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Monday, February 15, 2010

Dueling VP'S

 Both VP Biden and Former VP Cheney were on both Morning shows and answering each others statements. Cheney is the same old same old.  But I think he likes to forget the 2nd 4 yr term with Bush. And make everything Obama's fault.

 

'This Week' Transcript: Former Vice President Dick Cheney

Transcript: "This Week" with Former Vice President Dick Cheney and George Will, Peter Beinart, Paul Gigot and Jane Mayer.

Feb. 14, 2010 —
KARL: Good morning, and welcome to "This Week."
CHENEY: There is no middle ground.
KARL: This morning, a "This Week" exclusive, former Vice President Dick Cheney, the administration's harshest critic...
CHENEY: The president's been largely silent. Half-measures keep you half-exposed. The White House must stop dithering.
KARL: ... with no apologies of his own.
CHENEY: I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program.
KARL: National security, Iran, politics, and...
BIDEN: Iraq, I mean, it's going to be one of the great achievements of this administration.
KARL: ... Dick Cheney takes on the current vice president, only on "This Week." Then, a Washington thaw.
OBAMA: I'm going to spend some time listening.
KARL: But can bipartisanship survive the politics of the moment?
PALIN: We need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.
KARL: That and the rest of the week's politics on our roundtable with George Will, Peter Beinart of the Council on Foreign Relations, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, and Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal.
And as always, the Sunday funnies.
LETTERMAN: John McCain knew that it was Sarah Palin's birthday, and he did something very nice for her. He bought her a Toyota.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: From the heart of the nation's capital, "This Week" with ABC's congressional correspondent, Jonathan Karl, live from the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue.
KARL: Joining me now, former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Mr. Vice President, welcome to "This Week."
CHENEY: Good morning, John.
KARL: Now, you have been unflinching in your criticism of this administration's handling of terrorism, counterterrorism. Most recently, talking about the Christmas Day bomber, you said, "It is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend that we are not at war." Now, this morning, we have heard from the current vice president, Joe Biden, directly in response to that. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: We're pursuing that war with a vigor like it's never been seen before. We've eliminated 12 of their top 20 people. We have taken out 100 of their associates. We are making -- we've sent them underground. They are, in fact, not able to do anything remotely like they were in the past. They are on the run. I don't know where Dick Cheney has been.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KARL: Your response?
CHENEY: Well, my reference to the notion that the president was trying to avoid treating this as a war was in relation to his initial response when we heard about the Christmas underwear bomber...
KARL: Right.
CHENEY: ... up in Detroit, when he went out and said this was the act of an isolated extremist. No, it wasn't. And we found out over time, obviously -- and he eventually changed his -- his assessment -- but that, in fact, this was an individual who'd been trained by Al Qaida, who'd been part of a larger conspiracy, and it was closer to being an act of war than it was the act of an isolated extremist.
It's the mindset that concerns me, John. I think it's -- it's very important to go back and keep in mind the distinction between handling these events as criminal acts, which was the way we did before 9/11, and then looking at 9/11 and saying, "This is not a criminal act," not when you destroy 16 acres of Manhattan, kill 3,000 Americans, blow a big hole in the Pentagon. That's an act of war.
KARL: Well -- well...
CHENEY: And what the administration was slow to do was to come to that -- that recognition that we are at war, not dealing with criminal acts. And as I say, my response there dealt specifically to the fact the president called it an isolated extremist. It was not.
KARL: Well, I want to get to that notion of treating this as a law enforcement action, but what the administration will say is, look at what they have done, 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, doubling, tripling, and maybe even more the drone attacks on the tribal areas in Pakistan on Al Qaida targets. They say that they are actually dedicating more resources to the fight against Al Qaida than you were.
CHENEY: Well, I -- you know, I'm a complete supporter of what they're doing in Afghanistan. I think the president made the right decision to send troops into Afghanistan. I thought it took him a while to get there.
Having Stan McChrystal now in charge in Afghanistan I think is an excellent choice. General McChrystal's one of the most able officers I know. I'm glad they're doing what they're doing in Afghanistan. I'm not a critic of what they're doing, in terms of how they're dealing with that situation.
But I do see repeatedly examples that there are key members in the administration, like Eric Holder, for example, the attorney general, who still insists on thinking of terror attacks against the United States as criminal acts as opposed to acts of war, and that's a -- that's a huge distinction.
KARL: OK, before we get to Eric Holder, a couple more things from the vice president. He's been out responding preemptively to you. One thing he said we heard in the open, that he believes Iraq may ultimately prove to be one of the greatest achievements of the Obama administration.
CHENEY: Well, I -- I guess I shouldn't be surprised by my friend, Joe Biden. I'm glad he now believes Iraq is a success. Of course, Obiden and -- Obama and Biden campaigned from one end of the country to the other for two years criticizing our Iraq policy.
CHENEY: They opposed the surge that was absolutely crucial to our getting to the point we're at now with respect to Iraq. And for them to try to take credit for what's happened in Iraq strikes me as a little strange. I think if -- if they had had their way, if we'd followed the policies they'd pursued from the outset or advocated from the outset, Saddam Hussein would still be in power in Baghdad today.
So if they're going to take credit for it, fair enough, for what they've done while they're there, but it ought to go with a healthy dose of "Thank you, George Bush" up front and a recognition that some of their early recommendations, with respect to prosecuting that war, we're just dead wrong.
KARL: Well, in fact, Vice President Biden says that he believes that the war in Iraq was not worth it. What do you say to that? I mean, given the resources that were drawn away from the -- what you could argue is the central front in Afghanistan, Pakistan, is he right about that?
CHENEY: No. I -- I believe very deeply in the proposition that what we did in Iraq was the right thing to do. It was hard to do. It took a long time. There were significant costs involved.
But we got rid of one of the worst dictators of the 20th century. We took down his government, a man who'd produced and used weapons of mass destruction, a man who'd started two different wars, a man who had a relationship with terror. We're going to have a democracy in Iraq today. We do today. They're going to have another free election this March.
This has been an enormous achievement from the standpoint of peace and stability in the Middle East and ending a threat to the United States. Now, as I say, Joe Biden doesn't believe that. Joe Biden wants to take credit -- I'm not sure for what -- since he opposed that policy pretty much from the outset.
KARL: I think what he wants to take credit for is taking resources out of Iraq, the fact...
CHENEY: That's being done in accordance with a timetable that we initiated, that we -- that we negotiated with -- with the Iraqis. I mean, that was our policy.
KARL: Another thing from the vice president, he also addressed the possibility of another 9/11-style attack.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: The idea of there being a massive attack in the United States like 9/11 is unlikely, in my view. But if you see what's happening, particularly with Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, they have decided to move in a direction of much more small-bore, but devastatingly frightening attacks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KARL: Is he right?
CHENEY: I don't think so. And I would point to a study that was released just within the last week or two up at the Kennedy School at Harvard by a gentleman -- Mowatt-Larssen's his name, I believe. He was CIA for 23 years, director of intelligence at the Energy Department for a long time, that looks at this whole question of weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaida and comes to the conclusion that there's a very high threat that Al Qaida is trying very hard to acquire a weapon of mass destruction and, if they're successful in acquiring it, that they will use it.
I think he's right. I think, in fact, the situation with respect to Al Qaida to say that, you know, that was a big attack we had on 9/11, but it's not likely again, I just think that's dead wrong. I think the biggest strategic threat the United States faces today is the possibility of another 9/11 with a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind, and I think Al Qaida is out there even as we meet trying to figure out how to do that.
KARL: And do you think that the Obama administration is taking enough serious steps to prevent that?
CHENEY: I think they need to do everything they can to prevent it. And if the mindset is it's not likely, then it's difficult to mobilize the resources and get people to give it the kind of priority that it deserves.
KARL: OK, let's get to -- you mentioned Eric Holder, the treatment of the Christmas Day underwear bomber. How do you think that case should have been dealt with?
CHENEY: I think the -- the proper way to -- to deal with it would have been to treat him as an enemy combatant. I think that was the right way to go.
The thing I learned from watching that process unfold, though, was that the administration really wasn't equipped to deal with the aftermath of an attempted attack against the United States in the sense that they didn't know what to do with the guy.
There was talk earlier after they'd dismantled the system we'd put in place for prisoner interrogation of high-value detainees. They'd gone out supposedly to create the HIG, high-value interrogation program, but in reality, it was not up and running at Christmastime when it should have been. It started months before that, to put that in place. They need a process, a set of institutions that they can fall back on. Admittedly, this is hard. We had a hard time dealing with this. You've got the Supreme Court on one side that -- that is going to evaluate everything you do, and you've got to be careful with that. The Congress gets involved in it.
CHENEY: So I'm not saying it's an easy task, but by this point, when they've made all the decisions they've had, closed Guantanamo, end (ph) the high-value detainee program and so forth, I think those are all mistakes. Those were the tools we put in place to deal with this kind of situation. They should have had something to put in lieu of those programs, and it would look like they do not have -- have that kind of capability yet.
KARL: If you have somebody in custody like Abdulmutallab, after just trying to blow up an airliner, and you think he has information on another attack, I mean, do you think that those enhanced interrogation techniques should have been -- should have been used? I mean, would you -- do you think that he should have been, for instance, subject to everything, including waterboarding?
CHENEY: Well, I think the -- the professionals need to make that judgment. We've got people in -- we had in our administration -- I'm sure they're still there -- many of them were career personnel -- who are expects in this subject. And they are the ones that you ought to turn somebody like Abdulmutallab over to, let them be the judge of whether or not he's prepared to cooperate and how they can best achieve his cooperation.
KARL: But you believe they should have had the option of everything up to and including waterboarding?
CHENEY: I think you ought to have all of those capabilities on the table. Now, President Obama has taken them off the table. He announced when he came in last year that they would never use anything other than the U.S. Army manual, which doesn't include those techniques. I think that's a mistake.
KARL: OK. So -- so was it a mistake when your administration took on the Richard Reid case? This is very similar. This was somebody that was trying to blow up an airliner with a shoe bomb, and he was within five minutes of getting taken off that plane read his Miranda rights, four times, in fact, in 48 hours, and tried through the civilian system. Was that a mistake?
CHENEY: Well, first of all, I believe he was not tried. He pled guilty. They never did end up having a trial.
Secondly, when this came up, as I recall, it was December of '01, just a couple of months after 9/11. We were not yet operational with the military commissions. We hadn't had all the Supreme Court decisions handed down about what we could and couldn't do with the commissions.
KARL: But you still had an option to put him into military custody.
CHENEY: Well, we could have put him into military custody. I don't -- I don't question that. The point is, in this particular case, all of that was never worked out, primarily because he pled guilty.
KARL: Now, I'd like to read you something that the sentencing judge reading the -- giving him his life sentence read to Richard Reid at the time of that sentencing. Here it is. He said to Reid, "You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. We do not negotiate with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice."
The judge in that case was a Reagan appointee. Doesn't he make a good point?
CHENEY: Well, I don't think so, in a sense that it -- if it -- if you interpret that as taking you to the point where all of these people are going to be treated as though they're guilty of individual criminal acts.
I want to come back again to the basic point I tried to make at the outset, John. And up until 9/11, all terrorist attacks were criminal acts. After 9/11, we made the decision that these were acts of war, these were strategic threats to the United States.
Once you make that judgment, then you can use a much broader range of tools, in terms of going after your adversary. You go after those who provide them safe harbor and sanctuary. You go after those who finance and those who provide weapons for them and those who train them. And you treat them as unlawful enemy combatants.
There's a huge distinction here in terms of the kinds of policies you put in place going forward. And what I'm most concerned about isn't so much argument about all the stuff in the past, about what happened to Abdulmutallab or Richard Reid. I think the relevant point is: What are the policies going to be going forward?
And if you're really serious and you believe this is a war and if you believe the greatest threat is a 9/11 with nukes or a 9/11 with a biological agent of some kind, then you have to consider it as a war, you have to consider it as something we may have to deal with tomorrow. You don't want the vice president of the United States running around saying, "Oh, it's not likely to happen."
KARL: Now, on that question of trying, you know, dealing as enemy combatants or through the criminal justice system, I came across this. This is a document that was put out by the Bush Justice Department under Attorney General Ashcroft...
CHENEY: Right.
KARL: ... covering the years 2001 to 2005. And if you go right to page one, they actually tout the criminal prosecutions...
CHENEY: They did.
KARL: ... of terror suspects, saying, "Altogether, the department has brought charges against 375 individuals in terrorism- related investigations and has convicted 195 to date." That was 2005. Again, seems to make the administration's point that they're not doing it all that differently from how you were doing it.
CHENEY: Well, we didn't all agree with that. We had -- I can remember a meeting in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House where we had a major shootout over how this was going to be handled between the Justice Department, that advocated that approach, and many of the rest of us, who wanted to treat it as an intelligence matter, as an act of war with military commissions.
We never clearly or totally resolved those issues. These are tough questions, no doubt about it. You want my opinion, my view of what ought to happen, I think we have to treat it as a -- as a war. This is a strategic threat to the United States. I think that's why we were successful for seven-and-a-half years in avoiding a further major attack against the United States.
And I do get very nervous and very upset when that's the dominant approach, as it was sometimes in the Bush administration or certainly would appear to be at times in the new Obama administration.
KARL: Did you more often win or lose those battles, especially as you got to the second term?
CHENEY: Well, I suppose it depends on which battle you're talking about. I won some; I lost some. I can't...
(CROSSTALK)
KARL: ... waterboarding, clearly, what was your...
CHENEY: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques that...
KARL: And you opposed the administration's actions of doing away with waterboarding?
CHENEY: Yes.
KARL: I'd like to ask you about the big terror case now, which is the KSM trial. The administration very much wants to see the mastermind of 9/11 tried in civilian courts here in the United States. New York has obviously objected.
Do you think that's going to happen? Do you think this will be a civilian trial? Or are they not going to be able to do it?
CHENEY: It looks to me like they're going to have great difficulty doing it in New York. I mean, even the mayor's come out against it now. I think trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York's a big -- big mistake. It gives him a huge platform to promulgate his -- his particular brand of propaganda around the world.
I think he ought to be at Guantanamo. I think he ought to be tried at Guantanamo in front of a military commission. They've got difficulties now, because my guess is they don't want to send him back to Guantanamo, because that would validate, if you will, the value of Guantanamo. They're trying to close it, clearly haven't been able to get it done.
But my guess is, in the end, he'll end up being tried in front of a military commission on a military facility some place.
KARL: So you think Guantanamo will be open when this president leaves office?
CHENEY: I wouldn't be surprised. It's a valuable facility. There's a reason why we set it up. It makes good sense. There's obviously great reluctance on Capitol Hill to appropriate the funds to close it down. I think -- I think Guantanamo is going to be there for quite a while.
KARL: And one other point -- I just want to read also from a previous interview that you gave -- one of your points about Guantanamo is, if you release the hard-core Al Qaida terrorists, you said, that are held at Guantanamo, I think they go back into the business of trying to kill more Americans and mount further mass casualty attacks. If you turn them loose and they go kill more Americans, who's responsible for that?
And it's a real concern. We've heard from the president's homeland security adviser, John Brennan, saying that at minimum 10 percent of the more than 500 that have been released from Guantanamo have gone back into the fight.
But Brennan also wrote this. He said, "I want to underscore the fact that all of these cases relate to detainees released during the previous administration and under the prior detainee review process."
In other words, all of those released from Guantanamo that have gone back into the fight were released by your administration. Can't you make the case that the Obama administration has actually been more responsible about releasing who they release from Guantanamo?
CHENEY: I wouldn't make that -- I wouldn't make that case, John. I think -- as I recall, the percentage that we had of the recidivists was 12 percent. And we released prisoners back basically to their home countries, partly because the State Department was under enormous pressure to do so, and there was an effort to try to return them. The Saudis had a rehabilitation program for returned Saudis, and...
KARL: Did you oppose those releases?
CHENEY: I did. I didn't think that releasing anybody was the right thing to do, unless you had evidence that, you know, there was a mistake of some kind or they'd been -- been before a commission and you'd reviewed their case and found that the case didn't stand up, and that was usually the case. They were put through a thorough scrub before they were released.
Obviously, some of them got through the filter. But I think, out of the ones that remain, those are the real hard core, and I think your recidivist rate would be far higher than it was on those that have already been released.
It's a tough problem; I'll be the first to admit it. But I think you have to have a facility like Guantanamo to hold these individuals who are members of Al Qaida, who've tried to kill Americans, and who -- when they're released, they'll go back out and try to kill Americans again.
KARL: I'd like to move to Iran. Do you trust the Obama administration to do what is necessary to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons?
CHENEY: I remain to be persuaded.
KARL: Do you think that sanctions can work? I mean, that's the track they've chosen.
CHENEY: Well, I think -- I hope sanctions work.
KARL: It's the same track you chose (ph).
CHENEY: We -- I certainly would hope sanctions would work, but I think they're most likely to work if you keep the military option on the table. I don't think you want to eliminate the military -- the possibility of military action. I think that's essential to give any kind of meaning at all to negotiations over sanctions.
KARL: How close did you come -- how close did the Bush administration come to taking military action against Iran?
CHENEY: Well, I would -- some of that I can't talk about, obviously, still. I'm sure it's still classified. We clearly never made the decision -- we never crossed over that line of saying, "Now we're going to mount a military operation to deal with the problem."
The president was always hopeful -- and I think everybody else was, too -- that we could find a way to deal with it within having to resort to military force. One of the problems that the Obama administration inherited was the Iranian problem, and it's a tough one.
KARL: David Sanger of the New York Times says that the Israelis came to you -- came to the administration in the final months and asked for certain things, bunker-buster bombs, air-to-air refueling capability, overflight rights, and that basically the administration dithered, did not give the Israelis a response. Was that a mistake?
CHENEY: I -- I can't get into it still. I'm sure a lot of those discussions are still very sensitive.
KARL: Let me ask you: Did you advocate a harder line, including in the military area, in those -- in those final months?
CHENEY: Usually.
KARL: And with respect to Iran?
CHENEY: Well, I -- I made public statements to the effect that I felt very strongly that we had to have the military option, that it had to be on the table, that it had to be a meaningful option, and that we might well have to resort to military force in order to deal with the threat that Iran represented. The problem here being that a nuclear-armed Iran is a huge threat to that entire part of the world and, indeed, to the United States.
KARL: Was it -- was it a...
CHENEY: We never got to the point where the president had to make a decision one way or the other.
KARL: Was that a mistake? Was it a mistake to leave that nuclear capability intact?
CHENEY: Well, we -- we did a lot, because we were very concerned about nuclear capability in the hands of rogue states or potentially shared with terrorist organizations, and we were successful in taking down, for example, Saddam Hussein, who had messed with nuclear weapons twice previously, taking down the A.Q. Khan network, a black-market operation that was providing technology to the North Koreans, Iranians, and Libyans. We successfully obtained all the Libyan materials for their nuclear program, so we got a lot done.
We didn't get everything done. We still -- when we finished, there still was the ongoing Iranian problem and the ongoing North Korean problem. Both of them remain to be addressed.
KARL: I'd like to get your response to Sarah Palin's recent comments on Iran.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PALIN: Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really to come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do, if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, well, maybe he's tougher than we think he -- than he is today.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KARL: She's, of course, talking about President Obama, seemed to be implying that this would be a good political move for him. What's your take?
CHENEY: I don't think a president can make a judgment like that on the basis of politics. The stakes are too high, the consequences too significant to be treating those as simple political calculations. When you begin to talk about war, talk about crossing international borders, you talk about committing American men and women to combat, that takes place on a plane clear above any political consideration.
KARL: So...
CHENEY: So I'd be -- I'd be very cautious about treating that kind of issue on those kinds of conditions.
KARL: We're almost out of time. We're going to get you very quickly on a few other subjects. First of all, one more on Palin. Is she qualified to be president?
CHENEY: I haven't made a decision yet on who I'm going to support for president the next time around. Whoever it is, is going to have to prove themselves capable of being president of the United States. And those tests will -- will come during the course of campaigns, obviously. I think -- well, I think all the prospective candidates out there have got a lot of work to do if, in fact, they're going to persuade a majority of Americans that they're ready to take on the world's toughest job.
KARL: OK, "don't ask/don't tell" -- you're a former defense secretary -- should this policy be repealed?
CHENEY: Twenty years ago, the military were strong advocates of "don't ask/don't tell," when I was secretary of defense. I think things have changed significantly since then. I see that Don Mullen -- or Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has indicated his belief that we ought to support a change in the policy. So I think -- my guess is the policy will be changed.
KARL: And do you think that's a good thing? I mean, is it time to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military?
CHENEY: I think the society has moved on. I think it's partly a generational question. I say, I'm reluctant to second-guess the military in this regard, because they're the ones that have got to make the judgment about how these policies affect the military capability of our -- of our units, and that first requirement that you have to look at all the time is whether or not they're still capable of achieving their mission, and does the policy change, i.e., putting gays in the force, affect their ability to perform their mission?
When the chiefs come forward and say, "We think we can do it," then it strikes me that it's -- it's time to reconsider the policy. And I think Admiral Mullen said that.
KARL: And, finally, I know that you have a reunion coming up later this month with President Bush. This'll be the first time you've seen him since leaving office, face to face?
CHENEY: Pretty much, yes. We talk on the telephone periodically, but the first time I've seen him since January 20th.
KARL: What does he think of you being so outspoken in contrast to him?
CHENEY: Well, I don't think he's opposed to it, by any means. I'd be inclined to let him speak for himself about it. The reason I've been outspoken is because there were some things being said, especially after we left office, about prosecuting CIA personnel that had carried out our counterterrorism policy or disbarring lawyers in the Justice Department who had -- had helped us put those policies together, and I was deeply offended by that, and I thought it was important that some senior person in the administration stand up and defend those people who'd done what we asked them to do.
And that's why I got started on it. I'm the vice president now -- ex-vice president. I have the great freedom and luxury of speaking out, saying what I -- what I want to say, what I believe. And I have not been discouraged from doing so.
KARL: And that includes writing a book?
CHENEY: Writing a book, that's correct.
KARL: Can you give us -- before you go -- a quick nugget that's going to be in the book, give us the title, give us something going?
CHENEY: Have me back about a year from now, and I'll have a copy of the book for you, John.
KARL: OK, it's deal.
CHENEY: All right.
KARL: Mr. Vice President, thanks a lot for joining us on "This Week."
CHENEY: Good to see you. I've enjoyed it.
KARL: The roundtable is next, George Will, Paul Gigot, Jane Mayer, and Peter Beinart. And later, the Sunday funnies.


EXCLUSIVE: Dick Cheney Critical of Biden, Obama National Security Policies

Former Vice President Says Bush-Era Policies Deserve Credit for Successes

By DEVIN DWYER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14, 2010—

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in an exclusive appearance on ABC News' "This Week," offered a sharp critique of the Obama administration's handling of national security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying any achievements over the past year largely stemmed from policies implemented under President George W. Bush.
"If [the administration is] going to take credit for [Iraq's success], fair enough ... but it ought to come with a healthy dose of 'Thank you, George Bush' up front and a recognition that some of their early recommendations with respect to prosecuting that war were just dead wrong," Cheney told ABC News' Jonathan Karl.
Earlier Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Cheney "either is misinformed or he is misinforming" about what policies have been most effective in combating terrorists.
Biden has also suggested that Iraq may end up being one of the Obama administration's greatest successes.
"Obama and Biden campaigned from one end of the country to the other for two years criticizing our Iraq policy," Cheney said. "If they had had their way, if we'd followed the policies they'd pursued from the outset or advocated from the outset, Saddam Hussein would still be in power in Baghdad today."
On Afghanistan, Cheney said he is a "complete supporter" of President Obama's decision to send more troops to the region and praised the selection of Gen. Stanley McChrystal to head the effort.
But the former vice president repeated his rebuke of the administration's handling of suspected terrorists, including would-be Christmas Day bomber Umar Abdulmutallab.
Following the attempted attack on Dec. 25, Abdulmuttallab was interrogated for 50 minutes, read his Miranda rights and has been arraigned in U.S. federal court. The Obama administration also has promised to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, try several high-profile suspected terrorists in U.S. federal courts and repatriate others abroad.
Cheney said the Mirandizing and detention of convicted shoe-bomber Richard Reid by law enforcement officials in December 2001 was appropriate at the time because military commissions were not yet operational.
"We hadn't had all the Supreme Court decisions handed down about what we could and couldn't do with the commissions," he said.
Reid was arraigned in U.S. federal court but never faced a trial because he pleaded guilty.
"I do see repeatedly examples that there are key members in the administration -- like Eric Holder, for example, the attorney general -- that still insist upon thinking of terror attacks against the United States as criminal acts of war," Cheney said.

Cheney: Biden 'Dead Wrong' on Chances of Another Attack

Cheney said the Obama administration's "mindset" is putting the country at risk of a terrorist attack and cited as an example Vice President Biden's recent statement that another attack on the scale of 9/11 is "unlikely."
"I just think that's just dead wrong," Cheney said. "I think the biggest threat the United States faces today is the possibility of another 9/11 with a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind. And I think al Qaeda is out there -- even as we meet -- trying to do that.
"You have to consider it as a war," Cheney said. "You have to consider it as something we may have to deal with tomorrow. You don't want the vice president of the United States running around saying, 'Oh, it's not likely going to happen.'"
The former vice president acknowledged that the debate over whether to treat threats to national security as criminal or wartime acts was waged within the Bush administration, too.
"We had a major shootout over how this was going to be handled between the Justice Department that advocated that approach and the rest of us that wanted to treat it as an act of war," he said.
Cheney said he disagrees with Obama administration's decision not to use so-called enhanced interrogation techniques and said he argued for them within the administration during the Bush years.
"I was a big supporter of waterboarding," Cheney said. "I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques. ... I think you ought to have all of those capabilities on the table."
Cheney, who said he has not seen former President George W. Bush since they left office over one year ago, may be the previous administration's most outspoken member.
He added that he was "deeply offended" by attempts to investigate and prosecute the Bush administration and CIA officials who helped construct and justify their counterterrorism policy.
"I thought it was important for some senior person in the administration to stand up and defend those people who'd done what we asked them to do," he said.

Cheney Undecided on Palin for President

When asked about former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska's presidential qualifications, Cheney said, "I haven't made a decision yet on who I'm going to support.
"I think all of the prospective candidates out there have got a lot of work to do if in fact they are going to persuade a majority of Americans that they are ready to take on the world's toughest job," Cheney said.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released this week found 71 percent say "no" when asked if Palin is qualified to serve as president. Among Republicans polled, approximately 52 percent think she's not qualified to be commander in chief.
Cheney took issue with Palin's suggestion that President Obama could help himself politically if he declared war on Iran.
"I don't think a president can make a judgment like that on the basis of politics," Cheney said. "The stakes are too high, the consequences too significant to be treating those as simple political calculations. When you begin to talk about war, talk about crossing international borders, you talk about committing American men and women to combat, that takes place on a plane clear above any political consideration."
In an interview last week on "Fox News Sunday," Palin said that if Obama "toughen[ed] up" and "secured our nation," people might think differently about him.
"Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decide to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do," Palin said. "[I]f he decided to toughen up ... I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, 'Well, maybe he's tougher than we think he's, than he is today.'"

Gays in the Military: Reconsider 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' Cheney Says


Cheney said he thinks it's time to "reconsider" the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that prohibits gays and lesbians from serving openly in the U.S. military.
"Twenty years ago, the military were strong advocates of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' when I was secretary of defense," Cheney said. "I think things have changed significantly since then."
Cheney served as the secretary of defense from 1989 to 1993 in the first Bush administration.
"I'm reluctant to second-guess the military in this regard," Cheney said. "When the chiefs come forward and say, 'We think we can do it,' then it strikes me that it's time to reconsider the policy.

Cheney Penning Memoir


The former vice president plans to see his former boss, President George W. Bush, at an administration reunion in the coming weeks, he said.
Cheney has been keeping busy by penning his memoir, which is due on bookshelves next year.

VP Biden on Meet the Press 2/14/10




This is complete script of videos


But first, the vice president of the United States. We spoke to him late last night from Vancouver.

Mr. Vice President, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

VICE PRES. JOE BIDEN: It's good to be back with you, David.

MR. GREGORY: You are there, of course, at the Winter Games, and there's been mixed emotions as the games have begun, incredible pride and excitement after the opening ceremonies, but also the tragic death of that luger from Georgia. Give me your impressions of the mood and of the games so far.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Well, exactly how you described it. I met with Misha Shalikashvili--Saakashvili last night, the president of Georgia, and it was obvious it was--it really had hit home with him and his team. But the way--the reception that the Georgian team got when they walked into the arena was heartening, and, and I think that--I think people are basically dedicating the games to the young man, and they're moving on. But it's an exciting atmosphere, notwithstanding the opening tragedy.

MR. GREGORY: Let me turn to some of the issues that you and, of course, the rest of the administration are dealing with. Let me start with terrorism and the controversy surrounding the proposed trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The attorney general ordered a civilian trial to be held in New York. Now it appears that that decision has been withdrawn. It's unclear what's going to happen. The reason for a civilian trial as given by the president and others was a question of perception, that it was very important that the rest of the world see that we'd treated Khalid Sheikh Mohammed fairly. But hasn't the administration already made the decision that even if he were to be acquitted that he would never be released?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Look, there's no doubt that he would not be acquitted; the facts we have are overwhelming. We're absolutely confident he will be convicted in whatever for he is tried. The attorney general made the decision that he should be tried in the court of the greatest jurisdiction, which was in New York City. There has been significant response coming from the city and congressional delegation requiring the president to have to take a look at this again. That decision as to where he's going to be tried and exactly when is something that is being considered right now. But he will be tried...

MR. GREGORY: But Mr. Vice President...

VICE PRES. BIDEN: ...he will be held accountable.

MR. GREGORY: But wait a minute, you--but the question I asked is whether a decision has already been made that even if he were to be acquitted, he would never be released.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: David, I'm not going to speculate on that. He will not be acquitted; he will be found guilty. He will be in jail, and he will stay there.

MR. GREGORY: But here is what the attorney general said last November on this question of what would happen if he were acquitted. This is what he said:

(Videotape, November 18, 2009)

ATT. GEN. ERIC HOLDER: If there were the possibility that a trial was not successful, that would not mean that that person would be released into, into our country. That, that would--that is not a possibility.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: It's rather clear what he's saying: If he were acquitted, he's not going to be released in America. I can't imagine the United States is going to release him somewhere in the Middle East or elsewhere around the world. So isn't the conclusion that he's going to stay a prisoner of the United States. And, if that's the case, despite your confidence in his conviction...

VICE PRES. BIDEN: No, it's not the case.

MR. GREGORY: ...despite your confidence in conviction, what is--where is the fairness--the perception of fairness in our system?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: David, he--the, the--what the attorney general said, he would not be released into America, that is a fact. But we're not even going to have to get to that place. I'm not going to speculate on what would happen to him if, in fact, he were acquitted. I assure you, I assure you, acquitted or not, he will not be walking the streets of the United States of America. He will not be acquitted.

MR. GREGORY: By such statements, are you prejudging the trial, and doesn't that undercut the, the goal of fairness by the rest of the world in our judicial system?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: No, look, I'm part of a team that heads up the prosecutorial apparatus of the federal government. We are confident in our case.

MR. GREGORY: Are you ruling out a military commission?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Name me a prosecutor--I am not ruling anything out. What I am telling you is he will be held accountable under the law. We have improved military commissions considerably. The fact of the matter is, the only reason there's any discussion going on about whether or not the trial will take place in an Article III court in the court of jurisdiction with the broadest jurisdiction, New York City, is because of the response of the Congress requiring the president to have to consider the consequences of failing to heed their, their, basically, their, their concerns. So this is a discussion taking place. The decision will be made by the president. He will be held accountable. A military tribunal is available. It is the less preferable way to go. But one way or another, he will be held accountable.

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you about some of the criticism that's been leveled at this administration by former Vice President Dick Cheney. He has argued that this administration has failed to treat the fight against terrorists as war. He cites the decision related to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to offer him a civilian trial as one example. Giving the Christmas Day bomber the privileges of the American criminal justice is another example. The decision to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison. What do you say?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Let me choose my words carefully here. Dick Cheney's a fine fellow. He's entitled to his own opinions. He's not entitled to rewrite history. He's not entitled to his own facts. The Christmas Day bomber was treated the exact way that he suggested that the shoe bomber was treated, absolutely the same way. Under the Bush administration, there were three trials in military courts. Two of those people are now walking the streets; they are free. There were 300 trials of so-called terrorists and those who had engaged in terror against the United States of America who are in federal prison and have not seen the light of day, prosecuted under the last administration. Dick Cheney's a fine fellow, but he is not entitled to rewrite history without it being challenged. I don't know where he has been. Where was he the last four years of the last administration?

MR. GREGORY: What about the general proposition that the president, according to former Vice President Cheney, doesn't consider America to be at war and is essentially soft on terrorism? What do you say about that?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: I don't think the vice--the former vice president, Dick Cheney, listens. The president of the United States said in the State of the Union, "We're at war with al-Qaeda." He stated this. And by the way, we're pursuing that war with a vigor like it's never been seen before. We've eliminated 12 of their top 20 people. We have taken out 100 of their associates. We are making--we've sent them underground. They are, in fact, not able to do anything remotely like they were in the past. They are on the run. I don't know where Dick Cheney has been. Look, it's one thing, again, to, to criticize; it's another thing to sort of rewrite history. What is he talking about?

MR. GREGORY: You, you have often said, when I've asked you and others, that you never impugn a man's motives, but why do you think Dick Cheney is speaking out and being so critical of the president and the administration so publicly?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: I don't know. I, I, I'm not going to guess about his motive. All I know is he's factually, substantively wrong on the major criticisms he is asserting. Why he's insisting on that, he either is misinformed or he is misinforming. But the facts are that his assertions are not accurate.

MR. GREGORY: You would not be this outspoken or critical when you're out of office, is that fair to say?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Well, I, I would hope I, I--look, it's one thing to be outspoken. It's another thing to be outspoken in a way that misrepresents the facts. And I, I just--again, I--it's almost like Dick is trying to rewrite history. I can understand with--why that would be, you know, an impulse. And maybe he isn't--literally, I'm not being facetious, maybe he's not fully informed of what's going on. I mean, the progress we have made. There has never been as much emphasis and resources brought against al-Qaeda. The success rate exceeds anything that occurred in the last administration. And they did their best. I'm not, I'm not impugning their effort. It's just simply not true that the president of the United States is not prosecuting the war against al-Qaeda with a vigor that's never been seen before. It's real, it's deep, it's successful.

MR. GREGORY: Let me move on to some other issues. I want to ask about some other foreign policy matters in just a couple of minutes. But let me turn to the economy. You said on Friday that Democrats facing re-election this fall will do just fine if Americans see, "tangible, visible evidence" that the economy is turning around, it's creating jobs. Well, here are the facts: You came into office, the unemployment rate was 7.4 percent, it's now 9.7 percent. Where is that evidence?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Well, look, I'll tell you where the evidence is. We came into office--and let's get the facts straight. The month we were sworn in, 740,000 people lost their jobs; 640,000 the next month, before we could get our, our, our, our, our computers hooked up accurately in the, in the West Wing. We had an economy that shrunk at 6 percent the quarter before we took office. We found ourselves with our financial institutions not only needing to reorganize, but in threat of shuttering their doors and moving the world into a literal depression. We found the housing market absolutely tanking for 32 months in a row. Here we are 11, 12 months later, we're in a situation where the economy grew at over 6 percent--or, excuse me, 5.8 percent the last quarter, where we are--stopped the hemorrhaging of jobs and are now going to begin to produce jobs on a monthly basis, where the housing market is stabilized, where no bank is in jeopardy. And now we're turning our attention to reviving small town banks, commercial banks so we can get credit flowing again. I--we have pulled us back from the brink, we have made genuine success, and now we're in the process of having--moving forward and the--building the kind of economy that is not built on a bubble, a housing bubble, not built on a dot-com bubble. We're investing in the future, including technology, the new green economy, etc. This is going to take time.

And my point was, David, it's understandable why, when you're sitting in your kitchen table and your wife or husband lost their job and you're worried about your job, where you're not sure you can send your kid back to college this year, where you're--can't get any help to care for your elderly parent, there's no wonder you're sitting there and feeling angry. But there's going--tangible evidence, tangible evidence that the path we've put the country on, that we're moving it in the right direction has become more and more apparent. And by the time we get around to November, in addition to bringing home 90,000 American troops out of Iraq, the story of this administration is going to be more clearly told and we're going to do just fine.

MR. GREGORY: But if--there's not going to be tangible evidence of a turnaround if the jobless rate is as high as it is.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: David, look, the neighborhood I grew up in, and I suspect the neighborhood you grew up in, no one sat at the, no one sat at the kitchen table talking about the jobless rate. They talked about their job. My grandpop used to have an expression: When the guy up on Oliphant was out of work, it was a slowdown; when your brother-in-law was out of work, it was a recession; when you're out of work, it's a depression. This is a depression for a lot of people. Not only are we moving to be able to provide them the ability to get jobs by putting a lot of focus on small business, the engine of job creation, through tax cuts, through capital gains cuts, through a $5,000 tax credit for employing people; in the meantime, we're working on things that affects the quality of their life. We're making sure their kid's going to be able to stay in college and pay back that college loan. We're helping--we're going to be helping them this year with child tax credits. We're going to help them with their--with elder credit. We're going to make sure that they are able to begin to save for their retirement by automatic 401(k) programs withheld from their--or excuse me, automatic retirement programs set up by their employers where they can have part of their pay automatically taken out and saved. There's a lot of things you do simultaneously beyond just creating jobs, which we have created or saved over two million jobs thus far. Put another way, instead of seven million people being unemployed, there would have been nine million people unemployed this year.

MR. GREGORY: Right. But, but do, do--you have to concede...

VICE PRES. BIDEN: But that--but less bad is not good enough.

MR. GREGORY: Wait a second, Mr. Vice President. Mr. Vice President, you have to concede, that figure that you use so often, economists say there is no way to accurately measure the impact of the stimulus on jobs saved or, or job creation. That is a number that cannot be verified.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Well, I do not agree with that. I know economists will tell you that. We use the same, we use the same econometric models economists have been using for the last 25 years to measure growth and to measure loss. That--you cannot say with absolute certainty what the job loss is either. It's based on an estimate of who files and how and when. Look, David, there is no reasonable economist that I know of, no econometric model that suggests that we have not created a minimum of 1.6 million to 2.4 million jobs. Even The Wall Street Journal last quarter acknowledged that the significant reason for the growth in the third quarter was because of the investments of the recovery package. They went on to say, but that's not good because once the recovery money is not there things are going to change. That--so you can't have it both ways.

MR. GREGORY: Let me...

VICE PRES. BIDEN: The fact that you stimulate the economy and it actually grows, no one doubts that the recovery package played a major part in that.

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you about health care.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Yep.

MR. GREGORY: Back in January, it was reported that you said to the president, given the country's fiscal situation, it was not wise to try to pursue healthcare reform. Given what's happened, given the trouble that healthcare reform is now in, do you think that that advice should have been followed?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Well, first of all, I'm not acknowledging what advice I gave. The advice I give to the president is private. That's why he keeps asking for it, and as long as it stays private.

I think the president made the right judgment in deciding that in order to bend the cost curve and prevent people from being victimized by health insurance costs that we had to move and we had to move aggressively. And the president is still committed to making sure that we do three things: One, make sure that those whose premiums are now continuing to skyrocket in fact are brought under control; making sure that the money the federal government spends on health care, 46 cents on every dollar spent is through Medicare and Medicaid, that we bend that cost curve to gain control of the future, of our future fiscal situation; and making sure the insurance companies can't engage in the kind of practices they do with pre-existing conditions and limits on coverage, etc.

We've invited the Republicans down to the White House. It is my sincere hope that they all say there's a real problem. If they're willing and they have ideas that can better deal with those three problems, we're ready, willing and able to listen; and we're anxious to. But we think it's absolutely essential for the economic health of this country that we move forward on health care.

MR. GREGORY: I wanted to get back to a few areas of foreign policy, away from the domestic, and that's Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. When I last interviewed you on this program eight months ago, this is what you said when I asked you whether President Obama would be the president to stop Iran from going nuclear or allow it to go nuclear. Here's--was your response.

(Videotape, June 14, 2009)

VICE PRES. BIDEN: He's going to be the president that stopped it, God willing. We are not going to allow Iran to go nuclear any more than the rest of the world is going to allow it to go nuclear.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: And yet eight months later, no real progress on that front. Do you still believe that to be the case, given Ahmadinejad's claim this week that, indeed, Iran is a nuclear power?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: It is not a nuclear power. I can understand why Ahmadinejad would make that assertion to divert the world's attention from the abuse of the civil liberties and civil rights of the people of Iran. But let's get the facts straight. The fact is that, number one, we've made significant progress. You have Iran more isolated internally by its own people than it has been in the last 20 years. In the region, they're completely isolated. We have the, we have the support of everyone from Russia to Europe, and I believe we'll get the support of China, to continue to impose sanctions on Iran to isolate them, to make it clear that, in fact, they cannot move forward. The progress that Iran has made on the nuclear front is greatly exaggerated, in my view. If you take a look at what's happened--anyway, I think we've made significant progress. We are no longer the issue in the world; Iran is the issue.

MR. GREGORY: Couple of other issues quickly, if we can. On Iraq, you said this week that it will turn out to be one of this president's great achievements. What did you mean?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: What I meant by that is I think he has taken office and managed the situation incredibly well in Iraq. We are now moving toward a position where there is actual political accommodation among factions who were killing one another just two years ago. We are going to be in a position to bring home 90,000 combat troops by the end of the summer. There will be a successful election, I predict, in Iraq, where there's full participation by the Sunnis, Shia, Kurds and other minorities. You are seeing the Iraqis now working. And we have worked very, very hard. I've made a total of 17 trips to Iraq, four just this year, working with each of the, each of the parties. I think they are working--it will be a great tribute to the Iraqi people and, I think, to the government that we've managed this transition, they've managed the transition well.

MR. GREGORY: Was the war worth it?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: No, I don't think the war was worth it in the sense that we paid a horrible price, not only in loss of life, the way the war was mishandled from the outset, but we took our eye off the ball, putting us in a much different and more dangerous position in Afghanistan. We lost support around the world. It's taken a lot of hard work to get it back. But we were handed--we were dealt a hand, and I think we're handling it incredibly well. I--that's presumptuous to say. I think we're handling it very well, the Iraqis are handling it well. And we build on the positive things that the Bush administration had initiated, and we have jettisoned those things that were negative.

MR. GREGORY: You, you mentioned Afghanistan. There is a large offensive under way by American and allied forces now in southern Afghanistan. What will be achieved through that?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Well, the hope is what will be achieved is we'll get further cooperation from the people in the region, the Pashtun tribes who will see more accommodation coming out of the Taliban, who--most of whom are Pashtun, realizing that they cannot realize their expectations through intimidation and force. And we will be in a position where the Iraqi forces that are leading this effort are more seasoned and more capable and more able to handle their own security interests over time.

MR. GREGORY: Finally, Mr. Vice President, about the Olympics, now, there are a lot of hockey fans in this country, including my seven-year-old son, who follow teams like the great Washington Capitals with great Russian players. I'm going to show you a picture of two of them, Alex Ovechkin and Alexander Semin. Now they are playing for Team Russia, and it's creating a lot of divided loyalties, my son now saying he's rooting for Team Russia over Team USA. What should, should a father do about this?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: I don't have that problem, and I would--well, David, I never give another man advice on how to deal with his children. Having three myself, I, I, I don't presume to tell anyone else. I think your son's a great hockey fan. Tell him that they chose to live in the United States and work and play for the Capitals, and, and that's what they, that's what he should focus on.

MR. GREGORY: I'll go with that. I'll see where it gets me.

Mr. Vice President, thank you, as always.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: All right.













Gibbs defends WH terror policies

 I love the morning show with Chuck and Savannah, hard hitting questions, I believe he answered them well, I do not agree with the answers especially the ones about KSM being tried and found guilty and spending his life in prison,  That is not fair and just justice, trying to make an outcome even before the trial, just could make it difficult to fairly try him.  No matter what you think or hope for the outcome keep it to yourself.. It was a good exchange.,.
What I love is it was alright during the Bush admin. for these terrorist to be tried in federal court, but now that Obama is in the WH and using the same policies as the Bush WH the republicans do not like it  and make a b-i-g stink stank stunk about it.... Why is that?  I think we know why........



President Obama is very strong on Terrorism and those who commit it.

Political RoundTable on Obama's War on Terrorism David Brooks, Rachel Maddow, Harold Ford Jr. and Aaron Schook

  
They talk about the KSM trial in detail. Personally my point of view we have one of the best judicial systems in the world.  Trying him in NY where he allegedly helped plan 9/11 is exactly where he should be tried for his crimes against humanity.  He is a terrorist not a war hero, he is a coward, to use planes and innocent lives to make a point. Biden and Obama both saying he will be brought to justice and executed is a bit premature.  Although with the evidence and his sort of talking makes it plain as the nose on your face, I am sure his defense will bring up the water boarding at Guantanamo and try to say that was extreme and against all known prisoner rights, I believe that those picked for the jury will either agree or not. Hopefully will look at all the evidence including whether the water boarding was too much whether there was any information gathered, or whether when enough was enough because I believe he was boarded over 150 times.  He should be tried in our justice system, not a military tribunal. They have not had a whole lot of wins, one I believe, they are not set up for any success...  They talked about Biden and Cheney's exchange this morning on the talk shows.....take a listen especially if you did not see it Sunday Morning....



Meet the Press - RoundTable

 Political RoundTable on Obama agenda, Health Care
David Brooks, Rachel Maddow, Harold Ford Jr. and Aaron Schook
The discussion gets very interesting especially with a democrat and a republican talking about dems not including the repubs and the repubs creating bills only to vote against them when the President comes on board. Rachel talking about the hypocrisy of it which I agree with and she also talks about the repubs voting against the stimulus bill and then going home and doing a ribbon cutting for an omnibus project. hypocrisy extreme. David Brooks shooting down health care only because polls supposedly shows that Americans do not want it, they are only interesting in jobs, well then why did the repubs vote against the job bill. Now Reid is trying to put through a weak watered down bill that does absolutely nothing. Which is worse pork, or watered down nothing.  They had better get their acts together or come November alot of the Senate will be out on their tushes. Because the PEOPLE are going to revolt and put in different congresspeople. Gregory asks Ford if he is going to run for office, he will make a decision soon, he has until later this month.  Gregory asked him about paying taxes in NY and about his bonus with Goldman Sachs, Ford said if he decides to run that will all be made public. I know I recapped, but listen anyway it was pretty good.......





How Not to Write a Jobs Bill

February 12, 2010
Editorial

The jobs bill emerging in the Senate is pathetic, both as a response to joblessness and as an example of legislation deemed capable of winning bipartisan support.
An $85 billion proposal put forward Thursday morning by Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, and by Charles Grassley, the committee’s top Republican, scarcely began to grapple with the $266 billion in provisions for jobs and stimulus that President Obama proposed in his budget. It was not even in the same league as the modest House-passed $154 billion jobs bill.
Worse, about half of the proposal had nothing to do with new jobs. The single largest chunk, about $31 billion, went to renew expiring tax breaks that are generally useful but unrelated to jobs. Another $10 billion would renew an expiring Medicare payment formula so doctors wouldn’t face a pay cut.
And, by Thursday afternoon, many Democrats said they could not support the lopsided proposal. So the majority leader, Harry Reid, decided to hold a vote on a stripped-down, $15 billion version in late February. The rest of the package, plus many other job-creation ideas, would be left for another day.
With 14.8 million Americans unemployed — more than 40 percent of them for more than six months — the smaller package is so puny as to be meaningless. Most of the $15 billion would cover the cost of a payroll tax holiday in 2010 for employers that hire unemployed workers. Since there are more than six unemployed workers for every job opening, a tax break for hiring is worth a try. But the proposed credit is too small to have a noticeable impact. At best, it would create about 250,000 additional jobs from April through the end of the year, according to an analysis by Moody’s Economy.com.
An even bigger problem is that the hiring credit is unlikely to work as intended unless it’s paired with other federal support to generate and maintain consumer demand — mainly extended unemployment benefits and more fiscal aid to states. No matter what Congress does to lower the cost of labor, employers won’t hire unless they believe demand will be sufficient to sell whatever the business produces. Absent unemployment benefits (which will expire at the end of February if Congress does not extend them) and aid to hard-pressed states, there are, as yet, no compelling signs that consumer demand will hold up this year.
At a minimum, a credible jobs package must extend unemployment benefits through 2010. Piecemeal extensions only ensure that lawmakers will have to return to the issue repeatedly, creating avoidable uncertainty for unemployed workers and for businesses that rely on the consumer demand generated by jobless benefits.
A credible package also must provide fiscal aid to states, which continue to be slammed by falling tax revenues just as more people need help. Without more aid, states will have to cut spending and raise taxes to close an estimated $142 billion budget gap for fiscal year 2011, which starts on July 1 for most states. Last year’s gap was $125 billion. Next year’s is anticipated to be $118 billion.
What senators don’t understand or choose to ignore is that state budget cuts mean layoffs. State and local governments are among the nation’s largest employers, responsible for 15 percent of the labor force, about the same share as the health care sector and far larger than manufacturing or the financial sector. Since August 2008, states and localities have eliminated 151,000 jobs.
State budget cuts also end or reduce payments to private contractors and to recipients of social programs. That reduces demand, which leads to more job loss.
The $15 billion Senate proposal may win Republican votes, but better-than-nothing is not nearly good enough. Neither is a pledge to do more later. A full response to joblessness is already overdue.


Comments that I found relevent

Jack
New York City
February 12th, 2010
8:57 am
It has become increasingly clear to me, as more and more of the issues that are actually important to the people of The United States get derailed by the power politics of Washington, that the United States Senate has been reduced to nothing more than an obstructionist body and should be abolished. Abolishing the Senate, or at least denuding it of its status as a co-equal branch of Government (or at least co-equal with the House), seems like a reasonable measure at times like these, when issues affecting huge swaths of the population of the country can be upended and diverted by power-plays perpetrated by small-state politicians. Politicians who have benefitted from the inefficiencies of a Federal system designed hundreds of years ago for a country less than a tenth of its current size. In fact, the independent state-hoods of many of the Plains and western states should be reconstituted, and amalgamated into territories that better reflect the concerns of a country with such a large population. A state of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming for example, would better reflect the profile of the population of that territory, and put it more in line with the other states that actually have to contend with the concerns of a large population. The same goes for North and South Dakota, and Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma, and so forth. In our current time, the structures and concerns of the past are outmoded and ineffective, and should be reconsidered.
The Senate as a body has proved itself time and time again to be a drag on the will of the People, and unless it can be re-balanced to more accurately reflect the character of this country, should be sidelined, or simply removed. 
 
artsybrute
Middletown, NY
February 12th, 2010
1:52 pm
What small business owners in the manufacturing industry agree upon:

We have no work. We have no orders. We do not need tax breaks for hiring people who would sit idle. We do not need tax breaks for purchasing machinery that will sit idle. Such incentives will only be advantageous once we have work but not the capital needed to expand back up to where we were three years ago.

We need work. We need markets. Unfair foreign competition and the governments "service economy" mentality is killing us. If you want to add value, you have to process something. (The food industry knows this. Just like a dollar of potatoes, oil and salt becomes eleven dollars of potato chips, ten dollars of silicon can become a one hundred dollar solar panel).

New initiatives for technically educating the workforce is nice. But the bulk of our work force is sitting home idle, well educated and qualified as they are.

Give us technical initiatives and programs to fund them. Advanced solar power. Artificial intelligence. Materials science. Nanotechnology. Communications. Superconductivity. Short term space programs. Programs to free up air traffic controllers from their manual work. Advanced ground traffic control. Disaster prediction. Telerobotics. Nuclear power plant control and safety. New transportation initiatives. The list could fill a book.

Involve people whose expertise lies beyond the realm of getting themselves elected.
 
Carole A. Dunn
Ocean Springs, Miss.
February 12th, 2010
10:38 am
We need a good temporary fix for our unemployment situation in the form of public jobs programs to work on our infrastructure, and in the meantime, Congress needs to do something about all the unfair trade agreements that take our jobs. All the job bills in the world won't do any good over the long run without fixing the primary cause of so much unemployment and underemployment in this country.

It must be made counterproductive for companies to offshore jobs and there should be a moratorium on all work visas for foreignors. The American government has been shirking its duty to the people for too long; a part of their job is to regulate business and commerce in a way that benefits the people of this country. They have been doing just the opposite for years. Too many rewards are handed out to businesses for offshoring jobs, and it's about time Congress realized how perverse that is. To me it's economic treason.
 
Mark C
San Francisco
February 12th, 2010
8:57 am
These are the rotten fruits of bi-partisanship. For the good of the country President Obama must end his silly,idiotic quixotic quest of bipartisanship, with the disrespectful, despicably racist Republicans. It's time President Obama faces up to the truth: the Republicans do not give a rat's behind for ordinary Americans. The only reasons Republicans are in government are to protect Corporate interests and enrich themselves and their friends...that's it. So, President Obama get real, soon, the people need a real president, with a real spine.
 
Sara
Minneapolis
February 12th, 2010
8:59 am
The Genius of the New Deal Unemployment Projects was that they built things or provided services that WERE NOT in competition with Private Industry and Business, and that whatever they produced was in the public sector but did not compete with existing public services.

Thus Neighborhood Playgrounds got play equipment, softball fields got laid out, picnic tables were built. I learned to Ice Skate on a WPA pond, and warm up next to a WPA enclosed Iron Furnace. The workers who built this stuff understood it was temporary work for just about minimum wage, and as soon as private hiring resumed, the projects would be completed and closed down. Normal WPA wages were $22.00 per week for a maximum of 35 hours work. Didn't matter whether you dug out skating ponds, painted post office murals or wrote travel guides for your state. None of the work was in competition with Private Industry, and all of it produced things of value in the Public Domain. FDR's notion was that people were better off working than collecting relief payments, he understood that working was about being part of community. He wanted the work product to be attractive, a source of pride -- but he did not want the projects to be so large and permanent that workers would see them as long term. Thus the quite low wages, that left incentive to keep looking for private employment.

Both the President but most of all Congress needs to be reminded about how these "Jobs Projects" really worked. Today much of our problem is the loss of memory or knowledge of the History of Great Depression Era projects, and as a consequence, citizens cannot lay on decision makers the expectations they should.
 
 
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The White House Blog

This is a big step in saving headaches, saving trees, and saving on costs of duplicating tests, because the Doctor(s) involved in a case need the same tests, this way there is a way for all Doctors to access all tests for the same patient.  I am in Pennsylvania and I have had some tests mainly x-rays, MRI, and fluoroscope, and my Doctors all had access to them with their viewer setup. Which I thought was brilliant.  I would love to see this system available all around the country. The next time I see the Doctor I will find out what the system is called, and add it to the blog.......

 

Going Beyond Paper and Pencil: Investments in Health IT

Keeping track of huge piles of paperwork is not an easy task for anyone. Imagine doing that for our entire health care system. In effect, that is what is going on with our current paper and pencil system of medical record keeping -- until now.

At the Department of Health and Human Services, part of our mission is to ensure quality health care for all Americans. And today I am excited to announce that we are delivering on this in the form of over $750 million in new grants that are part of a federal initiative to build capacity to enable widespread meaningful use of health IT, helping doctors adopt electronic medical records.

As part of the Recovery Act, the legislation President Obama signed into law last year to help strengthen the economy, these grants benefit both patients and doctors by cutting costs, eliminating paperwork, and helping doctors deliver high-quality, coordinated care. They also help eliminate errors that come with having a paper and pencil system and save patients from having to fill out the same form dozens of times.

You can find examples of this from across the country.  At one health system, they used electronic health records to identify older women who hadn’t received an osteoporosis screening and mail them personal letters encouraging them to get screened.  Screenings went up 300%. 

At another health system, only a third of their diabetes patients were receiving the recommended foot and eye exams.  They started tracking these patients using electronic health records, and within five months, the share of patients getting the recommended exams doubled to around two out of three.

Yet despite all these benefits, only 20 percent of doctors and 10 percent of hospitals have even basic electronic health records today.  That’s because even though many doctors around the country can see the potential benefits, there are also obstacles.

That’s where these grants come in. We want to spread the benefits of health information technology to our entire health care system. Led by our National Coordinator for Health IT, Dr. David Blumenthal, our grants team has identified major areas where we can begin to implement new technology to make delivering health care more efficient and more effective. Read Dr. Blumenthal’s blog about it here.

Electronic health records will provide major technological innovation to our current health care system by allowing doctors to work together to make sure patients get the right care at the right time and want to be clear that in all our Health IT investments, patient privacy is our top priority.
Kathleen Sebelius is Secretary of Health and Human Services





The White House
Office of the Press Secretary

Sebelius, Solis Announce Nearly $1 Billion Recovery Act Investment in Advancing Use of Health IT, Training Workers for Health Jobs of the Future

Grant Awards to Help Make Health IT Available to Over 100,000 Health Providers by 2014, Support Tens of Thousands of Jobs Nationwide
WASHINGTON, DC - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis today announced a total of nearly $1 billion in Recovery Act awards to help health care providers advance the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology (IT) and train workers for the health care jobs of the future. The awards will help make health IT available to over 100,000 hospitals and primary care physicians by 2014 and train thousands of people for careers in health care and information technology. This Recovery Act investment will help grow the emerging health IT industry which is expected to support tens of thousands of jobs ranging from nurses and pharmacy techs to IT technicians and trainers.
The over $750 million in HHS grant awards Secretary Sebelius announced today are part of a federal initiative to build capacity to enable widespread meaningful use of health IT. This assistance at the state and regional level will facilitate health care providers' efforts to adopt and use electronic health records (EHRs) in a meaningful manner that has the potential to improve the quality and efficiency of health care for all Americans. Of the over $750 million investment, $386 million will go to 40 states and qualified State Designated Entities (SDEs) to facilitate health information exchange (HIE) at the state level, while $375 million will go to an initial 32 non-profit organizations to support the development of regional extension centers (RECs) that will aid health professionals as they work to implement and use health information technology - with additional HIE and REC awards to be announced in the near future. RECs are expected to provide outreach and support services to at least 100,000 primary care providers and hospitals within two years.
"Health information technology can make our health care system more efficient and improve the quality of care we all receive," said Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. "These grant awards, the first of their kind, will help develop our electronic infrastructure and give doctors and other health care providers the support they need as they adopt this powerful technology."
The more than $225 million in DOL grant awards Secretary Solis announced will be used to train 15,000 people in job skills needed to access careers in health care, IT and other high growth fields. Through existing partnerships with local employers, the recipients of these grants have already identified roughly 10,000 job openings for skilled workers that likely will become available in the next two years in areas like nursing, pharmacy technology and information technology. The grants will fund 55 separate training programs in 30 states to help train people for secure, well-paid health jobs and meet the growing employment demand for health workers. Employment services will be available via the Department of Labor's local One Stop Career Centers, and training will be offered at community colleges and other local education providers.
“The Recovery Act’s investments are making a positive difference in the lives of America’s working families,” said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis. “The investments announced today will ensure thousands of workers across the nation can receive high-quality training and employment services, which will lead to good jobs in healthcare and other industries offering career-track employment and good pay and benefits.”
The HHS and DOL awards are part of an overall $100 billion investment in science, innovation and technology the Administration is making through the Recovery Act to spur domestic job creation in growing industries and lay a long-term foundation for economic growth. In addition to the 10,000 jobs the DOL grantees expect to fill with freshly trained workers, the health IT extension centers are expected to hire over 3,000 technology workers nationwide in the months ahead. Overall, the Administration investments in health IT and training will help significantly expand an emerging industry expected to support tens of thousands of secure, well-paid jobs nationwide.
A complete listing of the state HIE, REC and job training grant recipients is as follows: State HIE Awards:
State HIE Awardee Award Amount
Alabama Medicaid Agency $ 10,564,789
Arizona Governor's Office of Economic Recovery $ 9,377,000
Arkansas Dept of Finance and Administration $ 7,909,401
California Health and Human Services Agency $ 38,752,536
Colorado Regional Health Information Organization $ 9,175,777
Delaware Health Information Network $ 4,680,284
Government of the District of Columbia $ 5,189,709
Georgia Department of Community Health $ 13,003,003
Office of the Governor (Guam) $ 1,600,000
The Hawaii Health Information Exchange $ 5,602,318
Illinois Department of Health care and Family Services $ 18,837,639
Kansas Health Information Exchange Project $ 9,010,066
Cabinet for Health and Family Services (Kentucky) $ 9,750,000
State of Maine/Governor's Office of Health Policy & Finance $ 6,599,401
Massachusetts Technology Park Corporation $ 10,599,719
Michigan Department of Health $ 14,993,085
Minnesota Department of Health $ 9,622,000
Missouri Depart of Social Services $ 13,765,040
Nevada Department of Health and Human Services $ 6,133,426
New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services $ 5,457,856
Lovelace Clinic Foundation, New Mexico $ 7,070,441
New York eHealth Collaborative Inc. $ 22,364,782
Commonwealth of the NMI, Department of Public Health $ 800,000
North Carolina Department of State Treasurer $ 12,950,860
Ohio Health Information Partnership LLC $ 14,872,199
Oklahoma Health Care Authority $ 8,883,741
Pacific Ecommerce Development Corporation (American Samoa) $ 600,000
State of Oregon $ 8,579,992
Governor's Office of Health Care Reform Commonwealth of Pennsylvania $ 17,140,446
Oticina del Gobernador La Fortaeza (Puerto Rico) $ 7,770,980
Rhode Island Quality Institute $ 5,280,000
State of Tennessee $ 11,664,580
Utah Department of Health $ 6,296,705
Vermont Department of Human Services $ 5,034,328
Virgin Islands Department of Health $ 1,000,000
Virginia Department of Health $ 11,613,537
Health Care Authority (Washington) $ 11,300,000
West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources $ 7,819,000
Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services $ 9,441,000
Office of the Governor (Wyoming) $ 4,873,000
Total Award Amount $ 385,978,640
Regional Extension Center Awards:
RECs Awardee Award Amount
Altarum Institute, Michigan $ 19,619,990
Arkansas Foundation For Medical Care $ 7,400,000
CIMRO of Nebraska $ 6,647,371
Colorado RHIO $ 12,475,000
District of Columbia Primary Care Association $ 5,488,437
Fund for Public Health New York $ 21,754,010
Greater Cincinnati HealthBridge (Ohio-Kentucky) $ 9,738,000
Health Choice Network, Inc.,Florida $ 8,500,000
HealthInsight, Utah-Nevada $ 6,917,783
Iowa IFMC $ 5,508,019
Kansas Foundation for Medical Care Inc. $ 7,000,000
Key Health Alliance (Stratis Health), Minnesota – North Dakota $ 19,000,000
Lovelace Clinic, New Mexico $ 6,175,000
Massachusetts Technology Park Cooperation $ 13,433,107
MetaStar, Inc, Wisconsin $ 9,125,000
Morehouse School of Medicine, Inc., Georgia $ 19,521,542
New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) $ 26,534,999
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill $ 13,569,169
Northern California Regional Extension Center $ 17,286,081
Northern Illinois University $ 7,546,000
Northwestern University $ 7,649,533
OCHIN Inc. (Primary), Oregon $ 13,201,499
Ohio Health Information Partnership $ 28,500,000
Oklahoma Foundation for Medical Quality, Inc. $ 5,331,685
Purdue University $ 12,000,000
Qsource (Tennessee) $ 7,256,155
Qualis Health, Washington - Idaho $ 12,846,482
Rhode Island Quality Institute $ 6,000,000
Southern California Regional Extension Center $ 13,961,339
Vermont Information Technology Leaders, Inc. $ 6,762,080
VHQC and the Center for Innovative Technology, for The Virginia Consortium $ 12,425,000
West Virginia Health Improvement Institute Inc. $ 6,000,000
Total Award Amount $ 375,173,281
Job Training Awards:
Healthcare / High Growth Grant Recipient Award Amount
Calhoun Community College $3,470,830
Mid-South Community College $3,391,053
South Arkansas Community College $3,520,612
Kern Community College District (KCCD) $2,768,572
Los Rios Community College District $4,988,561
Mt. San Antonio Community College District $2,239,714
San Diego State University Research Foundation $4,953,575
San Jose State University Research Foundation $5,000,000
San Bernardino Community College District $4,260,863
Youth Policy Institute $3,623,473
Spanish Speaking Unity Council $3,559,139
Otero Junior College $4,999,350
National Council of La Raza $3,457,516
Providence Health Foundation of Providence Hospital $4,953,999
DeKalb Technical College (DTC) $2,043,859
Governors State University $4,994,686
Indianapolis Private Industry Council, Inc. $4,885,812
Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana $5,000,000
Iowa Workforce Development $3,403,164
Maysville Community and Technical College $2,007,637
Louisiana Technical College, Greater Acadiana Region 4 $4,859,040
Southern University at Shreveport $4,296,308
Maine Department of Labor $4,892,213
The Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) $4,928,654
Macomb Community College $4,971,642
American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center $5,000,000
Northland Community and Technical College $4,996,844
MN State Colleges & Universities DBA Pine Technical College $4,230,950
South Central College $4,506,101
The Montgomery Institute $4,519,625
Full Employment Council $4,998,344
Crowder College $3,576,760
Maryville University - St. Louis $4,699,354
University of New Hampshire $2,944,732
Passaic County Community College $4,475,041
Fulton Montgomery Community College (FMCC) $2,865,657
Hudson Valley Community College (HVCC) $3,382,200
University Behavioral Associates, Inc. $5,000,000
Workforce Investment Board of Herkimer, Madison, and Oneida Counties $2,700,096
Goodwill Industries, Inc., Serving E. Neb and SW Iowa $2,007,846
Nevada Cancer Institute $3,262,676
Berea Children’s Home 4,927,843
BioOhio $5,000,000
Cincinnati State Technical and Community College $4,935,132
Columbus State Community College $4,605,303
Enterprise for Employment and Education $2,373,073
Trident Technical College $2,624,532
Florence-Darlington Technical College (FDTC) $4,346,351
The University of South Dakota $5,000,000
Centerstone of Tennessee, Inc. $5,000,000
North Central Texas College $4,150,005
San Jacinto Community College District $4,722,919
The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) $4,655,799
Shenandoah Valley Workforce Investment Board, Inc. (SVWIB) $4,951,991
Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board $5,000,000
Total $226,929,446
Additional information about the state HIE and RECs may be found at http://HealthIT.HHS.gov/statehie and http://healthit.hhs.gov/extensionprogram.
Information about other health IT programs funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 can be found here: http://HealthIT.HHS.gov
Information about Healthcare/High Growth Grants, and other DOL training programs is available at http://www.doleta.gov/.
For more information about the Recovery Act, please visit: www.hhs.gov/recovery, www.dol.gov/recovery, and www.recovery.gov.