|
Banned
|
Is the President Really the President, Or....?
I suspect that "the President" holds the office in name only, that Cheney is actually "running things", and that he has seriously miscalculated..... by permitting Scooter Libby to "go on trial" instead of sparing the office of the VP, and the VP himself, the exposure that the details of the prosecution's case, and the testimony have so far brought to public availability...versus insisting that Libby avoid a public trial via pursuit of a "plea deal".
No one can say for sure what the Libby trial, will end up costing both Cheney and Libby, but however much it costs them in time, lost opportunities to further whatever their ultimate goals were, unwanted media and public scrutiny, damage to reputaition, and possible criminal penalties, the total costs will be steeper and will diminish Cheney's power and influence, more than he could ever imagine, probably even this far into the unfolding of events that began with Cheney's decision to react to Joe Wilson's trip to Niger and Wilson's post 2003 SOTU comments to other diplomats, reporters, and finally in print.
....and, if Mr. Bush has been "president", in title only, for the past six years, who will replace Cheney if his current 18 percent approval rating is further eroded by information coming out of Libby's trial, or by disclosures gleaned from congressional investigations spearheaded by the new democratic majority?
I'm asking these questions because the details in the following links influence me to believe that they are timely and appropriate things to wonder about :
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070211/...cheney_s_world
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/we...ew&oref=slogin
Cheney’s To-Do Lists, Then and Now
....In 2003, for instance, Mr. Cheney was not protecting secrets but authorizing Mr. Libby to peddle them to Judith Miller, then a reporter for The Times, in an effort to counter the points made in the opinion article, according to Mr. Libby’s grand jury testimony. But his combative relationship with the press and the goals that animate it have not changed.
“He’s had the same idea for the past 30 years,” said Kathryn S. Olmsted, a history professor at the University of California at Davis, who wrote about the Cheney file in her 1996 book, “Challenging the Secret Government.”
<b>“His philosophy is that the president and the vice president and the people around the president decide what’s secret and what’s not,” she said.</b> “They thought they had to aggressively go after the press and Congress to reclaim the powers the president lost in Watergate.”.....
|
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...cle2132569.ece
Quote:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/plumbook/20..._appendix5.pdf
....The Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter. The Vice Presidency performs functions in both the legislative branch (see article I, section 3 of the Constitution) and in the executive branch (see article II, and amendments XII and XXV, of the Constitution, and section 106 of title 3 of the United States Code)......
|
Quote:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?...rticleId=11926
See Dick Run (the Country)
Cheney's the real president. It'd be nice if the press noticed.
By Robert Kuttner
Web Exclusive: 08.28.06
.....If Cheney were the president, more of this would be smoked out because the press would be paying attention. The New York Times' acerbic columnist Maureen Dowd regularly makes sport of Cheney's dominance, and there are plenty of jokes (Bush is a heartbeat away from the presidency). But you can count serious newspaper or magazine articles on Cheney's operation on the fingers of one hand. One of the first was by Bob Dreyfuss writing in the Prospect -- "Vice Squad," on all the vice-president's men, which ran in our May issue. Another notable example is Charlie Savage's important May 28th piece in The Boston Globe on Cheney operative David Addington, the architect and chief reviewer of legislation for "signing statements." The most comprehensive was Jane Mayer's fine piece in the July 3 New Yorker on Addington.
Cheney's power is matched only by his penchant for secrecy. When Dreyfuss requested the names of people who serve on the vice president's staff, he was told this was classified information. Former staffers for other departments provided Dreyfuss with names. This journalism requires a lot of hard work, but it is gettable because so many people in government have been sandbagged by the Cheney operation and are willing to provide information.
So secretive is Cheney (and so incurious the media) that when his chief of staff, Irving Lewis Libby, was implicated in the leaked identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, reporters who rushed to look Libby up on Nexis and Google found that Libby had barely rated previous press attention.
<b>Why does this matter? Because if the man actually running the government is out of the spotlight, the administration and its policies are far less accountable. ......</b>
|
Quote:
http://www.lebanonwire.com/0503/05030201FP.asp
......Cheney has had the largest national security staff of any vice president in U.S. history—one larger than President John F. Kennedy’s entire NSC staff at one time. He also has a network of close associates that extend throughout the government and who report to him or to Lewis “Scooter” Libby, his chief of staff, whose rank (assistant to the president) is technically equivalent to the national security advisor’s. Estimates of the total number of staffers, consultants, and those seconded from other agencies to the vice president’s office to work on national security-related issues have ranged from 15 to 35; it’s impossible to know for sure, as the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act do not cover the Office of the Vice President, and therefore it does not need to disclose details of its operation........
|
Quote:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/fea...701.rozen.html
....First stop, Cheney’s office itself and its extraordinarily large staff, presided over by Cheney’s Cheney, chief counsel turned chief of staff David Addington, who replaced “Scooter” Libby following Libby’s indictment in the Valerie Plame investigation. “A friend of mine counted noses [at the office] and came away with 88. That doesn’t count others seconded from other agencies,” said Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, previously chief of staff to former secretary of state Colin Powell. Wilkerson’s source also noted a National Security Council staff of 212, instead of the usual 110 to 150. The build-up signals Cheney’s desire to consolidate power in the White House—where, not incidentally, it’s harder for Congress and the press to pry. (When I inquired about a staffer’s rumored move to the Veep’s office, a Cheney press officer answered sweetly, “If we have a personnel announcement we’d like you to know about, we’ll tell you.”)....
|
Last edited by host; 02-11-2007 at 11:23 PM..
|