A Great Foreign Policy And Defense Forum With Dick Cheney And Leon Panetta

This is a major treat for anyone interested in U.S. foreign policy and national defense. A great Forum at the Reagan National Defense Forum featuring former Defense Secretaries Leon Panetta and Dick Cheney, along with veteran Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr.

This is a great discussion of the new era of foreign policy under President-elect Donald Trump, the challenges and national security threats we face and possible solutions by three people with vast experience and who very much know what they're talking about.



The fact that all three know and respect each other makes this a refreshing change from the usual shouting contest, and some humorous banter between the trio leavens an extremely worthwhile and informative discussion.

Well worth an hour's time, taped live as it happened at the Reagan Library.

Joe Biden On Domestic Abuse: "This Isn't Your Garden Variety Slap Across the Face’

Remember, this is the sitting vice president of the United States, clearly implying that a slap across the face to wifey is not domestic abuse, just business as usual!

I wonder if Jill Biden has learned her 'place' with the aid of this kind of 'discipline'? Does the vice president laugh and giggle when he administers it,like he did in the vice presidential debate with Paul Ryan? Is anyone going to have the stones to ask the vice president what he meant by that?

And no, I'm not exaggerating one bit.

You know that if Dick Cheney had said something like this, it would have been headlines. It would be the Story Of The Day. Maybe of the week.

What was that again about a GOP war on women? Where's the press? Where's NOW? Or do they give this sort of nonsense a pass if somebody has a 'D" after their name?

Update: Well, whaddya know? Apparently I and the National Review both got punked on this one.

Vice President Biden included a phrase that was edited out in the above video, saying: "These are tell-tale signs to say this isn’t your garden-variety slap across the face which is totally unacceptable in and of itself."

Obviously, as the late Gilda Radner would have said, that's very different. I'm actually very glad to be wrong on this one, feeling as I do about 'men' hitting women.My apologies to the Veep and to anyone else who was upset by this.

SecDef Panetta Admits Enhanced Interrogation Works, Led Us To Bin-Laden

Well, well.

Remember all of the noise from Democrats about waterboarding being torture? Remember how President Obama released confidential memos after the entire intelligence community begged him not to,because it would tell our enemies exactly the techniques we'd be using to interrogate them? Remember how Attorney General Eric Holder and the president were going to prosecute the CIA interrogators involved and the government attorneys who wrote legal opinions for the Bush Administration used to authorize waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques?

Remember how President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and a slew of other Democrats used this issue to play partisan politics and the media amplified it?

Today on NBC's Meet The Press, ex-SecDef Leon Panetta admitted that those techniques provided the intelligence that led the U.S. to Osama bin-Laden.

(h/t, Jim at Gateway)

Of course Panetta was quick to try to qualify it with a quick remark that 'we worked out most of it without resorting to those techniques', but he admitted that waterboarding and enhanced interrogation got the results we needed. And it's not the first time he's said it.

This is the same man who, at his 2009 CIA confirmation hearing conformation hearings called waterboarding "torture" and said it was something he would never use. Until he needed to, I suppose.

These same people demonized President Bush for making the same decision, one that, according to then Vice President Cheney, prevented subsequent al-Qaeda attacks and saved American lives. After all the obscene noise from the Left, no one has ever provided any evidence whatsoever that Cheney was wrong.

And of course, you're never going to hear Panetta, Mrs.Clinton or the president admit they were badly mistaken.

In other remarks in today's interview, Panetta touted Chuck Hagel's appointment as the new Secretary of defense, saying he had no doubt Hagel was 'ready to take over his job.'

If by that he meant being a clueless sycophant with no understanding or appreciation of national defense who would cheerfully carry out the orders for the hollowing out of America's military, Panetta might be right.

Dick Cheney, Post Transplant: 'Obama An Unmitigated Disaster'

Ah,The Dark Lord... how sweet it is. Dick Cheney administers a beat down to President Obama from a sitting position!

Dick Cheney, just weeks after undergoing heart transplant surgery, plunged back into the political theater Saturday — praising presumptive nominee Mitt Romney while slamming President Obama as an “unmitigated disaster.”

The tough words came during an hour-and-15-minute talk at the Wyoming Republican Party state convention in Cheyenne on Saturday.

He sat in a plush chair throughout the long chat with daughter Liz Cheney and looked decidedly healthier than recent appearances where he has been gaunt and used a cane.

After Rick Santorum dropped out of the race this past week, Cheney in his address urged the party to pull together behind Romney. He said the former Massachusetts governor would do a “whale of a job.”

His opinion of the sitting president was less flattering.

“He has been an unmitigated disaster to the country,” Cheney said of Obama.

He spoke, said what he had to say... and then stood up, howled like a wolf,fired a flaming arrow into the air and caught it in his teeth as it came down, to wild cheers and gasps of awe from the assembled crowd.

Nice to have you back sir! Here's to your continued good health and long life.

Cheney Slaps Biden Upside The Head.....

I absolutely loved this, on several levels.

With around a month to go until he retires, Vice President Dick Cheney decided it was time for a little payback to VP elect Joe Biden.

In a FOX news interview, VP Cheney was asked about Biden's oft quoted remark that "Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history."

Cheney mockingly replied, "He also said that all the powers and responsibilities of the executive branch are laid out in Article I of the Constitution. Well, they're not. Article I of the Constitution is the one on the legislative branch."

"Joe's been chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a member of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate for 36 years, teaches constitutional law back in Delaware, and can't keep straight which article of the Constitution provides for the legislature and which provides for the executive. So I think I'd write that off as campaign rhetoric. I don't take it seriously."

"If he wants to diminish the office of the vice president, that's obviously his call," Cheney shrugged. "President-elect Obama will decide what he wants in a vice president and apparently, from the way they're talking about it, he does not expect him to have as consequential a role as I have had during my time."

Cheney also defended what he called the Bush administration's aggressive prosecution of the War on Terror, which he claimed was a major reason the US hasn't been attacked since 9/11.I don't quite agree with him there, but I will say that as far as I'm concerned, if Cheney and Bush's positions had been reversed we'd be a lot closer to winning it.

I also like that Cheney made a special effort to defend ex SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, saying that he had tried hard to convince Bush not to fire him in 2006. "I did disagree with the decision," Cheney said. "The president doesn't always take my advice."

Most people aren't aware of it,but Rumsfeld and Cheney were against invading and occupying Iraq.

Brigadier General Mark Scheid, chief of the Logistics War Plans Division after 9/11, and one of the people with primary responsibility for war planning, was quoted in an interview with Orin Kerr as having been told by Rumsfeld to plan for a war with Iraq, but not to bother planning for a long stay,but for a quick punitive strike. Rumsfeld was wary of the enormous cost of having to do 'nation building.'

Jed Babbin, ex-Undersecretary of State has also written on this topic.

Dick Cheney was likewise opposed to a ground invasion of Iraq, and a remarkable interview with him has surfaced that was done just after the first Gulf War where he accurately predicted every one of the problems we've encountered and gave them as good reasons why he advised the first President Bush not to invade and occupy Iraq.

The idea of invading and occupying Iraq and rebuilding it as a 'model for Arab democracy' came from Clinton holdover George Tenet, who George W. Bush kept on as head of the CIA and from none other than Bush's then Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Guess which plan President Bush picked?

And then, to add insult to injury Dubya put Rumsfeld in charge of implementing it, with the troops and resources Bush allowed him.

That's the hidden meaning behind Rumsfeld's remark that you fight a war with the army you have,not the army you wish you had.

In short, Rumsfeld was a scapegoat who was fired as a sop to Bush's political enemies. It was the most disgraceful treatment of a dedicated public servant by a sitting president I can think of offhand.

Dick Cheney has been unjustly vilified in the press and by Democrats for eight years now,but he embodies one of my favorite saying by Ronald Reagan:"There's no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care about who gets the credit."

He's always been about getting the job done.It's how he's operated during the decades he's spent in Washington during his distinguished career.

"We've been here for eight years now, eventually you wear out your welcome in this business but I'm very comfortable with where we are and what we've achieved substantively," he said. "And frankly I would not want to be one of those guys who spends all his times reading the polls. I think people like that shouldn't serve in these jobs."

Whenever George W. Bush had a particularly sensitive job that needed undertaking,his go-to guy was always Dick Cheney. It was Cheney who would fly to see Musharraf in Pakistan, the Sultan of Bahrein,the Israelis,the Saudis, Maliki in Iraq or Karzhai in Afghanistan to coordinate strategy and carry the word of the president to foreign leaders in a forceful, no nonsense manner.

Even more impressively, he apparently resolved to use his best abilities to make the Bush Administration's policies work and be a team player in bolstering the president - even when he strongly disagreed with him.

He survived at least two assassination attempts that I know of, and probably others I don't. And he did it all with a severe heart condition , which means that it probably took years off his life.

Cheney certainly didn't need the job and could very easily have retired a long time ago and spent the years fly fishing and hunting up in Wyoming...but he's made of very different stuff, and in his mind,the country came first.

He'll be missed, whether people realize it or not.