Poll: 23 percent say Cheney worst vice president ever

A new national poll suggests that almost a quarter of Americans think that Dick Cheney is the worst vice president in American history.

Twenty-three percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday say that Cheney is the country's worst vice president, when compared with his predecessors.

... Cheney steps down as vice president January 20. He will be succeeded by Vice President-elect Joe Biden. Although extremely unpopular, Cheney will leave office as one of the most powerful vice presidents in history. He played a crucial role in many of the Bush administration's crucial policies and was a major proponent of using and expanding executive powers. - cnn

... He admitted he personally approved torture, but insisted it destroyed Al Qaeda and saved American lives. According to a powerful article by David Rose in Vanity Fair, the Bush-Cheney torture regime accomplished exactly the opposite. The torture photos from Abu Ghraib helped Al Qaeda's recruitment soar. U.S. officers in Iraq say torture-inspired attacks on U.S. soldiers were the #1 and #2 cause of soldiers' deaths. CIA analysts say the "intelligence" produced by torture was worthless. - democrats

A Dick Cheney time line:

1969: Cheney Hired by Donald Rumsfeld to Serve as Aide.

Cheney avoids Vietnam War by securing five student deferments [Washington Post, 1/17/2006]

Rumsfeld resigns as congressman to run the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO).

September 21, 1974 and After: Rumsfeld, Cheney Take Power in White House. President Ford asks Donald Rumsfeld to be his as “staff coordinator.” ... Rumsfeld agrees, and names former Wyoming Congressman Dick Cheney as his deputy.

November 4, 1975: ’Halloween Massacre’ Places Rumsfeld, Cheney in Power. Nixon holdovers fired by Ford. Rumsfeld becomes secretary of defense. George H. W. Bush replaces William Colby as director of the CIA. Cheney becomes youngest chief of staff in White House history.

1995 - Dick Cheney is appointed CEO of Halliburton.

1998 - Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, & Paul Wolfowiz participate in a think tank that concludes that we need to invade Iraq to lock up oil for the 21st Century. Letter is sent to then President Clinton asking him to do as much. Think tank concludes in their document titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (link) that there would need to be a “new Pearl Harbor” to allow a political climate to invade Iraq.

2000 August: Cheney leaves his position as Halliburton's CEO to run as Bush's Vice President. Halliburton announces that it is giving Cheney a retirement package worth more than $33.7 million.

2000 - Bush Claims election; Cheney sets up team to determine who will serve in the cabinet including Rumsfeld. Tries to get Wolfowiz in as CIA chief which is rebuked.  Wolfowicz is instead set up as Rumsfeld’s Defense Secretary and puts together a plan for war.

2000 - Cheney sets up shadow CIA office, meant to question the real CIA’s analysis.   Shadow group was fixing evidence to go to war with Iraq even before 9/11 according to 2 cabinet members (Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil & Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke).

2001 KBR wins a $300-million exclusive contract to supply logistics to the Navy, providing services like cooking, construction, power generation and fuel transportation.

2001 - Richard Clarke explains to Bush in a meeting with three witnesses that Iraq is not involved with the 9/11 attack and that the attack came from Al Quaida; Bush tries to intimidate Clarke into giving him an answer that Iraq and the attacks were linked.

Feb. 3, 2001 - a secret National Security Council document instructs NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney’s task force, which was “melding” two previously unrelated policy areas: “the review of operational policies towards rogue states” and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.” [The New Yorker, Feb. 16, 2004]



June 1, 2001 - A change in NORAD and Pentagon orders  revokes standing orders to shoot down errant or hijacked aircraft and instructed them instead to stand down until they were given orders by the President, Vice President or Secretary of Defense.

September 11, 2001 (8:25 a.m.-8:50 a.m.): Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Sean O’Keefe stops by for an unscheduled visit with Cheney Neither Can Later Recall What They Discuss.

September 11, 2001 (8:30 a.m) Cheney is scheduled to meet John McConnell, his chief speechwriter, left waiting outside the office while the vice president is deep in discussion with O’Keefe.

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9/11/2001 9:25 a.m. Cheney was "absolutely" already there in the PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Center) bunker despite  9/11 Commission Report claims he had not arrived until 9:58-- after the Pentagon had been hit  - rm , Mineta's Testimony ,  jonesrp.

October 18, 2001, alarm in the White House situation room allegedly goes off. Vice President Cheney is said to believe he has been subjected to a lethal dose of anthrax.

October 24, 2001: House and Senate Pass Patriot Act Without Reading It. 

2008 - Halliburton stock 1000% higher than late 2001.

2008 - Cheney sued to preserve his records; White House argues that it should be able to destroy Cheney’s records.

Mineta told Lee Hamilton:

“During the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President…the plane is 50 miles out…the plane is 30 miles out….and when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president “do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary!?

Michael Ruppert has done a first-rate job in Crossing the Rubicon to explain how the chain of command was quietly changed June 1, 2001 in anticipation of 911, probably to put Dick Cheney in charge of the NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) response that day, but he cannot quite find the direct evidence he wants to confirm Cheney’s command role. Ruppert has also recounted how as many as five simultaneous war games were running the morning of 911 so that even individuals not complicit with the 911 plot would be precluded from effective response. These war games involved live flight of actual airliners posing as hijacked planes, introduction of dummy hijacked planes into the radar screens of FAA comptrollers and phantom data into the independent radar systems of the military, an evacuation in the wake of a simulated crash of an airliner into the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), and the defense against a foreign invader. These games took NORAD jets normally available for interception far from their usual bases, and made directing the few remaining jets to their targets difficult if not impossible because of the problem of sorting genuine hijackings from phantom hijacking. Thus, whoever organized the war games to coincide with 911, and whoever coordinated them that day, but especially whoever assumed command of the NORAD response once the 911 attack began is a key operational player of 911. 4 The USGIC controlled media has buried the crucial 911 war games story to disguise USGIC complicity.

But wait, even disabling NORAD leaves the very pesky problem that the White House and Pentagon are equipped with their own anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile defenses that are adequate to down an approaching Boeing. What is needed is an inside man to make sure that the Pentagon does not shoot down the approaching plane. Did anyone say, “Dick Cheney”? Which is why Norman Mineta’s testimony matters so much: it is the very kind of direct evidence needed to understand 911 and gives strong independent support to Ruppert’s claim that Cheney commanded the overall USA “defense” against the 911 attacks. (And, of course, Cheney being in charge also explains why Bush was sidelined at Booker Elementary listening to “My Pet Goat.” Bush could not be trusted to perform publicly in a high-pressure domestic covert operation and was probably informed of it after-the-fact with a sly wink about “plausible deniability.”) - wtc7

An additional item of interest that has been largely ignored is that extremely high-value, critically important facilities such as the Pentagon typically have fully automated, reactive air defense systems in place. These point-defense systems have been mounted on US Navy warships for decades, and are capable of radar-detecting incoming missiles or artillery, and then tracking, targeting, and shooting them out of the sky within seconds. Such robotic sentry guns -- variously referred to as "Area Denial Systems", "Close-In Weapons Systems", and "Active Protection Systems" -- all rely on built-in radar capabilities to track and target incoming projectiles or missiles. The systems are fully automated; once in an active defense state, they will target and fire on an incoming missile or aircraft with no intervention from a human operator. So Vice President Cheney's stand-down order may not have just applied to calling off the fighter interceptors, but also to disabling all automated air defenses around the Pentagon. ...

This isn't science fiction; automated point defense systems have been around for decades. Take Raytheon's Phalanx as a first example. First deployed in 1980, this famous system uses separate search and tracking radars (characteristic of such systems) to focus in on its targets. There is no identification friend or foe; it simply analyzes the speed and relative movement of the missile, and fires upon it if the programmed threat criteria are met. The main things it looks for are how rapidly the potential target is incoming, and where it seems to be heading. Primarily deployed aboard US Navy ships, there is also a land-based variant. Each unit is about $3.8 million (much more for advanced optics), and the overall multi-year program cost has been almost $2.7 billion. ...

Now we are to believe that the most powerful defense agency in the world had its headquarters building successfully attacked by cave-dwelling kamikaze pilots. The "incoming kamikaze" problem was solved a long time ago -- it's called RADAR and explosive artillery. When you link the two with some robotics and software controls, the resulting system becomes an incredibly effective air defense guardian.

The point is that our military's air defenses are unmatched in the world. There is no way -- over half a century after WWII -- that a kamikaze attack on a facility such as the Pentagon would ever succeed on its own. If it did, it would have to be considered the worst security lapse in the Pentagon's history. ... So who's in charge of Pentagon facility security, and surface-to-air defenses in particular? Did they fire this person? Of course not. The worst attack on headquarters in US military history actually resulted in... no demotions, transfers, or any other disciplinary action at the Pentagon. Actually, several people got promoted. ... - fedexposure

April Gallop, an enlisted member and survivor who worked at the Pentagon and brought her infant child to work that day, told me that when she was assigned there she got a classified tour of the building introducing her to its defenses, and she was told it was the best defended and safest building in the world. To this day she cannot comprehend why those defenses would have failed on 9/11. - rat

They should be able to shoot down a big slow thing like an incoming hijacked jet. On the other hand, if the conspiracy people are right and Cheney was running the show, allowing the attack to happen so we'd have a pretext for and oil war, why would Mineta be in the bunker with Cheney? PD? There is so much conflicting info. I hope some day we can read a complete story of 9/11 that makes all the conflicting information make sense.

Dec, 2008:

Cheney also told ABC that Guantanamo Bay's detention camp should remain open until the end of the War on Terror. He said he did not know when that would be. Terror, incidentally, has been in existence... forever.

Cheney expressed doubts that President-elect Barack Obama will close the camp or give up any of the broadened authority Cheney fought to bring to the executive branch. Cheney told Rush Limbaugh, "Once [the Obama administration] get[s] here and they're faced with the same problems we deal with every day, then they will appreciate some of the things we've put in place."

Of waterboarding, Cheney said that he supported the process of getting it cleared. He called waterboarding, "a remarkably successful effort, and I think the results speak for themselves." Actually, they don't, since we have no idea what information waterboarded detainees have provided.

Cheney's farewell media push culminates with an hour long interview on Fox News Sunday.  - aol