We've had enough. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Follow Us. Terms Privacy Policy. He hopes to be president, as he puts it, "Eventually.
Marty Rudoy, Contributor. Suggest a correction. What's Hot. More In Comedy. Trump's decision to reverse course on Bush's approach may be motivated by several factors.
While it could be purely out of the kindness of his heart, it may also have been done as a personal favor to Cheney, who has been advising Vice President Mike Pence. The President might also be sending a message to his close aides Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, who are embroiled in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. He may be indicating that he will be willing to pardon them, too, should he need to.
After all, if Trump is willing to pardon a man he does not even know, then pardoning his own former aides willing to protect him from Mueller's investigation would seem entirely possible. Follow CNN Opinion. But the pardon also shows his about-face on the Bush White House. During the Republican primary, Trump called the war in Iraq "a big, fat mistake" and said the US invasion "destabilized the Middle East.
And with Trump's surprise pardon, it seems Pence has repaid Cheney for his advice. The intent was to trick the detainees into believing that they would drown. Christopher Hitchens gamely subjected himself to the procedure, knowing he could stop it at any time. Barton Gellman, who wrote one of the definitive books on Cheney, gives the background in a Time magazine piece:. Cheney admits he was behind the spying in his memoir. But Gellman makes a compelling case that he lies about a confrontation with an ailing John Ashcroft to make himself look better.
After his initial stints in government under Republican administrations, including time as George H. Jane Mayer has an account of how the relationship began:. After Cheney enriched himself by exploiting contacts with various corrupt Arab autocrats that he made while drawing a public salary, he returned to public life as vice president. During the campaign, however, Cheney said he viewed Iraq differently.
The transactions were not illegal, but they were politically suspect. The deals occurred under the United Nations Oil-for-Food program, at a time when Saddam Hussein chose which companies his government would work with. Corruption was rampant. It would have been very much a senior-level decision, made by the regime at the top.
Once again, Hylton makes the case against Cheney most succinctly:. In all of this, Richard B. Cheney has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as vice president and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
We now know that the U.
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