[Grovenet] Chaney again! Evil man.

[Katie Allnutt]

Maybe I have a soft spot for old guys but there are days when
I think that Cheney may not be as evil as he is scared.
When a guy thinks there are boogeymen behind every door is is likely  
to shoot through the door before he opens it when he hears the doorbell.
If you have the mindset that whatever is in your house must be  
protected 'at all costs', then an occasional dead neighbor is just  
collateral damage and worth the price of shooting through the door  
every time. And you will eventually hit the Comcast man who is trying  
to break in and assault your front office staff to use a recent real  
life example.

The dividing line these days seem to be between the groups that think  
what ever Cheney did, it was 'worth it', and the groups that think  
that principles still matter and if you give up your principles that  
easily then you turn yourself into the enemy that you are most afraid  
of.
I feel sorry for folks who accidentally shoot their teenagers who  
slip out of the house and night and try to sneak back in. The parent  
not aware of the fact that their kid is coming home, mistakenly  
thinks a burglar is about to do harm and shoots to protect  
themselves.  (Lest you think this is just some dumb scenario I saw on  
TV, a friend came very close to shooting my husband while we were  
camping once because he thought a bear was trying to get in under  
very similar circumstances. So, I am incredibly lucky to have a  
living spouse.) And this scenario happened in Portland when a foreign  
exchange student was invited to a Halloween party and told to just  
walk in, but wound up at the wrong house. The homeowners thought he  
was a criminal and killed him.

This kind of thing is tragic when it happens in real life and there  
is a parallel with what Dick Cheney did since he was acting like a  
frightened old man when all this started.  He still seems frightened  
today.  And please note that none of these comments diminishes the  
fact that there are very real threats both on the local level (the  
Comcast guy) and the international level (Nuclear hazards from both  
state (NKorea) and non state actors). We need cooler heads to be  
charge when there also exists an internal threat that we will implode  
our constitution if our leaders don't keep it's ideals and principles  
safe too. Cheney could not keep a cool head and it is probably a  
living hell to be that scared all the time.

Even with real threats it does not need to be US policy to shoot  
every time we are scared and to wiretap or torture every person who  
might know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody that  
doesn't like us.

Katie



On Jul 11, 2009, at 2:12 PM, Ed Davie wrote:

> Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
>  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/us/politics/12intel.html? 
> _r=1&hp  a.. By SCOTT SHANEPublished: July 11, 2009The Central  
> Intelligence Agency withheldinformation about a secret  
> counterterrorismprogram from Congress for eight years on  
> directorders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, theagency's  
> director, Leon E. Panetta, has told theSenate and House  
> intelligence committees, twopeople with direct knowledge of the  
> matter saidSaturday.The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the  
> decisionto conceal the still-unidentified program fromCongress  
> deepened the mystery surrounding it,suggesting that the Bush  
> administration had put ahigh priority on the program and its  
> secrecy.Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he firstlearned of  
> its existence from subordinates on June23, briefed the two  
> intelligence committees aboutit in separate closed sessions the  
> next day.Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives  
> andassociates were unsuccessful.The question of how completely the  
> C.I.A.
>  informedCongress about sensitive programs has been hotlydisputed  
> by Democrats and Republicans since May,when Speaker Nancy Pelosi  
> accused the agency offailing to reveal in 2002 that it  
> waswaterboarding a terrorism suspect, a claim Mr.Panetta  
> rejected.The law requires the president to make sure  
> theintelligence committees "are kept fully andcurrently informed of  
> the intelligence activitiesof the United States, including any  
> significantanticipated intelligence activity." But thelanguage of  
> the statute, the amended NationalSecurity Act of 1947, leaves some  
> leeway forjudgment, saying such briefings should be done "tothe  
> extent consistent with due regard for theprotection from  
> unauthorized disclosure ofclassified information relating to  
> sensitiveintelligence sources and methods or otherexceptionally  
> sensitive matters."In addition, for covert action programs,  
> aparticularly secret category in which the role ofthe United States  
> is hidden, the law says thatbriefings can be limited to
>  the
>  so-called Gang ofEight, consisting of the Republican and  
> Democraticleaders of both houses of Congress and of  
> theirintelligence committees.The disclosure about Mr. Cheney's role  
> in theunidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after aninspector  
> general's report underscored the centralrole of the former vice  
> president's office inrestricting to a small circle of  
> officialsknowledge of the National Security Agency'sprogram of  
> eavesdropping without warrants, adegree of secrecy that the report  
> concluded hurtthe effectiveness of the counterterrorismsurveillance  
> effort.Democrats in Congress, who contend that the covertaction  
> provision was abused to cover up programsunder President Bush, are  
> seeking to change thelaw to permit the full committees to be  
> briefed onmore matters. President Obama, however, hasthreatened to  
> veto the intelligence authorizationbill if the changes go too far,  
> and the proposalis now being negotiated by the White House and  
> theintelligence committees.A spokesman for
>  the
>  intelligence agency, PaulGimigliano, declined on Saturday to  
> comment on thereport of Mr. Cheney's role."It's not agency practice  
> to discuss what may ormay not have been said in a classified  
> briefing,"Mr. Gimigliano said. "When a C.I.A. unit broughtthis  
> matter to Director Panetta's attention, itwas with the  
> recommendation that it be sharedappropriately with Congress. That  
> was also hisview, and he took swift, decisive action to put itinto  
> effect."Bill Harlow, a spokesman for George J. Tenet, whowas the  
> C.I.A. director when the unidentifiedprogram began, declined to  
> comment on Saturday,noting that the program remains  
> classified.Intelligence and Congressional officials have saidthe  
> unidentified program did not involve theC.I.A. interrogation  
> program and did not involvedomestic intelligence activities. They  
> have saidthe program was started by the counterterrorismcenter at  
> the C.I.A. shortly after the attacks ofSept. 11, 2001, but never  
> became fullyoperational, involving planning
>  and some
>  trainingthat took place off and on from 2001 until  
> thisyear."Because this program never went fully operationaland  
> hadn't been briefed as Panetta thought itshould have been, his  
> decision to kill it wasneither difficult nor controversial,"  
> oneintelligence official, who would speak about theclassified  
> program only on condition of anonymity."That's worth remembering  
> amid all the drama."Members of Congress have differed on  
> thesignificance of the program, whose details remainsecret. Most of  
> those interviewed, however, havesaid that it was an important  
> activity that theyfelt should have been disclosed.In the eight  
> years of his vice presidency, Mr.Cheney was the Bush  
> administration's most vehementdefender of the secrecy of government  
> activities,particularly in the intelligence arena. He went tothe  
> Supreme Court to keep secret the advisers tohis task force on  
> energy, and won.A report released on Friday by the  
> inspectorsgeneral of five agencies about the NationalSecurity  
> Agency's dome
>  stic
>  surveillance programmakes clear that Mr. Cheney's legal adviser,  
> DavidS. Addington, had to personally approve everygovernment  
> official who was told about theprogram. The report said "the  
> exceptionallycompartmented nature of the program" frustratedF.B.I.  
> agents who were assigned to follow up ontips it turned up.High- 
> level N.S.A. officials who were responsiblefor ensuring that the  
> surveillance program waslegal, including the agency's inspector  
> generaland general counsel, were not permitted by Mr.Cheney's  
> office to read the Justice Departmentopinion that found the  
> eavesdropping legal,several officials said.Mr. Addington could not  
> be reached for comment onSaturday.Questions over the adequacy and  
> the truthfulnessof the C.I.A.'s briefings for Congress date backto  
> the creation of the intelligence oversightcommittees in the 1970s  
> after disclosures ofagency assassination and mind-control programs  
> andother abuses. But complaints increased in the Bushyears, when  
> the C.I.A. and other
>  intelligenceagencies took the major role in pursuing Al Qaeda.The  
> use of harsh interrogation methods, includingwaterboarding, for  
> instance, was first describedto a handful of lawmakers for the  
> first time inSeptember 2002. Ms. Pelosi and the C.I.A.  
> havedisagreed about what she was told, but in anycase, the briefing  
> occurred only after a terrorismsuspect, Abu Zubaydah, had been  
> waterboarded 83times.Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat  
> ofIllinois on the House committee, wrote on Fridayto the chairman,  
> Representative Silvestre Reyes,Democrat of Texas, to demand an  
> investigation ofthe unidentified program and why Congress was  
> nottold of it. Aides said Mr. Reyes was reviewing  
> thematter."There's been a history of difficulty in gettingthe  
> C.I.A. to tell us what they should," saidRepresentative Adam Smith,  
> Democrat of Washington."We will absolutely be held accountable  
> foranything the agency does."Representative Peter Hoekstra of  
> Michigan, thecommittee's top Republican, said he w
>  ould
>  notjudge the agency harshly in the case of theunidentified  
> program, because it was not fullyoperational. But he said that in  
> general, theagency has not been as forthcoming as the  
> lawrequires."We have to pull the information out of them toget what  
> we need," Mr. Hoekstra said.
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