Psycho Dick

The Ed Show:

9/11 blame game

June 2 — Psycho talk: In Sunday's Washington Post, former Counter-Terrorism Chief Richard Clark took aim at former Vice President Dick Cheney, writing "top officials ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaida attack." Cheney then turned around and place that blame on Clark.

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2:08

The Daily Show:

Dick (Uncut)

June 3, 2009 — Dick Cheney doesn't recall Richard Clarke warning the White House of an imminent terrorist attack months before 9/11, but he hasn't read his book.

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Dick (Uncut)
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3:50

Building containing Dick Cheney's office is on fire

The Eisenhower Executive Building, which houses the Vice President's office is on fire. Hopefully no one is injured, but here are some explanations for how it might have happened:

1. With the clock running down on the Bush administration, they were going to build a bonfire to burn all those documents on Cheney's energy committee hearings, but with his penchant for secrecy he suggested that they hold it indoors.

2. After all those years of the CIA trying to get him with those exploding cigars, Fidel Castro finally got his revenge. He sent a box of them to Cheney, and Cheney, not knowing who they were from, lit one.

3. We now know where the 'secret, undisclosed underground location' is, and it's a hell of a long way down under the Eisenhower building, and quite hot down there.

4. Speaking of the devil, Dick Cheney forgot to extinguish himself this morning when he entered his office.

5. The ghost of Ike is sending a message that he doesn't like what Cheney and his crew have done to the military, the country and the Republican party.

6. With Congress withholding funding for Iraq, the Bush administration took out one of those risky subprime mortgages on the building and now they are also trying to collect the insurance money.

7. It is sort of cramped in there, so it was inevitable that they'd waterboard somebody too close to an electrical outlet.

8. We will find out who started the fire, because Scooter Libby will tell Bob Novak.

9. They just made the building non-smoking, so it started with Cheney sneaking a smoke in the bathroom. He accidentally caught the toilet paper on fire.

10. They experienced a short circuit in an electrical cattle prod during an interrogation session. After it melted one set of testicles, the fire really took off.

11. Dick Cheney is known to sometimes be a volcanic hothead. So this morning his temper got the better of him and the fire started in the room he was in due to spontaneous combustion.

12. The Vice President's answer to global warming: burn documents that were left in the office by the previous occupant.

13. On April 10, 2003 Dick Cheney said that the rioters who were burning all those government buildings in Baghdad were just 'blowing off steam.' So with tension rising in the Vice President's office, maybe he thought it was time to do the same.

14. With Congress passing the new energy bill, oilman Dick Cheney is doing his own research to try and develop a cleaner burning fuel.

15. While duck hunting in his office, Dick Cheney misfired with his shotgun and shot an electrical outlet.

16. The Vice President started a couch on fire with his rhetoric.

17. Congress and the Justice Department are looking into those destroyed CIA tapes. So they need to destroy the tapes of them destroying the tapes.

18. The Vice President had a meeting this morning with some space aliens from Altair-7, and the staff forgot to fireproof the room first.

19. Realizing that he was going to be leaving the office next year, Cheney wanted to make it clear which furniture was his. So remembering his old cattle ranching days he heated up the branding iron and tried to brand the sofa.

20. Never an advocate for civil liberties, Cheney was amusing himslf by burning a copy of the Constitution.

Cheney announcement is a probe, part of a plan to bury their tracks.

Vice President Cheney claimed yesterday that his office is not part of the Bush administration and therefore doesn't have to send to the National Archives any documents that he has.

Aside from the laughable proposition that the Vice President is not part of the administration, this has a serious-- and a dark side.

Presidential administrations by law must keep documentation on file, both for the benefit of future administrations and for the review of historians.

These documents are kept in the National Archives and housed in Presidential Libraries.

Of course some are classified, and remain so until some time in the future when either a specific declassification date is passed or they are deemed as no longer required to be classified by the administration then in charge.

Even where documents may prove to be embarrassing or possibly the grounds for criminal liability, procedures have been devised that will still make them the basis for future historical knowlege. For example, Lyndon Johnson had a time capsule sealed which will be opened in 2039-- a date by which anyone who might have been associated with his crimes in Vietnam will almost certainly be long since gone from this world.

But what we've seen from the Bush administration is a whole new direction. First, were the lost emails. Thousands, maybe even millions of government emails, required by law to be stored (and recently requested by Congress as part of the investigation of the U.S. attorney firings) have been deleted.

I think the investigation probably has only uncovered earlier than the White House expected one of the pieces of one of the greatest coverups of our time, which we will see much more of in the near future, especially if it looks like a President who may not be interested in protecting Bush administration secrets wins the White House.

Another piece fell into place yesterday with Cheney's blatant claim. Believe me, it's not just that he wants to keep the attendees at his energy summit secret. It goes much deeper than that, especially with the role that the Vice President's office has played in developing the policies of this administration. If he can blanket claim the right to deny documents to the National Archives then he has sigificantly reduced the number of documents the administration will have to make public right there, and provided a 'safe' spot within the administration where they can send the most damning of documents and get them out of harm's way.

This administration is aware that the sand is starting to run out of the hourglass, and when it does they could be caught holding documentation on torture, secret surveillance of American citizens, kidnapping and 'black rendition,' detention of prisoners for secret trials, and other illegal operations. Like a drug dealer who has been tipped off that their house has been staked out and the police are on their way, they have a limited time to dispose of the sticky evidence and a lot of it to get rid of.

I fear that Cheney's announcement may be a probe, intended to see how far they can push the needle in terms of covering up what they have done. But expect over the next couple of years more and more stories like this as the Bush administration does everything they can to bury their skeletons (and may we hope that is only a figurative description.)