Colin Powell's Nutty Former Chief Of Staff: Cheney Is Afraid of Being Tried As A War Criminal

The following article is mind boggling in its vindictiveness.

From: ABC News

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's memoir, "In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir," is out Tuesday, and it's full of criticism and attacks on his Bush administration colleagues -- from describing Condoleezza Rice as "tearfully admitting" he was right on the war in Iraq to revealing private conversations with George W. Bush on the eve of the Iraq war.

He reserves much of his ire for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and now Powell and his longtime aide and chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, are attempting to set the record straight. In no uncertain terms.

Cheney, Wilkerson told ABC News, "was president for all practical purposes for the first term of the Bush administration" and "fears being tried as a war criminal."

In his memoir, Cheney claims Powell undermined President Bush. "It was as though he thought the proper way to express his views was by criticizing administration policy to people outside the government," Cheney writes, adding that he encouraged Powell's removal from the administration after the 2004 election, writing Powell's resignation "was for the best."

Powell himself called Cheney's criticism "cheap shots" during an interview this past Sunday on CBS News' Face the Nation.

"What really sort of got my attention was this way in which he characterized it: it's going to 'cause heads to explode,'" Powell said. "That's quite a visual. And in fact, it's the kind of headline I would expect to come out of a gossip columnist, or the kind of headline you might see one of the supermarket tabloids write. It's not the kind of headline I would have expected to come from a former vice president of the United States of America."

Before serving as Powell's chief of staff while Powell was Secretary of State, Wilkerson worked in the first Bush administration as a special assistant to Powell, who was then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Cheney was serving as Secretary of Defense. He's known Cheney for decades, but says now, "I simply don't recognize Mr. Cheney anymore" and calling him a "very vindictive person."

"I think he's just trying to, one, assert himself so he's not in some subsequent time period tried for war crimes and, second, so that he somehow vindicates himself because he feels like he needs vindication. That in itself tells you something about him," Wilkerson told ABC News, explaining that Cheney may have "angst" because of receiving deferments instead of serving in the Vietnam War like Wilkerson and others in the administration.


"He's developed an angst and almost a protective cover, and now he fears being tried as a war criminal so he uses such terminology as 'exploding heads all over Washington' because that's the way someone who's decided he's not going to be prosecuted acts: boldly, let's get out in front of everybody, let's act like we are not concerned and so forth when in fact they are covering up their own fear that somebody will Pinochet him," Wilkerson said alluding to the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested for war crimes.

Cheney told NBC News that his revealing memoir would have "heads exploding all over Washington."

Wilkerson said Powell was "simply not opposed to the war," citing the former Secretary of State's now infamous trip to the United Nations in February 2003 in which he testified that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction as proof that he wasn't undermining Bush. Instead, Wilkerson said he actually criticized Powell for "expressing too much support" for the war and explained that he used his own military experience to advise Powell that the U.S. military wasn't finished with its job in Afghanistan and the military would be stretched too thin. He said he registered "all manner of objections" to Powell, adding that "some of those probably leaked" but that Powell wasn't objecting to the war.

"From what I've read, Cheney seems to criticize everyone, including President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, [Deputy Secretary of State] Rich Armitage, and a host of others except himself. Waterboarding is a war crime, unwarranted surveillance… all of which are crimes. I don't care whether the president authorized him to do it or not, they are crimes," Wilkerson said. "Cheney was a good secretary of defense in my view. In fact I would put him up amongst the top three in the short history of the position. No longer do I feel that way, and I don't know what happened to Cheney."


"I think he was misled by the DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] George Tenet, by the deputy DCI John McLaughlin and by the vice president of the United States who had put Tenet and McLaughlin under such pressure that they dared not respond except with the message that the vice president wanted them to respond with," Wilkerson said. "[Cheney] had been out there [to the CIA] a dozen times to put his personal imprint on George Tenet, John McLaughlin and others so that they would know positively what he wanted, and what he wanted was war with Iraq."

Yearbook List of Worst People:Hitler,Bin Laden,Manson..Bush,Cheney???

From Russellville Middle School in Arkansas.The title tells the basic story. A high school yearbook that lists the five worst people:
1.)Adolph Hitler: Ok, that makes sense.No need to explain.
2.)Osama Bin Laden:The modern super villain.Evil guy,but personally I think Stalin would be second to Hitler.
3.)Charles Manson: Ok,really nasty guy.To this day he's Roman Polanski's pedophilia defense. Mao anyone? Genghiz Khan? Hey, this is a high school.

NUMBERS 4 and 5? Drumroll please...........
George W Bush and Dick Cheney!!!!!!!Not Stalin,or Mao,or Saddam.Not Genghiz,or the Caesars. Just Bush and Cheney.

Why you may ask is such a list in a high school yearbook? Beats me. I always thought yearbooks were things you signed with a suggestive limerick that equals the average maturity of its recipients.

So,obviously a handfall of students or publisher or both lacking any all knowledge of history decided to include it. This incident all by itself reflects the lack of a genuine education. They ought to send the editors and publishers to a real history class,rather than a highly politicized miseducation.Politics with a heavy hand in education. See for yourself

Sy Hersh,Olbermann, Slandered SEALs That Later Killed Bin Laden as Cheney's Personal Assassins

FROM: NEWSBUSTERS

The Navy SEALs who killed bin Laden are being widely hailed as heroes -- in stark contrast to previous descriptions of them from liberals in the media.

It was not long ago, over in the wetlands of the left, that these courageous warriors were demeaned as little more than homicidal thugs acting at the behest of war criminal Dick Cheney.

Here's how Keith Olbermann, then at MSNBC, described claims made by New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh in 2009 (h/t, RealClearPolitics; video after page break) --

In 1976 President Gerald R. Ford issued an executive order that read in part, quote, no employee of the United States government shall engage in or conspire to engage in political assassination.Our fifth story on the Countdown tonight, as we first reported on this news hour last night, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh claiming to have uncovered a covert, executive assassination ring that reported directly to Vice President Dick Cheney's office. A reminder, if one is needed, that in 1976 Mr. Cheney was the chief of staff to President Ford. Meaning, by the time Cheney was back in the West Wing, it appears he had either forgotten about his own boss's executive order or, worse, he had decided to ignore it.

Mr. Hersh making the revelations at a forum in Minnesota two nights ago. The topic -- America's constitutional crisis. Hersh saying that Mr. Cheney and his inner circle, quote, they ran a government within the government, adding, eight or nine neo-conservatives took over our country. Hersh's bomshell allegations about the assassination ring, the result of reporting for a book he says might still be a year or two away from being published. Hersh telling Minnpost.com in an email after the event that the disclosures are, quote, not something he wanted to dwell about in public. The toothpaste, however, already out of the proverbial tube here. When the discussion touched upon the abuses of executive power, Mr. Hersh, asked how these things tend to happen and whether they continue to happen to this day. In his reply, the reporter describing a secret commando unit officially called the Joint Special Operations Command.