"Doug Miller" wrote in message
et...
In article , "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:
"We" have not decided that a certain level of mercury from power plants is
OK. That was decided in meetings with attendees whose identity has been
CLASSIFIED by Dick Cheney. They decided what mercury levels they could
afford to release or control.
I think you need to renew the lining in your tinfoil hat, Kanter.
--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
Poor Miller. Reads nothing, spews a lot.
http://www.haleakalatimes.com/news/story2525.aspx
Cheney hates sunshine (and puppies)
A preference for secrecy has long been a Cheney character trait, and he
showed it immediately after taking office. He formed the National Energy
Policy Development Group and used it to create a national energy policy, but
refused to name the members of the task force and claimed an executive
privilege to keep the nature of the discussions secret. In Nov. 2001, Bush
made Cheney the first vice-president in American history to hold the same
executive privilege to classify information as the president.
The policy that came out of the NEPDG focused on the need to establish new
sources of oil, to make “energy security a priority of U.S. trade and
foreign policy,” and to promote outside investment in oil and gas industries
of Middle East and Persian Gulf countries. The task force worked quickly by
Washington standards, meeting for less than 100 days to prepare a
comprehensive national policy regarding a complex and critical aspect of
modern life.
The Sierra Club, Judicial Watch and the Government Accounting Office filed
separate lawsuits against Cheney, seeking the release of all documents
related to the energy task force. Cheney had refused the GAO’s direct
agency-to-agency request, saying that it would compromise “the
confidentiality of communications among a President, a Vice-President, the
President’s other senior advisors and others.”
In July 2003, the Supreme Court denied Cheney’s bid for secrecy and ordered
the NEPDG to release its documents to the public, which showed that members
of the task force included Ken Lay, CEO of an already-troubled Enron, along
with six other Enron executives; ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond and others from
ExxonMobil, and representatives from the American Petroleum Institute.
Other documents described which countries and transnational companies had
agreements with Saddam Hussein to develop Iraq’s oil. There were maps and
charts detailing Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries, terminals and gas
projects. There were also maps of all oil and gas development in Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The documents are dated March 2001, two
years before the invasion of Iraq.
Cheney’s personal insistence on secrecy didn’t interfere with his role in
leaking the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA officer who had the
misfortune of being married to a man who became a target for what Gore Vidal
refers to as “the Cheney/Bush junta.” The perjury trial of Cheney’s former
Chief of Staff, Lewis Libby, has revealed that Cheney was deeply involved in
the attempt to discredit Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson,
after he blew the whistle on Bush’s claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking
uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon.
According to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, “Cheney enlisted Libby
to act as his surrogate and personally respond to reporters’ queries about
the veracity of Wilson’s allegations by authorizing his chief of staff to
leak classified information to journalists.
The classified information that was leaked may have included Plame’s covert
status,” Fitzgerald said, “In retaliation for her husband’s stinging rebukes
of the administration’s Iraq policies.”
“There is a cloud over the vice president. ... a cloud over the White House
over what happened,” Fitzgerald told the jury. “That cloud is something you
just can’t pretend isn’t there.”
It was Cheney’s office that wrote up the 2002 “torture memos” claiming the
Geneva Conventions don’t apply to “enemy combatants.” It was Cheney himself
who described Sen. John McCain’s legislation banning inhumane treatment of
detainees as a law that “would cost thousands of American lives.” Based on
that record, Admiral Stansfield Turner, a former director of the CIA,
referred to Cheney as “the Vice President for torture.”
“Cheney’s manner and authority of voice far outstrip his true abilities,”
according to Chas Freeman, who was an ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the
first Bush administration. “It was clear from the start that George W. Bush
required adult supervision – but it turns out Cheney has even worse
instincts. He does not understand that when you act recklessly, your
mistakes will come back and bite you on the ass.”
The Casper Star Tribune isn’t too pleased with Cheney these days either,
saying in a December 2006 editorial: “During Cheney’s tenure as VP, Wyoming
has seen a virtual takeover of our public lands by the oil and gas industry.
As the chief architect of the Bush energy policy, Cheney deserves much of
the credit (or blame) for the unplanned, uncontrolled sprawl of oil and gas
development across Wyoming’s open spaces. So far, it seems that the vice
president has brought little more than destruction and embarrassment to
Wyoming during his term in office.”
Cheney’s not even a true conservative, according to David Payne, a national
security expert and occasional Fox News commentator – a man so conservative
that he considers George W. Bush to be a “centrist” President.
“For a long time, I was willing to look past Cheney’s growing list of false
assertions and support for dubious and decidedly un-conservative policies,”
Payne wrote in July 2004. “For over three years, I observed his misguided
embrace of neo-conservatism and his record as chief propagandist for the
administration’s
unprovoked war against Iraq.”
Payne’s ultimate conclusion was that in order for the Republican party to
get back to “a Reaganite policy of conservative realism that puts America’s
national interests first,” the Vice President that he once supported “simply
has to go.”
Rob Lafferty