by Qutb » Mon Feb 20, 2006 6:58 pm
Interesting <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11436302/site/newsweek/" target="top">Newsweek</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> story. According to an anonymous WH staffer, Cheney didn't even call Bush about the shooting! Is the idiot son completely out of the loop? It does seem that way, and Newsweek goes a long way to suggesting the same here. <br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Back at Cheney's lodgings at the ranch—<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>guest quarters called Uncle Tom's House</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->—there was no discussion of a public statement. The White House was at first informed in surprisingly cryptic and cursory fashion—<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>the Situation Room was told of an unspecified shooting accident in the vice president's hunting party. It took a phone call from presidential counselor Karl Rove to Katharine Armstrong ("Karl's one of my closest friends in life," she told NEWSWEEK) to sort out what had happened and report back to President Bush</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->—that the vice president was the shooter and that Whittington had been wounded, though apparently not fatally. That night, according to a senior White House official who refused to be identified discussing a sensitive matter, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Cheney did not speak to either Bush or the White House staff or his own press people</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->. He did speak with David Addington, his chief of staff and former lawyer <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>who is a strong proponent of executive power and secrecy</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->.<br><br>(...)<br><br>In Washington, White House staffers were quietly urging Cheney's staff to somehow go public with the shooting. But Bush never picked up the phone to call Cheney, either to console or to offer counsel.<br><br>(...)<br><br>Matalin is about the only one who could even try to persuade Cheney to talk. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>His official staff is a little afraid of him</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->. NEWSWEEK once asked his press secretary (there have been seven of them since he became vice president) if Cheney went to church on Sundays. The spokesperson confessed she really couldn't ask the veep; the question was just "too personal."<br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Here's a minor bombshell:<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Cheney testified to the 9/11 Commission that he spoke with President Bush before giving an order to shoot down a hijacked civilian airliner that appeared headed toward Washington. (The plane was United Flight 93, which crashed in a Pennsylvania field after a brave revolt by the passengers.) But a source close to the commission, who declined to be identified revealing sensitive information, says that <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>none of the staffers who worked on this aspect of the investigation believed Cheney's version of events</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->.<br><br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>Cheney spent much of his time after 9/11 in his "undisclosed location." The threat seemed terribly real. Cheney spent a great deal of time working on a "decapitation plan"—i.e., shaping a fill-in government in a horrific event in which he and the president and other top leaders were taken out by a terrorist chem-bio or nuclear attack.<br><br>(...)<br><br>It was possible to dimly discern Cheney's shakier footing last week in the ongoing dispute with Capitol Hill over warrant-less eavesdropping. Uneasy about the administration's disregard for the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court warrants to eavesdrop on communications into the United States, three Republicans on the Senate intelligence committee were agitating for greater oversight. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Cheney, who has been the most aggressive defender of the administration's power to wage war (including spying) without congressional approval, went up to the Hill to quell the rebellion. For several hours on Tuesday, he met behind closed doors in the intelligence committee's secret hearing room with the senators</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->. Two days later intelligence committee chairman Pat Roberts, a staunch Bush ally, was able to put off a vote on whether to open an investigation.<br><br>It appeared that Cheney, though pale and obviously distressed by his hunting accident, was still capable of quietly exerting influence. But then Roberts began showing some restlessness. He began suggesting that perhaps the wiretapping program should be brought under FISA after all. His remarks came after the White House seemed to soften a little and suggest that it would be willing to disclose more information about the program and talk to senators about changing the law. Suddenly, Cheney no longer seemed so all-powerful, so sure of getting his way.<br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Sections/Newsweek/Components/Photos/Mag/060227_Issue/060218_CheneyHorse_vl.standard.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br>Insert Brokeback Mountain joke here. <p></p><i></i>
