“We don’t do [ Iraqi ] body counts.”
— General Tommy Franks, US Central Command

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"A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies. The government will have to operate on the dark side."
— Dick Cheney

"The Iraq war is a remarkable achievement."
— Dick Cheney, 2/24/07

"By 2010 we will need 50 million more barrels a day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is where the prize lies."
— Dick Cheney, then Halliburton chief executive officer, 1999

"Vice President Dick Cheney is on a tour of the Middle East. Over there, he's known as 'Lawrence of Arrhythmia'"
— David Letterman

       Dick Cheney's Got A Gun

  ODEO


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"We never had the burden of proof [on finding WMDS]. It was up to Saddam Hussein to prove to the world that he didn't have such weapons."
— Dick Cheney, U.S. Vice-President 11/21/05

"It's intellectually corrupt to condone mass murder for a political goal"
— John Malkovich

"What's the difference between Michael Jackson and Dick Cheney? One has pasty white skin, fake body parts and he's creepy; the other's Michael Jackson."
— Jay Leno

"Prosecutors announced yesterday that Karl Rove will not be charged with any crimes. The White House was pretty relieved. President Bush told Dick Cheney, 'You can cancel that hunting trip with Karl Rove.'"
— Jay Leno

"And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
— Lord Acton

(on AG Alberto Gonzales announcing that the seven men arrested in Miami with suspected ties to al Qaeda were going to wage a full ground war against the United States):
"Seven guys? I am not a general. I am not in any way affiliated with a military academy, but I believe if you are going to wage a full ground war against the United States, you need to field at least as many people as, say, a softball team."
— Jon Stewart

"Speaking of Cheney in a recent interview, an author who's writing a book about Cheney says that Dick Cheney is misunderstood and is not a monster. Then the author admitted, Cheney told me if I didn't say that, he would eat my children."
— Conan O'Brien

"And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"
— From Cheney's 2003 Xmas card

"We Will, In Fact, Be Greeted As Liberators."
— Dick Cheney, on Iraqi war (Meet the Press, 3/16/03)

"I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more accurate in my experience in those events that I'm personally involved in, than many of the other outlets."
— Dick Cheney

"War is conducted for the very few at the expense of the masses."
"Like all members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher ups. This is typical of everyone in the military service."
"War is a racket. Never again will I become a racketeer for capitalism."

— U.S. Major General Smedley Butler, twice awarded the Medal of Honor

"Dick Cheney was at the ball game last night. During the 7th inning they showed him on the jumbotron at Yankee Stadium and everyone started booing him. You know Dick Cheney has a temper. He went a bit crazy, grabbed everyone that booed him, then ran them around naked on a leash."
— David Letterman

"This was nice, President Bush wished the Iraqis God's grace on their road to democracy. And then Vice President Cheney told them to Go Fuck Themselves."
— Craig Kilborn

Cheney "May be guilty of war crime"

The Guardian

Vice-president Dick Cheney accused of backing torture
Claims on BBC by former insider add to Bush's woes

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday November 30, 2005

WASHINGTON - Vice-president Dick Cheney's burden on the Bush administration grew heavier yesterday after a former senior US state department official said he could be guilty of a war crime over the abuse of prisoners.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, singled out Mr Cheney in a wide-ranging political assault on the BBC's Today programme.

Mr Wilkerson said that in an internal administration debate over whether to abide by the Geneva conventions in the treatment of detainees, Mr Cheney led the argument "that essentially wanted to do away with all restrictions".

Asked whether the vice-president was guilty of a war crime, Mr Wilkerson replied: "Well, that's an interesting question - it was certainly a domestic crime to advocate terror and I would suspect that it is ... an international crime as well." In the context of other remarks it appeared he was using the word "terror" to apply to the systematic abuse of prisoners.

The Washington Post last month called Mr Cheney the "vice-president for torture" for his demand that the CIA be exempted from a ban on "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of detainees.

Mr Wilkerson, a former army colonel, also said he had seen increasing evidence that the White House had manipulated pre-war intelligence on Iraq to make its case for the invasion. He said: "You begin to wonder was this intelligence spun? Was it politicised? Was it cherry-picked? Did, in fact, the American people get fooled? I am beginning to have my concerns."

Mr Cheney has been under fire for his role in assembling evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Mr Wilkerson told the Associated Press that the vice-president must have sincerely believed Iraq could be a spawning ground for terrorism because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard".

Such charges have kept the Bush administration on the defensive for several months. Mr Bush yesterday repeated his earlier assertion that the US "does not torture and that's important for people around the world to realise". He is also due to make the first of a series of speeches today, outlining his plan to defeat the insurgency and pave the way for US withdrawal. The White House will also publish a declassified version of its war plan.

But it has now emerged that two justice department memos listing permissible interrogation methods have been kept secret by the White House, even from the Senate intelligence committee. The New Yorker recently quoted a source who had seen a memo as calling it "breathtaking".

"The document dismissed virtually all national and international laws regulating the treatment of prisoners, including war crimes and assault statutes, and it was radical in its view that in wartime the president can fight enemies by whatever means he sees fit," the magazine reported.

One technique allegedly used by the CIA in questioning suspects is "waterboarding" (strapping a detainee to a board and submerging it until the prisoner believes he or she is drowning). The White House is accused of defining "torture" so narrowly as to exclude such methods. But James Ross, a legal expert at Human Rights Watch said such a narrow definition was at odds with international norms.

"Waterboarding is clearly a form of torture. It has been used since the Inquisition. It was a well-known torture technique in Latin America," Mr Ross said.

Human Rights Watch this year called for a special counsel to investigate any US officials - no matter their rank or position - who took part in, "ordered, or had command responsibility for war crimes or torture, or other prohibited ill-treatment against detainees in US custody".

The report focused on the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, for his alleged command responsibility for abuses at Abu Ghraib, but Mr Wilkerson argued Mr Cheney was ultimately responsible.

The US is a signatory to the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture, which bans inflicting "severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental". Such practices are also a crime under US federal law.


JUST OUR BILL

by Dennis Roddy
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Saturday, December 02, 2000

Lito Pena is sure of his memory. Thirty-six years ago he, then a Democratic Party poll watcher, got into a shoving match with a Republican who had spent the opening hours of the 1964 election doing his damnedest to keep people from voting in south Phoenix.

"He was holding up minority voters because he knew they were going to vote Democratic," said Pena.

The guy called himself Bill. He knew the law and applied it with the precision of a swordsman. He sat at the table at the Bethune School, a polling place brimming with black citizens, and quizzed voters ad nauseam about where they were from, how long they'd lived there -- every question in the book. A passage of the Constitution was read and people who spoke broken English were ordered to interpret it to prove they had the language skills to vote.

By the time Pena arrived at Bethune, he said, the line to vote was four abreast and a block long. People were giving up and going home.

Pena told the guy to leave. They got into an argument. Shoving followed. Arizona politics can be raw. Finally, Pena said, the guy raised a fist as if he was fixing to throw a punch. "I said 'If that's what you want, I'll get someone to take you out of here." Party leaders told him not to get physical, but this was the second straight election in which Republicans had sent out people to intellectually rough up the voters. The project even had a name: Operation Eagle Eye.

Pena had a group of 20 iron workers holed up in a motel nearby. He dispatched one who grabbed Bill and hustled him out of the school. "He was pushing him across a yard and backed him into the school building," Pena remembered.

Others in Phoenix remember Operation Eagle Eye, too. Charlie Stevens, then the head of the local Young Republicans, said he got a phone call from the same lawyer Pena remembered throwing out of Bethune School. The guy wanted to know why Charlie hadn't joined Operation Eagle Eye. "I think they called them flying squads," Stevens said. "It was perfectly legal. The law at the time was that you had to be able to read English and interpret what you read." But he didn't like the idea and he told Bill this. "My parents were immigrants," Stevens said. They'd settled in Cleveland, Ohio, a pair of Greeks driven out of Turkey who arrived in the United States with broken English and a desire to be American. After their son went to law school and settled in Phoenix, he even Americanized the name. Charlie Tsoukalas became Charlie Stevens.

"I didn't think it was proper to challenge my dad or my mother to interpret the Constitution," Stevens said. "Even people who are born here have trouble interpreting the Constitution. Lawyers have trouble interpreting it." The guy told Stevens that if he felt that way about it, then he could take a pass.

There was nothing illegal going on there, Stevens said. "It just violated my principles. I had a poor family. I grew up in the projects in Cleveland, Ohio."

Operation Eagle Eye had a two-year run. Eventually, Arizona changed the laws that had allowed the kind of challenges that had devolved into bullying.

Pena went on to serve 30 years in the Arizona State Legislature. Stevens became a prosperous and well-regarded lawyer in Phoenix and helped Sandra Day O'Connor get her start in law.

The guy Pena remembers tossing out of Bethune School prospered, too. Bill Rehnquist, now better known as William H. Rehnquist, chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, presided yesterday over a case that centers on whether every vote for president was properly recorded in the state of Florida.

In his confirmation hearings for the court in 1971, Rehnquist denied personally intimidating voters and gave the explanation that he might have been called to polling places on Election Day to arbitrate disputes over voter qualifications. Fifteen years later, three more witnesses, including a deputy U.S. attorney, told of being called to polling places and having angry voters point to Rehnquist as their tormentor. His defenders suggested it was a case of mistaken identity.

Now, with the presidency in the balance, Rehnquist has been asked to read passages of the Constitution and interpret them. Once again, a reading and interpretation will determine whose vote gets to count.