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Dick Cheney and Steve Clemons Share a Long Moment (of Silence)
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Thursday, Jun 26 2008, 11:18PM
This is awkward as the Australian American Leadership Dialogue meeting at which I posed a question to Vice President Cheney was off the record -- but it's out there now in the New York Times.
It was a fascinating, little bit scary moment because the Vice President after speaking for quite a while about a lot of tough subjects just went stone silent after I posed a question on North Korea.
I hear that Cheney did look back when he was leaving the stage and did flash me a semi-friendly grin, or at least others thought that was what it was. I'm not so sure.
-- Steve Clemons
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Reader Comments (24) - post a comment
uh oh steve, you better be watching your back now. seriously though, what a great story.
You knew the pushback re: Cheney/Bolton was a sore spot.
Cheney aide Addington says he didn't write memos
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080627/ap_on_go_co/terrorism_interrogations
Hmmm.
Good shot!
I relinquish part of my skepticism about the fallout w/r/t setting up Iran, it looks like the neos took a fall, as you said, Steve.
Did his eyes start glowing red like the Terminator? That's when I'd hightail it to somewhere quiet, but not Wyoming.
I read 20-30 political blogs each day, and yours is one of the best. When I saw your name in the Times today I had a flash of pride, as if I were reading about an old friend. What a great question.
Steve, you inspire us each day with your common sense, your balance, your leadership, and your ability to produce the dynamics of change and understanding. I'm reading the New York Times, and you are on the front page above the fold. That just does not happen every day. You make me feel like we matter, like we have a chance, in this crappy, miserable situation that Bush and Cheney have produced for this country.
Thank you Steve for asking the difficult question despite the scary experience it created for. Well done.
I only wish your meeting had been on the record. Since 2001 we have been missing this sort of bold and honest questioning of our leaders by broadcast journalists. I hope we can get some of that back. I know you will continue to lead the effort, and I hope other analysts and journalists will feel inspired by your example.
Is that photo the semi-smile he gave you? Word has it that he shot his hunting partner after the partner asked him about Gitmo. Great job!
Steve,
I'm always smiling and proud to be reader of TWN and never surprised by the wonderful things you do. You did have exquisite timing of confronting Cheney the day before SCOTUS made it legal for him to have a hand gun in DC! Maybe you should go to Asis for a while just to be safe and yī lù shùn fēng.
Well you know Darth just loves you to pieces for leading the opposition against Bolton and this deal with North Korea is a big and direct consquence of Bolton not being part of the negotitions.... you know NK was a pet target of theirs. I'm sure his mental calculator was registering, "That guy".
Plus, he knows the whole business of dubbing him Darth started here... he jokes about it, but it's really old news, so it must be on his mind.
Part of the NK shell game on sanctions was that a side effect of not allowing nuclear enrichment meant their power programs would of course be relegated to spiking the price of available fossil fuels, especially oil and coal.
He's big into the energy industry, most likely NK wasn't steering enough his way to justify their being brought into the circle of business.
Now he loses money in comparison there, and additionally loses more in the other spectrum that game the market in terms of speculation for fossil energy.
Lose-lose for Cheney, even though the energy industry moves forward. Ouch.
Thanks, Steve, for asking the question. After losing on North Korea, Cheney will make sure that there will be a bombing campaign on Iran, I'm afraid. His ego will not allow anything less. The guy is a menace.
Besides there is all that oil that could come to US oil companies, just like with Iraq.
Didn't the wonderful VP have his heart transplanted recently with a miniature oil pump?
That would make him smile, n'est-ce pas?
Buddy, you rule. And you showed remarkable restraint and class.
What Pauline asked and Raoul said.
Good work,
Hang in there, and be proud of yourself, you made Darth Vader, pause and think and admit to himself how wrong his approach is, and how it hurts our great nation.
Say hi to your dogs!!
Thanks,
John
Excellent.
But you should know that over in Cheney's own personal branch of the government, such questions are not permitted.
While having the juxtapostion regarding the two characters:Steve Clemons and Dick Cheney, one may neutrally add the impression that the former depicts the best traits of political liberalism and humanistic globalism while the latter demonstrates the features of political chauvinism, xenophobia and neoliberalism in his thinking.
When he invites you to go hunting with him, it's important to have an unavoidable prior engagement to cite. Also, avoid the use of the word "barnacle"!
You got major stones Steve! Bravo!
I'm surprised he didn't tell you to go F yourself!
I mean isn't that his standard response to America in general?
Secret energy meeting? Go F yourself!
Etc., Etc. Etc.
Steve, I've not commented on this thread because I'm not sure how I feel about it. Certainly, I have been quite vocal in my opinion that you should use your insider status and connections in a far more dissenting manner. And, in light of that, I extend a heart felt "thank you" for daring to query Cheney with a question you must have known would be poorly recieved. I imagine you just slammed a door shut that you won't ever have the opportunity to open again. In fact, it was undoubtedly a whole hallway of doors.
But in the end, Cheney just showed you the same disdain he has shown all of the American people. No answers, and no apologies.
There is far more that needs to be asked of this man, under oath and before the American people. Your question, although timely as far as current events go, pales when compared to the questions Cheney should be tasked to answer about 9/11, his energy policies, Plame, torture, and the widescale deceptions, exagerations, and fearmongering that preceded a foreign policy disaster that has cost over a million lives, and has damaged our nation beyond our imaginations, perhaps irrepairably.
Kudos, man.
But really, we aren't lacking questions, are we?
Its the answers we lack.
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