Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Interview of the Vice President by Jim Lehrer

Shorter Cheney:
Congress? They can go you-know-what themselves.

...Ah hell, I can't just leave it at that. Here is more from VP Go Fuck Yourself.

...[not] in the interest of the country, ... if ... the legislative process leads to the disclosure of sensitive operational matters with respect to this program.


Huh. This would mean that any legislation regarding intelligence collection could disclose the details of that collection. So, legislation regarding intelligence is a threat to national security.

Boy, how have we missed this all along? We sure were silly to allow any legislation at all on intelligence matters. You know, we really should just leave up to the Executive, acting in secret.

So there was a consensus between those of us in the administration who were involved, as well as the leaders on Capitol Hill who were briefed on the program that legislation would not be helpful.

...there was no great concern expressed that somehow we needed to come get additional legislative authority.


Ah. Things that a man with zero credibility should not say. Things that have already been contradicted in public.

And at that point now, we've had some members head for the hills so to speak; forget, perhaps, that they were at the briefings and fully informed of the program.


Classy, Dick. Classy.

I think people are straining here to try to find an issue to some extent.


I, for one, didn't strain too much to find an issue.

We also had a Supreme Court decision in the Hamdi case, where the Court, in effect, found that there was implicit in the authorization of the use of force the authorization of the President to hold an American citizen. And clearly, that's a more intrusive, if you will, use of power and authority than is surveillance of the enemy.


I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think that's what the Hamdi ruling said. Therefore, that nifty little logical leap from Hamdi to the "less intrusive" wiretapping is a crock.

Q You told CNN last week that thousands of lives have been saved by this NSA surveillance program. Are we talking about Americans lives have been saved?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I can't go beyond that. I do believe that a great many lives have been saved because of what we've been able to do with this program.


Which lives? You wouldn't know them. They live in Niagara Falls.

And on Iraq...

Q You drew a lot of heat and ridicule when you said eight months ago, the insurgency is in its last throes. Do you regret having said that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I think the way I think about it is as I just described. I think about when we look back and get some historical perspective on this period, I'll believe that the period we were in through 2005 was, in fact, a turning point; that putting in place a democratic government in Iraq was the -- sort of the cornerstone, if you will, of victory against the insurgents.

Q But every report -- the inspector general, who is in charge of looking at what the reconstruction program is like, et cetera, was on our program just a few days ago, and said that the insurgency's strength is keeping the reconstruction from happening. They're not even back to power -- electricity and water -- what they had pre-war in
large parts of the country. That doesn't concern you about the --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Certainly we're concerned. But I think we'll find that the strategy that we've got in place, both on the security side and on the political side, is what's going to ultimately produce victory there...


Never never never admit you made a mistake. Never never never admit you said something wrong.

Q Why didn't we anticipate [the insurgency]?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, you can't anticipate everything.


Oopsie!

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