When asked his opinion about Tom DeLay's thinly veiled threats against judges following the Terri Schiavo debacle, he gave a rather surprising answer.
Cheney said he backed efforts to help save Terri Schiavo's life, but strongly disagreed with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who wants retribution against judges who blocked restoration of her feeding tube.
"I don't think that's appropriate . . . There's a reason why judges get lifetime appointments," he said.
I have to agree with Think Progress, who said, "Rule of Thumb: If Cheney says you’ve gone over the line, you’ve gone way over the line."
Keeping in line with his Big Oil loving roots, Cheney Scoffed at predictions that oil prices could zoom to $105 a barrel, quipping, "Maybe somebody's long in the oil market." Interesting. Even though experts from both sides of the aisle agree that increasing world demand, particularly from China, are going to continue to swamp supplies and drive prices further upward, Cheney thinks it's a fantasy. Oh well... if nothing else, the situation is driving a heavy and renewed interest in biofuels.
In what was probably one of his most embarrassing comments, Dick decided to chime in on the UN oil for food scandal.
Cheney stressed that the oil-for-food program was "pretty well corrupted" by Saddam Hussein's use of it to bribe officials, and that such a scandal must never happen again.
"If the U.N.'s going to be effective, if we're going to be able to have confidence in the U.N., then we've got to make certain that kind of failing can't occur," he said.
This is probably an area where Rove should have kept him on a short leash. For some details on the rampant hypocrisy in this position were brought to light this week by Molly Ivins. Take a look at these excerpts from her most recent column.
Those throwing conniption fits over the United Nations' misdeeds (failure of oversight, according to the Volcker Report) might want to meditate a bit on the role of the U.S. government in all this before they further embarrass themselves denouncing perfidious foreigners. For one thing, part of the oversight responsibility was on the United States, as a member of the 661 Committee, which monitored Iraq's compliance with the sanctions. The United States had the power to veto all sales of Iraqi oil and all purchases of goods bought with money from the program. Further, The Washington Post reports, "Diplomats and oil brokers have recently said that the U.S. had long turned a blind eye to illicit shipments of Iraqi oil by its allies Jordan and Turkey. The United States acknowledged this week that it had acquiesced in the trade to ensure that crucial allies would not suffer economic hardships." In fact, in March 2003 the Treasury Department provided assurances that the United States would not obstruct a plan by two companies to import millions of barrels of oil from Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions. Smuggling oil was actually Saddam Hussein's biggest source of income, not the kickbacks he got from oil-for-food. Ahed Okhon, a spokesman for one of the companies, claims Jordan had "blanket cover" from the U.N. sanctions. Newsweek, in an extensive report on corruption in Iraq, says: "More than U.S. money is at stake. The administration has harshly criticized the United Nations over hundreds of millions stolen from the oil-for-food program under Saddam. But the successor to oil-for-food created under the occupation, called the Development Fund for Iraq, could involve billions of potentially misused dollars. On Jan. 30, the CPA's [Coalition Provisional Authority] own inspector general, Stuart Bowen, concluded that occupation authorities accounted poorly for $8.8 billion in these Iraqi funds." Franklin Willis, a former CPA senior adviser, told Newsweek that the administration's reluctance to prosecute outright fraud in Iraq has turned the place into a "free-fraud zone." I'm just going to pull a cheap Instapundit ploy here and simply say, "heh.... indeed."
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