Dick Cheney Faces The Nation

This weekend, Vice President Dick Cheney will appear on CBS's “Face the Nation.” It has been months since Vice President Cheney, whose full-throated defenses of the White House have become routine, has appeared on a Sunday news show. Since then, he has yet to answer questions about the growing number of scandals currently engulfing the Bush Administration as well as the White House’s failed Iraq strategy. Below are a few questions for Cheney on the US Attorneys scandal, the worsening situation in Iraq, and the growing strain being placed on our soldiers:

1. In light of the bombing of the Iraqi parliament inside the green zone, do you still believe things are going “remarkably well” in Iraq?

• “If you look at the general overall situation, they’re doing remarkably well.” [Vice President Cheney on the Rush Limbaugh Show, 10/17/06, http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/17/cheney-rush/]

2. This week, it was announced that 13,000 National Guard soldiers should prepare for a sooner than expected possible deployment to Iraq and last week Defense Secretary Gates said U.S. Army units would be deployed to Iraq for 15 months instead of 12 months. Even Gates said our forces are “stretched.” Will you acknowledge that your Administration’s failure to properly plan for the war has stretched our military to the breaking point?

• “Defense Secretary Robert Gates said U.S. Army units would be deployed to Iraq for 15 months instead of 12 months, effective immediately. … ‘Our forces are stretched, there's no question about that,’ Gates said… The shift, which doesn't apply to the Marine Corps, comes as 73 percent of Americans said Bush's plan for Iraq has made the situation there worse or has had no effect on the country's stability, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll.” [Bloomberg, 4/11/07]

• “As many as 13,000 National Guard soldiers from Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio and Oklahoma got an official heads-up yesterday that they should expect possible deployment to Iraq by year’s end or in 2008, sooner than scheduled. Most of these soldiers have already been deployed in the past few years, and several thousand have served at least one tour in Iraq, underscoring just how profoundly the National Guard’s role has shifted since 2003.” [New York Times, 4/10/07]

3. When will we leave Iraq?

• “The insurgency in Iraq is ‘in the last throes,’ Vice President Dick Cheney says, and he predicts that the fighting will end before the Bush administration leaves office.” [CNN.com, 6/20/05, http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/30/cheney.iraq/]

• Prior to the war, “Cheney also predicted the fight would ‘go relatively quickly, but we can't count on that.’ That same day on NBC's ‘Meet the Press,’ Cheney said, ‘I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.’ It was then he predicted that the regular Iraqi soldiers would not ‘put up such a struggle,’ and that even ‘significant elements of the Republican Guard . . . are likely to step aside.’ Asked if Americans are prepared for a ‘long, costly and bloody battle,’ Cheney replied: ‘Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way. . . . The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein, and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.’” [Washington Post, 3/29/03, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44801-2003Mar28?language=printer]

4. Recent reports show that a number of White House staffers used RNC email accounts to secretly conduct government business and that many of these emails, including many of Karl Rove’s messages, have since been lost. Doesn't this practice violate the law? Has any member of your staff been given an RNC account? Can you comment on this practice?

• RNC Emails Lost. "Waxman was briefed today by a Republican National Committee attorney, Rob Kelner, that 'roughly 50 White House officials have had e-mail accounts on RNC servers' at some point since President Bush came to office, accounts that were controllled by the RNC. ''Mr. Kelner stated that to his knowledge, the earliest e-mails records of White House officials on RNC servers are from 2004. Although White House officials had used RNC e-mail since 2001, the RNC has apparently destroyed all e-mail records from White House officials from 2001, 2002, and 2003.'" According to a letter from Waxman, 'Mr. Kelner's briefing raised particular concems about Karl Rove, who according to press reports used his RNC account for 95 percent of his communications. According to Mr. Kelner, although the hold started in August 2004, the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove's account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.' Mr. Kelner also explained that starting in 2005, the RNC began to treat Mr. Rove's emails in a special fashion. At some point in 2005, the RNC commenced an automatic archive policy for Mr. Rove, but not for any other White House officials." [Politico, 4/12/07]

• Practice May Have Violated The Law. "The main issue is that the accounts were used not just to carry out purely political duties, but to conduct official presidential business. How often, no one yet knows. This could get the Bush White House in trouble with the Presidential Records Act. The 1978 law requires the White House to ensure its actions, decisions and deliberations are 'adequately documented' and that records relating to the performance of presidential duties be preserved. It also governs how those records are eventually made public. It contains exceptions for political and personal activities." [AP, 4/13/07]

5. A new poll says a majority of Americans think the Attorney General should be fired. Do you think Attorney General Gonzales should be fired? How far into the Bush White House does this scandal go and has anyone on your staff been involved?

• Majority Of Americans Want Gonzales To Resign. “U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign, most Americans say, and White House aides should be forced to testify before Congress about their involvement in the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys. In a new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll, conducted April 5 to 9, 53 percent of respondents said Gonzales should leave his post.” [Bloomberg, 4/11/07]

6. Do you feel you were misled by Doug Feith?

• Feith Office Briefed Cheney With Misleading Information. The Washington Post noted that: “The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was "mature" and "symbiotic," marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics.” [Washington Post, 4/6/07]

• Senate Experts Said Feith Office “Determined” To Find Al-Queda, Iraq Connection. “This report shows that in the case of Iraq’s relationship with al Qaeda, intelligence was exaggerated to support Administration policy aims primarily by the Feith policy office, which was determined to find a strong connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, rather than by the [Intelligence Community], which was consistently dubious of such a connection. In order to present a public case that heightened the sense of threat from Iraq, Administration officials reflected more closely the analysis of Under Secretary Feith’s policy office rather than the more cautious analysis of the [Intelligence Community].” [Senate Armed Services Committee Minority Report, 10/04]

• Pentagon Says Feith “Presdisposed.” “Douglas Feith, an architect of President George W. Bush's Iraq war policy, was "predisposed" to find links between Iraq and al-Qaida, a Pentagon report says.” [UPI, 2/9/07]

• Feith Created “Alternative” Analysis From Intelligence Experts. “…the office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, developed and disseminated an “alternative” assessment of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda that went beyond the judgments of intelligence professionals in the [Intelligence Community], and which resulted in providing unreliable intelligence information about the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship to policymakers through both direct and indirect means.” [Senate Armed Services Committee Minority Report, 10/04]