Posted on 05/22/2009 9:26:49 AM PDT by anniegetyourgun
The hottest Republican property out there isn't former Vice President Dick Cheney but his daughter Liz, who has taken to the airwaves to defend her dad and the whole Bush administration on national security and Guantánamo Bay issues. Liz Cheney, who followed the former veep's hard-hitting speech criticizing President Obama's policies with a CNN appearance, is becoming so popular in conservative circles that some want her to run for office. "She's awesome. Everyone wants her to run," said a close friend.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
People have also run for governor of Texas on a whole lot less than Liz Cheney’s resume, too.
This is Lynn Cheney’s daughter. For those of you who can remember CNN’s Crossfire, Lynn (Liz’s Mother) often appeared to give the case for the “right” and consistently ran over her left opponent. Liz is picking up where she left off.
Count me in!
She’s not. That’s her sister. She is married to a former Justice Dept Attorney and has children.
I was thinking on the same lines. If Liz cheney can articulate conservative values like this, PLEASE run for this office. She will be a winner
Oh how right you are.....I think were getting somewhere.
Gov. Perry or (Gov.Good Hair), George Bush (the pretend Texan), Gov. Grandma.....oh brother!
Soon we will have Warshington insider and Bush lap dog Kay Bailey Hutchison running for govenor.
Elitist bone heads....all of’em.
Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, was a State Department official overseeing Mideast policy during the George W. Bush administration. At State, Cheney oversaw efforts to develop regime-change strategies in places like Syria and Iran, efforts closely in line with the “war on terror” policy agenda developed by neoconservatives at places like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and vigorously pursued by Cheney’s father and his aides in the Office of the Vice President. After leaving the administration in early 2006, she continued to lend her voice to these efforts in op-eds published in major news outlets. She also served as a senior advisor to the 2008 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney.1
Cheney and her father’s similar ideological sympathies made headlines in January 2009 when a writer for Slate.com discovered Elizabeth’s 1988 senior thesis at the library of Colorado College. Titled the “Evolution of Presidential War Powers,” Cheney’s thesis, according to writer Zac Frank, argued that “constitutionally and historically, presidents have virtually unchecked powers in war.” Adds Frank, “Thirteen years before her father became vice president, she had symbolically authored the first legal memorandum of the Bush administration, laying out the same arguments that would eventually justify Guantanamo and extraordinary rendition, wiretapping of American citizens, and, broadly, the unitary theory of the executive that shaped the Bush presidency.”2
From 2005 to early 2006, Cheney served as principal deputy assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, making her No. 2 in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. The post, which she left in spring 2006 to have her fifth child, reportedly entailed actively working to develop regime-change strategies for Middle Eastern countries, mainly Syria and Iran. According to unnamed colleagues interviewed by the newspaper The Australian, within the department, she was called the “freedom agenda coordinator” or “democracy tsar.”3
The job was Elizabeth Cheney’s second in the Bush State Department. From 2002 to 2003, she served as a deputy assistant secretary, a post she left to aid her father’s vice presidential reelection campaign. Her earlier tenure, although a matter of concern among critics who regarded her as a spy within Colin Powell’s State Department, ended with little fanfare. According to Todd Purdum of the New York Times, “After two years of working on projects to promote women’s rights and democracy in the Arab world, she won praise from skeptical foreign service officers, the European press, Arab leaders, and prominent Democrats.”4
Not everyone, however, was pleased with Cheney’s work. Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s assistant at State, told the American Prospect that she clashed with ambassadors while visiting the Middle East: “Liz Cheney comes out to this country, and she tells the ambassador—and she doesn’t outrank him—she tells the ambassador, ‘You’re not going in the meeting with me.’ And he says, ‘I’m sorry, I’m going in the meeting with you. You’re not going into a meeting with the head of State without me.’ And she says, ‘Nope—would you like a telephone call?’”5
Cheney’s return to State in 2005 fueled speculation that she was pushing plans to intervene in Iran and Syria. Journalist Robert Dreyfuss wrote, “During the past 15 months, Elizabeth Cheney has met with and bolstered a gaggle of Syrian exiles, often in tandem with John Hannah and David Wurmser, top officials in the Office of the Vice President; has pressed hard for money to accelerate the administration’s ever-more overt campaign for forced regime change in both Damascus and Tehran; and has overseen an increasingly discredited push for American-inspired democratic reform from Morocco to Iran.”6
Observers also connected Cheney with two obscure offices in the State Department that were the focus of concerns in early 2006 about the Bush administration’s plans for the Middle East. On April 22, 2006, the Financial Times reported on the creation of an “Iran-Syria Operations Group” (ISOG) that purportedly reported to Cheney. Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman, denied the group existed. However, other unnamed sources, including U.S. government officials and a European diplomat, assured the Financial Times that the group had in fact been established. These sources said that the group served as an interagency effort that “is supposed to coordinate with the Pentagon and other departments.”7
The New York Times reported that the State Department requested $85 million for a Liz Cheney-run program “for scholarships, exchange programs, radio and television broadcasts, and other activities aimed at shaking up Iran’s political system.” But observers were skeptical about the program’s impact. Said Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.: “It sounds good to fund civil society groups, but not when you don’t know who the groups are. No real group wants a direct affiliation with the United States. It will just get them into trouble with the government.”8
Cheney’s “unpublicized” meetings with Syrian dissidents in early 2005 also spurred speculation that the administration was repeating the strategy it followed with former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi, who helped feed misleading information to the United States about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs. The meetings were first reported in the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, which claimed to have received confirmation of them from the State Department. According to an Agence France Presse account, Cheney, Hannah and several Pentagon and National Security Council officials met with the dissidents to “discuss ways of ‘weakening the Syrian regime.’”9
Among those participating on the Syrian side was Farid Ghadry, a U.S.-based businessman who headed the Reform Party of Syria. According to Robert Dreyfuss, Ghadry is “a pro-Israeli Syrian who’s maintained ties to neoconservatives in Washington and who is close to [David] Wurmser and his wife, Meyrav Wurmser, the director of Middle East affairs for the Hudson Institute.”10
Mourhaf Jouejati, a Syria specialist at George Washington University, called Ghadry a “mini-me of Ahmed Chalabi.”11 Jouejati also claimed that Liz Cheney, Hannah, and the Wurmsers “are the backbone for Farid Ghadry’s movement. The question is, are they just seeking leverage with Syria, or is it a serious option? If it is the latter, I would be scared, because that means that they don’t know what they are doing.”12 According to Dreyfuss, Ghadry’s connections to this network may have resulted from his membership at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and participation in meetings of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a neoconservative-driven outfit that aims to tighten military relations between the United States and Israel.13
After leaving office in 2006, Cheney remained a vocal proponent of Bush foreign policies. In early 2007, shortly after Dick Cheney publicly accused House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) of “bad behavior” for visiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Washington Post ran an op-ed in which Liz Cheney argued that “conducting diplomacy with the regime in Damascus while they kill Lebanese democrats is not only irresponsible, it is shameful.” She added: “Talking to the Syrians emboldens and rewards them at the expense of America and our allies in the Middle East. It hasn’t and won’t change their behavior. They are an outlaw regime and should be isolated.”14
According to the Inter Press Service (IPS), Cheney’s op-ed “evoked considerable speculation [in Washington] ... [about] the balance between hawks led by the vice president and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams, on the one hand, and ‘realists’ led by the State Department, on the other …”15 Wayne White, a former top State Department Middle East analyst and adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, told IPS: “This could be a desperate attempt to reverse a trend that is going against [the hardliners].” Another observer, retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff under former Secretary of State Powell, told reporter Jim Lobe: “She’s doing Daddy’s business. It’s what Powell used to say about Bush: he’s got these rough edges, and Cheney knows how to rub them.”16
Earlier, in January 2007, Cheney wrote a sharply worded op-ed in the Post titled “Retreat Isn’t an Option.” The piece, which came on the heels of President Bush’s controversial decision to boost troop levels in Iraq and threaten military action against Iraq’s neighbors, implicitly attacked the U.S. public for weakness on the war on terror. “American troops will win if we show even one-tenth the courage here at home that they show every day on the battlefield,” wrote Cheney. “And by the way, you cannot wish failure on our soldiers’ mission and claim, at the same time, to be supporting the troops. It just doesn’t compute.”17
Cheney reserved much of her invective for then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), whom she argued was proving as weak-willed on Iraq as her male counterparts in Congress: “In 2007, a woman can run for president and show the same level of courage and conviction about this war many of her male colleagues have. Steel in the spine? Not so much.”18
The op-ed also revealed Cheney’s mastery of what one commentator terms the neoconservatives’ trademark “combination of overstatement and ancestor-worship.”19 Citing the World War II-era victory rhetoric of adopted neocon deity Winston Churchill, Cheney argued that “America faces an existential threat ... We will have to fight these terrorists to the death somewhere, sometime. We can’t negotiate with them or ‘solve’ their jihad. If we quit in Iraq now, we must get ready for a harder, longer, more deadly struggle later.” She then concluded: “America deserves better. It’s time for everyone—Republicans and Democrats—to stop trying to find ways for America to quit. Victory is the only option. We must have the fortitude and the courage to do what it takes. In the words of Winston Churchill, we must deserve victory. We must be in it to win.”20
Cheney’s husband, Philip Perry, served as general counsel to the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush presidency.
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Close Affiliations
Mitt Romney 2008 Presidential Campaign: Senior Advisor
Government Service
State Department: Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (2005-2006); Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Near East (2002-2003)
Education
University of Chicago: Law Degree
Date of Birth
July 28, 1966
The Right Web Mission
Right Web tracks militarists’ efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy.
Sources
1. Fox News, “Liz Cheney On Joining Mitt Romney’s Campaign,” January 28, 2008, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,326374,00.html
2. Zak Frank, “Elizabeth Cheney, Bush Legal Counsel,” Slate.com, January 2009.
3. Sarah Baxter, “Cheney’s Daughter Takes on Iranian Mullahs,” Australian, March 6, 2006.
4. Todd Purdum, “Weaned on Politics, Cheney Daughters Find a Place at the Table,” New York Times, May 31, 2005.
5. Robert Dreyfuss, “The Commissar’s in Town,” American Prospect, June 2006.
6. Robert Dreyfuss, “The Commissar’s in Town,” American Prospect, June 2006.
7. Gideon Rachman, “The Neocons’ Route to Disaster,” Financial Times, January 15, 2007.
8. Steven Weisman, “U.S. Program Is Directed at Altering Iran’s Politics,” New York Times, April 15, 2006.
9. “U.S. Discusses ‘Weakening Damascus Regime’ with Syrian Dissidents,” Agence France Presse, March 26, 2005.
10. Robert Dreyfuss, “The Commissar’s in Town,” American Prospect, June 2006.
11. Robert Dreyfuss, “The Commissar’s in Town,” American Prospect, June 2006.
12. Robert Dreyfuss, “The Commissar’s in Town,” American Prospect, June 2006.
13. Robert Dreyfuss, “The Commissar’s in Town,” American Prospect, June 2006.
14. Elizabeth Cheney, “The Truth about Syria,” Washington Post, April 12, 2007.
15. Jim Lobe, “Cheney’s Daughter Rages Against Syria,” Inter Press Service, April 12, 2007.
16. Jim Lobe, “Cheney’s Daughter Rages Against Syria,” Inter Press Service, April 12, 2007.
17. Elizabeth Cheney, “Retreat Isn’t an Option,” Washington Post, January 23, 2007.
18. Gideon Rachman, “The Neocons’ Route to Disaster,” Financial Times, January 15, 2007.
19. Elizabeth Cheney, “Retreat Isn’t an Option,” Washington Post, January 23, 2007.
Go Liz, Go Liz, go go go Liz
She awesome. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her in congress someday.
I was thinking the very same thing last night when I was watching her on Hannity.
? Really???
There’s a reason her father and Liz are out on the circuit and generating headlines.
“That is an idiotic comment and you should be ashamed. Try reading something - she’s married and raising 5 kids.”
I said IF. Maybe you should read all of the words in my comment?
In that case, she is making a good showing, not sure how she got to be such a darling of MSNBC though.
She cleanly knocked it out of the park with those interviews. Very impressive.
Yes I saw your “if” - which meant you hadn’t read the article that stated she was the mother of 5 children.
Disqualifier, in my book.
Imagine a Palin/Cheney ticket for 2012...
I guess you don't remember her mother, she sounds just like her.
AND, she can speak without a teleprompter!
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