Brink Lindsey points out that if you dig into the transcript of the interview that the now-famous video comes from, it turns out that Cheney's changed his tune on Iran as well.
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More Classic Cheney
16 Aug 2007 03:27 pm
Comments (14)
Did that really happen? I'd never thought of that tactic before.
This may be a pointless point at the moment, but for all those who think Edwards is not a 'fighter' because he wasn't tough enough on Cheney during the '04 VP debate, I'd remind you that he brought up exactly this issue to Dick's face then.
I'm tellin' ya- Cheney's problem is nuerological.
Now I am left to ponder, until the end of my days, how there can be such a thing as a point that is pointless.
sorry-neurological. I've been Iglesiasized.
I believe at that time Haliburton had to resort to creating a foreign subsidiary to work in Iran. He probably resented that.
Njorl snarks about it, but he's obviously right. Cheney advocated lifting the Iran sanctions when he was CEO of Halliburton because that would be great for Halliburton. After he leaves Halliburton, he no longer advocates what is good for Halliburton.
If anything, this is just further proof that everything the Left has been saying about Cheney and Halliburton for the last 7 years is complete bullsh*t. If Cheney really wanted to help Halliburton, he would have been advocating lifting the Iran sanctions all along, just as he did back in the 90s when he was Halliburton CEO.
Cheney did a fine job as Defense Secretary during the First Gulf War, including going along with the now obviously correct decision to not plow on to Baghdad in 1991. Something went wrong with Cheney between then and 2001.
"[O]ur sanctions policy oftentimes generates unanticipated consequences. It puts us in a position where a part of our government is pursuing objectives that are at odds with other objectives that the United States has with respect to a particular region."--Dick Cheney, 1994
This is the key. I think a sympathetic person would say that 9-11 so affected Cheney that he abandoned the realist foreign policy worldview that he had spent a lifetime absorbing and honing from the likes of Brent Scowcroft, which is why Scowcroft--in the New Yorker piece about him a few months back--claimed that he "doesn't know" the Cheney of today. In short, Cheney exchanged a realism for the 1% doctrine in which preventative war became a necessary policy option.
What remains to be explain is what caused him to be so mendacious about this transformation. He never said that we had to go to war in Iraq in spite of the risks. Instead, he used happy talk about being greeted as liberators and last throes and dead-enders when confronted with evidence that his realist worldview might hold some water even after 9-11. It's this omission or manipulation...or whatever you want to call that I find so troubling and so damning.
He should have been much, much more forthright. Now that I think about it, this is the case Jon Stewart made when he interviewed Stephen Hayes.
Two words.
pump head
uh Al, who needs Iran's oil when you've got Iraq's ?
It’s not that there has been any “transformation” in Cheney himself. Rather, it’s the difference in strategic perspective associated with being the CEO of a large international corporation, on the one hand, and being in direct control of the big stick provided by the US government and military apparatus, on the other.
As the CEO of Halliburton, Cheney had to be alert to and intimately concerned with the costs and benefits of Iran policy from the point of view of the competitive interest and bottom line of US corporations (including Halliburton). Most revealing, in this respect, is when he says (in the 1998 presentation to the Cato group, as quoted by Lindsey):
American firms are prohibited from dealing with Iran and find themselves cut out of the action, both in terms of opportunities that develop with respect to Iran itself, and also with respect to our ability to gain access to Caspian resources.
In other words, what loomed large then, in his calculus, was the market position of “American firms” in terms of the “action” in that region. And, of course, the implicit critique that the evil and effete Clinton was incapable of acting effectively on their behalf.
However, with the change-over at the White House in 2000, and upon becoming the alter ego of Bush II, he was granted more power over the instruments of state, and perhaps over Bush II’s brain, than he ever had even as Sec. Def. for Bush I. Vested with such power and influence, and with his side-kick Rummy in control at the Pentagon, it must have seemed now much easier to pursue the same corporate goal by using the big stick to whip the whole Middle East into line by getting rid of the obstacles one by one, beginning with Iraq, then Iran, Syria, etc.
It seems to me that the corporate goal has remained constant throughout. What’s changed is his position in relation to the instruments of power. And underlying this switch and the quagmire in which he now finds himself, is a fundamental misconception of the capacity of the US government to exercise that power to make the world “safe” for US corporations.
When are people going to realize that anything these morons say publicly is strictly for public consumption?
Bush isn't stupid or illiterate. He just does not CARE what he says to you. So he says anything at all that happens to be in his head and it comes out sounding like gibberish.
The same is true of Cheney, except he pays a little more attention to the actual words and ostensible reasoning.
A few years ago, I saw Don Rumsfeld get utterly clobbered on a news program. The interviewers asked him why he had said that Saddam was an imminent nuclear threat. He blithely said he never said that. But they were ready for him. They instantly popped up on the screen the exact quote.
Rumsfeld sat there for a good thirty seconds or more. It was total silence on the program. He looked dumbfounded that he could be sandbagged so perfectly on national television.
Did he care? Other than at that moment, which was embarrassing, hell, no. What harm did it do him? Absolutely none.
These people DO NOT CARE because they have the power - and you do NOT.
Who's going to harm Dick Cheney? Unless you can get him and Bush impeached AND charged with criminal offenses and brought to either a Federal or international court, they are UNTOUCHABLE! They are going to walk out of office and make more money than you'll ever see in your life for the rest of their lives. Do they care what the history books are going to say? They'll be dead by then.
So why should they care that you called them on some statement they made X years ago?
"Oooh, boo-hoo, I 'flip-flopped'!" Then Dick Cheney will tell you to go fuck yourself.
Well, we don't care either.
The goal here is to get these bozos out of office and stop them from doing any more harm. Let them write books, go on talk shows, sit on company boards, head up university departments, and make Presidential libraries. Who cares?
Getting rid of them is what matters - and making sure we don't replace them with equal scumbags like Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani is what we should be concerned about.
Pointing out where they contradicted themselves is only useful if you use it to point out that they do not care - because when they say anything, they are really saying "go fuck yourself, little citizen." This is what every citizen needs to understand.
"Njorl snarks about it, but he's obviously right. Cheney advocated lifting the Iran sanctions when he was CEO of Halliburton because that would be great for Halliburton. After he leaves Halliburton, he no longer advocates what is good for Halliburton.
If anything, this is just further proof that everything the Left has been saying about Cheney and Halliburton for the last 7 years is complete bullsh*t. If Cheney really wanted to help Halliburton, he would have been advocating lifting the Iran sanctions all along, just as he did back in the 90s when he was Halliburton CEO."-Posted by Al
There is no longer any need for Halliburton to work in Iran. Halliburton is an oil services company, not an oil company. They make their money building infrastructure. The opportunities in Iran are dwarfed by those in Iraq.
Comments closed August 30, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
"... it turns out that Cheney's changed his tune on Iran as well."
I believe at that time Haliburton had to resort to creating a foreign subsidiary to work in Iran. He probably resented that.
Posted by Njorl | August 16, 2007 3:56 PM