dick cheney Archives - Where Is The Outrage?

Benghazi – revisited, again

I’m not sure why, but for some reason conservatives continue to be ~~fascinated~~ fixated on Benghazi. Conservatives have investigated. They have questioned. They have postulated. Yet, they found nothing. On Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney was on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Now, I have no idea why Chris Wallace would waste his time talking with Dick Cheney. The former vice president really has no new insights. His point of view is clear. As a matter fact, you can put a cardboard cutout of Dick Cheney in a chair of any Sunday talk show and you know exactly what the former vice president will say. There are no circumstances in which he believes US military force is not the right option. He will always support an aggressive posture.

Oh, the lies. It would be different if Chris Wallace did not know the truth, but he does. Yet, he lets Cheney paint his own version of events in Benghazi. We know from testimony in front of the Senate that President Obama directed Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to “do everything we needed to do to try to protect lives.” Somehow, this little fact was never discussed on Fox News Sunday. Why not? Because their whole goal was to try to make the president look weak. A president who actually instructed to do everything needed isn’t weak. (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2013-06-18T22:05:01-04:00June 18th, 2013|Foreign Affairs, Obama administration, Party Politics|Comments Off

News Roundup – NSA surveillance, NBA, U.S. Open and more

Over the last two weeks, there’s been a flurry of reports over the NSA surveillance program. There’s been a lot of finger-pointing. There have been lots of accusations in which reporters and their sources have been called traitors and/or patriots, depending upon which side of the political spectrum you’re on. First of all, I really don’t believe that we have enough information to figure out exactly what’s going on. We’ve got a cool name for a program called Prism. We have a rough idea about how the program works, but the devil is in the details. It is not important to me that former Vice President Dick Cheney went on Fox News and defended this program. We know that the vice president is not a human rights/civil rights kind of guy. We also know that he has lied to the American people before. Anybody who stands up and tells you that they are for or against this program should be immediately discarded as a zealot. We, the American people, simply don’t have enough information to figure out what’s going on. I know that President Obama stated that it was important to him that there are checks and balances, but I have no idea what these checks and balances are. I’m a little concerned that the FISA court is not a check nor a balance but are instead acting as a rubber stamp. I’m also afraid to say that I have absolutely no confidence in our elected politicians in Congress. I have no idea if these guys are acting in our best interest or not. (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2013-06-18T21:51:29-04:00June 18th, 2013|Domestic Spying, Sports|Comments Off

The United States and North Korea

I originally published this post approximately three years ago. With North Korea in the news again concerning its nuclear ambitions, I think it is important to understand the background.

As soon as President George W. Bush took office in 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that he was going to continue the actions of the Clinton administration. Quickly, Vice President Dick Cheney and other neo-cons in the Bush White House worked to silence Powell and reverse the steps that the Clinton Administration took to freeze nuclear weapons production in North Korea.

I believe the way that the US-North Korea relationship has been played out in the media has been ridiculously superficial. Secondly, the American public has been led to believe that everything started with President Clinton. He is portrayed as a hero or a villain, depending upon your point of view. As usual, I think that the real picture is far more complex.

It appears that North Korea’s nuclear plans date back to the late fifties and early ’60s. Being a very small and somewhat paranoid country, North Korea began to send scientists to the Soviet Union right at the end of the Korean War. They did not believe that when push came to shove the Soviet Union would stand up for them. The Cuban Missile Crisis reinforced that belief. The Soviet Union, their ally, backed down when the US show of force and imposed a blockade around Cuba. North Korea thought that Russia would do the same if squeezed by the US. Also, in 1965, the US, Japan and South Korean signed a diplomacy agreement. This served to further isolate the paranoid country. North Korea fired up the first of its two nuclear reactors in 1967. (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2013-04-02T21:00:05-04:00April 2nd, 2013|Bush Administration, North Korea|4 Comments