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Thanking Vice President Cheney

by

Perhaps at some other time, I’ll offer a more complete account of the wonderful evening I had last night, sitting next to Tammy Bruce and listening to former Vice President Cheney.  I  could mention the good company of our readers, the multiple standing ovations for the greatest Vice President of the past 100 years, the warm welcome we received from the Claremont Institute and the good work that they do.  Or that this blog was listed in the program of this conservative think tank’s annual dinner.

I will focus instead on the good man that Richard Cheney is and my brief meeting with that distinguished statesman.

Due to his health (he recently suffered a heart attack), Mr. Cheney did not do a photo op at the VIP reception.  So, right after desert, I mustered my courage and with Tammy, went over to introduce myself.  He was very polite, respectful.  In the 45 seconds or so I had to talk to him, I knew I couldn’t say much.  It would be rude to take up more of his time.

I could thank him for his steadfast commitment to our nation’s security and to conservative principles, for not backing down — or letting it get to him — when he was attacked unfairly in the media.  Instead, I offered the name of our blog, told him how honored I was when I learned that his younger daughter read our web-site, then did something I am sure few gay people have done, though many should.  I thanked him for publicly opposing the Federal Marriage Act in 2004 and told him how much of a hero he was to gay conservatives.

While gay activists may disagree with much that this good man has done and said, they should at least acknowledge how, he stood apart from the then-president on that one key issue.  Alas that so few have acknowledged this most pro-gay Vice President in U.S. history.

Comments

  2. Dan, as my late mother would say, “you are a mensch.” Nice job! I wish I could have had the same thrill as you did meeting such a sincere and dedicated American but your comments brought me close to that encounter.

    Happy Passover to all…

  5. If Dick Cheney is the best Vice President of the past hundred years, I would hate to see what a bad Vice President could come up with – because I can’t think of too many things worse than lying through your teeth over and over again to start a war, doling out billions of public dollars to your friends and financiers, and authorizing the systemic torture of thousands of innocent individuals. I can’t think of too many ways to do much worse, but you’re telling me that Dick Cheney did better than Al Gore? Yeah right.

    Dick Cheney is easily one of the biggest villains in American history, and he quite literally has hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians on his hands. He’s a big part of the reason that the Republicans couldn’t keep their majorities and the Presidency, and he is so enormously loathed and discredited in America that he has his daughter frantically running around trying to polish his turd of a legacy.

    I suspect that over the course of your life, there will be a time when you are embarrassed that you ever wrote fondly of the time that you met and talked to the man. As durable as some of these Republican myths have been over the past few decades, I just don’t see the United States having the luxury of believing in ridiculous legends like “Dick Cheney Was a Good Man” and “Sarah Palin is Really, Really Smart” anymore.

  7. Dan, Thank you for thanking the Vice President in most of our names!
    I see the haters couldn’t wait to come out and sully the comment section.

    Looking forward to a full report in person in a few hours!

  11. #6: Levi,

    If Al Gore “did better” than Dick Cheney as the Vice President, I would hate to see the “best” Vice President of the past hundred years you could come up with – because I can’t think of too many things worse than lying through your teeth over and over again to start a global panic among the gullibly dim-witted that the extinction of the human race is imminent due to their immoral insistence on using of the wrong light bulbs and exhaling carbon dioxide, pocketing millions of dollars funneled through fraudulent shell corporations, channeling billions of public dollars to his fellow con-artist friends and financiers, and endorsing the systematic oppression and confiscation of the wealth of millions of powerless and innocent middle- and low-income individuals. I can’t think of too many ways to do much worse, but you’re telling us that Al Gore “did better” than Dick Cheney? Yeah right.

    Al Gore is easily one of the biggest villains in American history, and he quite literally has hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, Kurdish rebels, and American soldiers on his hands, as illustrated by flip-flopping support and opposition to regime change in Iraq based solely on political expedience.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNdiq2oycTg

    He is also the reason that the Democrats managed to lose a presidential election even with every historical and statistical precedent working in his favor, and he is so enormously loathed and discredited in America that he has gone into hiding and has brainwashed moonbats like you and crackpot “scientists” frantically running around trying to polish his turd of a legacy with theocratic zeal even in the face of uncontroverted evidence of his participation in and profit from a world-wide leftist hoax.

    I suspect that over the course of your life, there will NEVER be a time when you are embarrassed or ashamed that you supported and defended this snake-oil salesman and apologist for mass-murdering dictators. As irrational and unsupported as these Democrat myths are (and have always been), and due to their stubborn allegiance to ignorance and chronic inability to think for themselves, I just don’t see the leftists ever letting go of ridiculous legends like “Al Gore cares about the environment” and “Saddam Hussein was framed and railroaded.”

  12. I’ve noticed that most Republican VP candidates are picked for reasons different than Dems. Reps seem to go for the person most able to do the job of President, is a good adviser, and helps shore up a lacking (often falsely viewed perception) inadequacy. Dems seem to go for the candidate who A: Makes the Prez look smarter (Gore and Biden especially make their presidents look genius compared to them) and B: makes assassination less likely (“What? if he’s gone the Biden/Gore/Mondale gets the job?…I’ll pass”). Advisory and Ability seem to be down the list further (I think it never was on the list with Biden).

  13. “No controlling legal authority”, Levi. You’re complimenting a man who either knowingly took bribes from Chinese military intelligence to further his election war chest, or really and sincerely thinks that Buddhist monks have checking accounts they can write $25,000 checks on; and then defended his conduct by saying that even though he was there, he wasn’t really there.

  14. “the greatest Vice President of the past 100 years”

    Its one to be a little fanboy for your party’s bigshots, but seriously, man, have you no self-respect?

    Here is a guy who “masterminded” one of the most embarrassingly incompetent attempts to use the military in our nation’s history. Not only did he marshal all of his political skill to force through a decision to go to war based on what turned out to be nonexistent evidence – bullying the intelligence communities and the political establishment to get them on board rather than to engage in any critical thinking – but he also sent our military into a fight they were totally unprepared for, in terms of material and equipment, and in terms of a lack of thinking and preparation for what the likely course of the conflict might be.

    He convinced himself that there was a serious threat in Iraq, he convinced himself that the war would be won easily, he convinced himself that we would be welcomed as liberators, and he convinced himself that we could easily manage the post invasion environment. Wrong on all counts. But worse, he managed to pressure all of the Republican establishment, almost all of the independent-minded people and a fair chunk of Democrats, at least at the beginning, that either he was right, or that it would be political suicide to try to slow down the train.

    Without question – the absolute WORST vice-president in history. Those VPs who did nothing but go fishing throughout their terms in office were far better because their net value to the country was at least zero, rather than a huge negative for Cheney.

    Even George Bush came to understand this, and famously turned away from Cheney in the second term – replacing his buddy Rumsfeld and giving the people aligned with Condi far more influence. Anything and everything that represents real accomplishments during the Bush administration was done either without Cheney, or in direct opposition to Cheney.

    But maybe you just can’t see anything beyond the fact that he was somewhat better than the average Republican on gay issues. One of the easiest things in the world to be. Of course, with all his power and influence, he never did a damn thing about it, except to mention that he had a liberal position.

  15. but you’re telling me that Dick Cheney did better than Al Gore? Yeah right.

    Algore had his little commission to analyze and improve airport and airline security. Several carriers mad a donation of about $500,000 with the help of Mrs. Daschle. Shortly thereafter, Algore dropped the whole thing. It’s possible that he has the blood of 2,973 dead and 6,000+ injured, all civilians, on his hands.

    Ergo, I WILL tell you that Dick Cheney did better than Algore. I can’t imagine a worse VP than a bloated asshole who put American lives on the line for the financial gain of the DNC.

    And that’s not even counting the illegal campaign contributions he took.

  16. Anything and everything that represents real accomplishments during the Bush administration was done either without Cheney, or in direct opposition to Cheney.

    [Citation Needed]

    and he is so enormously loathed and discredited in America

    Only in the liberal spank bank material.

  17. I don’t miss W all that much but I do miss Cheney… a great public servant in the true sense of the word. His wife, Lynn, and his daughters are all impressive in their own right as well.

    —

    The Left has learned well at the feet of Orwell’s Big Brother:

    Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.

    Since you lefties now control the present (yet you’re still pissed off – I guess you won’t be happy until we all prostrate ourselves before The One), you’re busy rewriting the past.

    Tano, for example, ignores completely the Iraq policies of the President Clinton – Iraq wasn’t a problem at all until Cheney decided we needed a war. I can recall Hillary Clinton as a senator justifying her votes to go into Afghanistan and Iraq based on her own research but, to a lefty, it never happened.

    Nevertheless, Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. Moreover, no international law can prevent the United States from taking actions to protect its vital interests, when it is manifestly clear that there is a choice to be made between law and survival… – Al Gore, Sep. 2002

    Now it’s true that Gore opposed the invasion at the time but note that he states that Iraq was a serious threat (which was the position of President Clinton while Gore was VP). So, Levi, were Bill, Al, and Hillary lying through their teeth, too?

    You push all the rhetoric and policies of the past down the memory hole and pretend that history began when Bush took office.

    You’re liars or stupid. Which is it?

  18. What’s even more cynical, is Levi’s just projecting his own beliefs onto VP Cheney. After all, if he agreed with liberating Iraq he’d be lauding President Bush for leading us into the future, kicking and screaming.

  19. Had the distinct honor of buying Mr. Cheney a scotch after his CPAC speech in 1991. (This was post-Gulf War and pre-cardio-sobriety!)

    My group found him to be a class act and the sort of individualist that we as conservatives could steadfastly support, gay or otherwise.

    Genuine pity is the only proper response for people who don’t recognize his greatness, his service, his commitment to all of the things that make this country great.

    Best wishes,
    -MFS

    p.s. In case you’re wondering: Chivas. He may have just been going easy on us because we were poverty-stricken college students, but it’s been my drink of choice ever since.

  24. I would hate to see what a bad Vice President could come up with – because I can’t think of too many things worse than lying through your teeth over and over again to start a war, doling out billions of public dollars to your friends and financiers, and authorizing the systemic torture of thousands of innocent individuals.

    Here is a guy who “masterminded” one of the most embarrassingly incompetent attempts to use the military in our nation’s history. Not only did he marshal all of his political skill to force through a decision to go to war based on what turned out to be nonexistent evidence – bullying the intelligence communities and the political establishment to get them on board rather than to engage in any critical thinking – but he also sent our military into a fight they were totally unprepared for, in terms of material and equipment, and in terms of a lack of thinking and preparation for what the likely course of the conflict might be.

    thank you VP Cheney, for sullying our good name, torturing people and starting immoral wars.

    Enjoy burning in hell, you traitor.

    And now a word from the sponsor of this installment of The Three Stooges ……… The Schlepp Boys, Levi, Tano and Nutso. Use enhances “Move-on.” It is cathartic and you will crap like a goose.

  25. Levi, if Mr. Cheney is a liar, please detail the lies and show that at the time he said those things he knew them to be false.

    Thanks.

    Comment by B. Daniel Blatt — March 28, 2010 @ 11:48 am – March 28, 2010

    I’m sure both of us have played this game dozens of times over the years. On the one hand, you’ve got me, a smart person, and on the other hand, you’ve got you, who has decided to believe every word that certain people tell them.

    So, briefly; the entire presentation by the Bush administration of their case for war in Iraq was lie. The entire endeavor was totally unnecessary but they spent years pretending it was the most important thing we had to do to protect our national security. They launched a propaganda campaign; they only presented evidence that suited their case, they never talked about the numerous pieces of evidence that contradicted their case, they made the rosiest predictions about how much the war would cost, how long it would take, and what it would result in, they made virtually every mistake they could in those earlier years and refused to change course for political reasons…. it is impossible to get the kind of disastrous results that we got in Iraq without lying.

    Now another thing that people such as yourself like to point out is that I’m not the government and I didn’t get to see the intelligence that Dick Cheney saw. I’m just supposed to take it for granted that his motivations were pure, that what he says is the truth, and that I can’t see any proof because of national security. Because as we all know, politicians are known for their habitual truthfulness. They wouldn’t be all secretive and deceptive to cover up their own crimes, corruption, and incompetence – that’s the last thing that someone like Dick Cheney would do.

    At the end of the day, this is something that conservatives will never be able to concede. How could you? The GOP was supposed to be the experts in all things military and national security after all, and it’s impossible to imagine how things could have been blown with Bush’s little adventure in Iraq. And considering all that, the only thing that conservatives ever have the balls to cop to is that “Some mistakes were made.” Admitting that the leaders of your party, who you all so enthusiastically and unquestioningly supported, are also liars and propagandists is just too much.

  26. Sorry, Levi, you offered no specific statements in your long response. To show Cheney was lying. All you need to is offer a particular statement he made at a certain time and show that at that time he knew what he was saying is false.

  27. Sorry, Levi, you offered no specific statements in your long response. To show Cheney was lying. All you need to is offer a particular statement he made at a certain time and show that at that time he knew what he was saying is false.

    Look, I don’t really feel like explaining the word ‘lie’ to you. If I told you that I heard from a good friend that if you went down some back alley at 2:30am on a Thursday, a man would appear and give you a bag of money, and you went down to check it out and were instead beaten senseless and robbed of your belongings, would you think that I told a lie to you? You might come back to me and ask me if I knew, and I might respond by saying, ‘no, I sincerely believed what I told you with all my heart,’ would you still feel lied to?

    There just is nothing I can say at this point if you haven’t been convinced already. A propaganda campaign to start a war has as its foundational essence deception and hyperbole and exaggeration and LYING. They wanted to invade a country and they spent months spinning a long yarn about why that was so important and it turned out that everything they said was wrong.

    Do you know how when you start telling lies, you usually have to start telling more lies to support the original lie, until at the end of the day you’ve got this big long elaborate work of fiction that is more about covering your own ass than whatever the original issue was? That’s what happened with Iraq. They lied to start the war and they kept lying to save face when things kept getting worse.

    And to parade around like you’re this small government champion that is really skeptical of the government line by default while failing to realize what the GOP has done to the country and to conservatism is about as cowardly as it gets. You were mashing out ten posts a day about Obama’s insidious plot to pass healthcare, but all Dick Cheney has to say is ‘It’s classified’ when it comes to questions of war and torture, and that’s okey-dokey with you.

    How is anyone supposed to take a conservative at face value when your every waking moment is devoted to propping up double standards?

  28. On the one hand, you’ve got me, a smart person, and on the other hand…

    And again, levi shows his understanding of debate. “I’m smarter than you, so I don’t have to prove anything.”

    In fact, Levi’s lack of proof shows that for all his alleged smarts, he’s lacking in common sense. And ettquette, and manners…

  29. Levi, it’s very simple. Just get one statement from Cheney that he knew at the time was false. Instead of meeting that challenge, each time you offer lengthy filled with lots of rhetoric about lying or some such. So, please meet my challenge.

    If Cheney lied so regularly, it should be easy to prove just one.

  30. @Dan: Don’t know if you’ve been following the back and forth between David Corn and Peter Wehner on Politics Daily.  But, it’s a great summary of the "Lied Us Into War" debate – best I’ve seen anywhere actually.

    Say what you will about Corn, he doesn’t come to this with blather about Christianist torture plots or the sixth definition of ‘deceit’ from Websters.  He actually has real charges to make.  Wehner, to his credit, addresses each point in turn and gets the best of the argument – as any disinterested observer would agree.

    Best wishes,
    -MFS

  34. #29: “How is anyone supposed to take a conservative at face value when your every waking moment is devoted to propping up double standards?”

    Levi, you have no problem with double standards or lying as long as the liar has a “D” next to his/her name. You condemn Cheney as an evil war criminal that belongs in the gas chamber, yet you can’t identify a single specific falsehood that isn’t based on your own biased speculations about Cheney’s character. Meanwhile, Colorado Patriot has posted a link to an article cataloguing the specific, unequivocal promises that Obama made to get elected (which surely influenced you to vote for him) and their expiration dates, but none of it seems to concern you (at most, I recall you expressing tepid disappointment with Obama, but only with regard to his failure to be MORE of a leftist in his decision-making).

    “They launched a propaganda campaign; they only presented evidence that suited their case, they never talked about the numerous pieces of evidence that contradicted their case, they made the rosiest predictions about how much the war would cost, how long it would take, and what it would result in, they made virtually every mistake they could in those earlier years and refused to change course for political reasons…. it is impossible to get the kind of disastrous results that we got in Iraq without lying.”

    Again, Obama made very specific promises about the economy and how the stimulus would improve it, but not a single prediction or promise (the ones that undeniably put him in the White House) have materialized. Not ONE. (And this is with having purportedly the “best and brightest” experts on his team.) Yet, you give Cheney and the Bush Administration the shaft for “lying” about “how much the war would cost, how long it would take, what it would result in…etc.” But it’s really you that’s lying, Levi. You’re not condemning Cheney for getting the cost and time estimates wrong on Iraq. You’re condemning him because we went to war at all–ANY war. There are no circumstances in which you would support the US going to war to protect its interests and people and your criticisms plainly demonstrate that.

    Even if the Administration had accurately predicted the cost down to the penny and the time frame down to the nanosecond, it would make no difference to you. Just like the Democrats that supported the mission but then stabbed Bush in the back when it became politically expedient, the implication of your opposition is that you would have supported the war if Hussein was caught red-handed cooking up a nuke and that the invasion would have transformed Iraq into a peace-loving democracy within 30 days with no civilian casualties and no loss of coalition soldiers. Oh yeah, and the whole thing needed to be pulled off for less than $10 million, tops. In other words, stop pretending that there are circumstances where you would support any war. No WMDs found? Please. In that scenario, you would have just taken the indignant position, “who are WE to decide what weapons another sovereign nation may possess?” Bush “refused to change course for political reasons”? What about the successful surge? That was a change of course and it worked, but it certainly changes nothing as far as you’re concerned anyway. You have no credibility here because we know that the only way Bush, Cheney, etc. could have gotten it right was to not go to war at all, even if you were convinced that Hussein was caught with WMDs and/or bought the plane tickets of the 9/11 hijackers with his personal Visa debit card. So stop pretending this is about Cheney lying or how the Administration handled the war. You just can’t stand American overtures of force under any circumstances because you see the US as the oppressor in every conflict.

    The objective was regime change and Hussein is dead. Three weeks ago, 10 million Iraqis came out to vote in the parliamentary election. The hydrocarbon law is slowly making its way through parliament and the objective of the law is to ensure that oil resources located in outlying regions will benefit those regions and the Iraqi people living there (instead of all oil resources belonging to the state and being illegally sold by Hussein to build his golden palaces while his people starve). The Iraqis have a real shot at living in some semblance of a democracy but I’m sure that there is no positive result that you would ever acknowledge without the question, “but at what cost?”

    Cheney is a great man and he cares about this nation and the American people in a way that Obama could never hope to understand. He and his wife give millions and millions of dollars to charity, in some years over 75 percent of their income. And it drives you insane that Cheney’s actions toward his lesbian daughter have been inconsistent with the bigoted caricature you have been programmed to assign to all conservatives. In contrast, on this very blog you have plainly admitted that although abortion is the “snuffing out” of a “would-be human life,” you support the procedure because it would be a bigger tragedy for an unwanted pregnancy to derail a woman’s plans for scheduling her life. Your inability to see the immorality of your position makes your criticism of Cheney an obscene joke.

  36. Dan, I’ve already done it unless you feel that dick cheney never expressed that invading iraq was necessary. That was the lie, and every interview and comment he gave in support of that expression was part of it.

    Let me try this another way. You routinely call the current president a liar because he promised a net spending cut, but by your logic, this isn’t technically a lie unless we can find some evidence that he knew he was telling a lie. Is there any such evidence? Maybe obama changed his mind, certainly his prerogative. Maybe obama plans to cut spending in the future? Maybe he was just tossing a line out there? Either way, it is impossible for you to prove beyond a doubt that he was deliberately and consiously lying- according to your definition as you’re applying it to cheney.

    The bush administration said we would find wmds, we would be greeted as liberators, the whole operation would take six weeks and cost a billion dollars. None of those things turned out to be true. So what would you call it? Shouldn’t there be some criticism of a group that gets so much of their own war’s forecast wrong?

  37. Levi conveniently ignores the statements and policies of the Clinton administration; the statements of Al Gore and then Senator Clinton in the run up to the Iraq war.

    This is an old question (but one I’ve never seen answered): if Bush was lying about WMDs in Iraq then what were the UN sanctions, no-fly zones, and all the rest about?

  38. #38: “Shouldn’t there be some criticism of a group that gets so much of their own war’s forecast wrong?”

    Yeah, Dan. All Levi is saying is that he would be praising Cheney and Bush for accomplishing regime change and facilitating a democratic government in Iraq, if only the pre-invasion time estimates and budgeting had been more accurate. You see? It’s the time and money issues that he’s really upset about. Otherwise, he fully supports the mission and the troops 100 percent!