Many people have theorized that Dubya wanted to invade Iraq in order to gain retribution for (or just one-up) his father’s failure to topple Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War.
Well, it seems like we might have something of the same thing going on between Liz Cheney and her father. Dick Cheney was chronically unpopular as Vice President, and Liz seems to be trying to make herself not just unpopular with liberals who hated Cheney but with everyone else, including conservatives. When someone like Kenneth Starr starts calling Liz’s latest attacks “shameful” you know she has sunk to a new low. And I agree.
So what has she done? Liz Cheney is in charge of the group “Keep America Safe” [now defunct -iron] that advocates for keeping Gitmo open, the use of torture, and other dubious activities that have caused the US so much trouble without actually keeping us any safer. So what could she possibly do that was even more shameful? She attacked lawyers!
Keep America Safe has spent the last two weeks going after a few current Justice department lawyers because (before they joined Obama’s Justice Department) they “represented or advocated for terrorist detainees”. In other words, if you get thrown into Gitmo because you are suspected of being a terrorist (and even our government acknowledges that a fair number of the people there are actually innocent), not only do you not get a real trial, but you shouldn’t even get a lawyer. She even tried to brand those lawyers as “The Al-Qaeda 7“.
Which means that Liz Cheney is denouncing the rule of law, the right to a fair trial, the Geneva Convention, and our pesky old Constitution. It makes me sick. I don’t care if this is merely a cheap partisan attack against the Obama administration, or if she is trying to rehabilitate her father’s reputation, or even if she actually believes this crap.
The only silver lining? The outrage against her attacks is the most bipartisan thing I’ve seen in a while.
6 Comments
When I think of Liz Cheney, I feel like someone flailing around in a pool, trying to touch my feet to the bottom.
Just can’t wrap my head around what standard the general populations holds them to. Just when you think you understand what is political lunacy, we have Cheney and Palin and Beck to prove to us wrong.
Mark my words, she’ll be elected to Congress by the end of the decade.
This is legal ethics 101, even the most unpopular defendant deserves to be represented. The lawyer does not become the client. University of Chicago should revoke her diploma.
Have I got this right? Lawyers doing a good job defending Gitmo detainees against whom? Against Bush Justice Dept? And then Bush Justice Dept. hires these same lawyers. So then the detainees lose their lawyers to the Bush Justice Dept that is prosecuting them. And Liz Chaney is now angry at whom, for what? What did I miss here?
No, Jim, these seven lawyers were hired by the Obama Justice Department, but in the past they had either “represented or advocated for terrorist detainees” (prior to working for the Justice department). Cheney is attacking these lawyers and pretty much calling them traitors. She should know better.
Oh, I get it. She’s attacking them because Obama hired them. Well, that explains everything.
Please add that she opposes the Geneva Convention.