicians regarding the American war strategy in Afghanistan. Some are even questioning Obama’s decision to take his time in assessing the request by the Pentagon for more troops in order to make sure that this strategy will produce the desired results.
Really?
Where the Hell have you all been since December 2001, when Osama bin Laden escaped in the battle of Tora Bora at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan as a result of the previous Administration’s and then Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff decision not to send in Special Forces to finish the job when the lead CIA operative Gary Berntsen radioed the Pentagon that he had Bin Laden located? Berntsen has become a leading critic of the failure of the Bush Administration and the Pentagon to send the necessary forces into Tora Bora in order to kill Osama bin Laden.
House Minority Leader John Boehner and Minority Senate Leader Mitch McConnell . . . six years after those towers were brought to the ground, and you are just now speaking up???