Free Republic

NEW YORK (AP) - Former Vice President Dick Cheney has signed a book deal with a conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster and said he hopes readers of all ideologies will be interested in his story. The memoir by Cheney, widely considered the most powerful vice president in history, is expected to be published in Spring 2011, a few months after President George W. Bush's book comes out. Cheney's work is currently untitled and will cover his long career in government, from chief of staff under President Ford to vice president under Bush, from Vietnam and Watergate to the first...

Cheney Responds to Panetta Dick Cheney released a statement responded to CIA Director Leon Panetta's suggestion that the former vice president's criticism of Obama administration policies means Cheney is wishing for another attack. "I hope my old friend Leon was misquoted. The important this is whether the Obama administration will continue the policies that have kept us safe for the last eight years." Panetta was quoted in a lengthy profile by Jane Mayer in this week's New Yorker. “I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue,” he told me. “It’s almost, a little bit, gallows...

Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday hit back at CIA Director Leon Panetta, over his suggestion that Cheney wants another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. "I hope my old friend Leon was misquoted," said Cheney in a statement provided to The Hill. "The important thing is whether or not the Obama administration will continue the policies that have kept us safe for the last eight years." Panetta, a veteran politician who served as Bill Clinton's chief of staff, had criticized Cheney for "gallows politics" and said the former vice president hoped the country were subject to another terrorist attack. "I...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bent over his speech text, reading in a monotone, former Vice President Dick Cheney could not have presented a more stark contrast to the glitzy style of President Barack Obama. Cheney, who often took a low-profile role as vice president, was off on a high-profile, wide-ranging attack. * On Obama's decision to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay without a plan for dealing with the prisoners: "The administration has found that it's easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo. But it's tricky to come up with an alternative that will serve the interests...

Thank you all very much, and Arthur, thank you for that introduction. It’s good to be back at AEI, where we have many friends. Lynne is one of your longtime scholars, and I’m looking forward to spending more time here myself as a returning trustee. What happened was, they were looking for a new member of the board of trustees, and they asked me to head up the search committee. I first came to AEI after serving at the Pentagon, and departed only after a very interesting job offer came along. I had no expectation of returning to public life,...

In one of the largest sums ever donated to charity by a U.S. public official, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne gave away nearly $7 million last year to help the poor and to medical research. According to income tax information released by the White House on Friday, the Cheneys' adjusted gross income in 2005 was $8,819,006. The sum was largely the result of Mr. Cheney's stock options from Halliburton and royalties from three books written by Mrs. Cheney. The Cheneys gave more than three-quarters of their income - $6,869,655 - to several charities, including George Washington University's...

Well, that settles it. Maureen Dowd thinks Dick Cheney should shut up. Cheney, she writes, is "batty," has "numskull ideas," and "still loves torture." Just as Jeb Bush and other Republicans are trying to get kinder and gentler, Cheney has popped out of his dungeon, scary organ music blaring, to carry on his nasty campaign of fear and loathing. Cheney, she concludes, "has replaced Sarah Palin as Rogue Diva." Oh, snap. All of this, we are told, is hurting Republicans. "It is very difficult for me to understand how the continued presence of Dick Cheney in the public eye could...

Just 38% of U.S. voters agree with former Vice President Dick Cheney that America is less safe now because of changes President Obama has made in national security. Fifty-one percent (51%) disagree with Cheney, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. The partisan divided is predictable: 72% of Republicans agree with Cheney, while 80% of Democrats disagree. Among voters not affiliated with either party, 35% think Cheney is right, but 50% say he’s wrong. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of all voters attach some importance to Cheney’s comments since he left office, but only 17% say his opinions are Very...

Dan Balz has stirred up partisans in writing that Cheney is "the most visible critic of President Obama's national security policies and, to the alarm of many people in the Republican Party, the most forceful and uncompromising defender of the Bush administration's record." Republican-sounding readers cite the article as another proof that the MSM is a bunch of left-wing loonies and Democratic-sounding readers mostly attack Cheney and his role in the Bush Administration and cheer him on, thinking he helps their cause. But CUPPAJO said, "I don't think it is the Reps that are wincing. I think you in the...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is "misleading the American people" by asserting that harsh interrogation tactics used on suspected terrorists were essential to keeping America safe, a Democratic senator charged Wednesday at an oversight hearing on the Bush administration's so-called "torture memos." Sen. Russ Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat, rejected claims made by Mr. Cheney in recent days that classified CIA memos prove that waterboarding and other techniques approved by the Bush administration Justice Department protected the nation from more terrorist attacks after 9/11. "Nothing I have seen -- including the two documents to which former Vice President Cheney has repeatedly referred...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Far from a secure, undisclosed location, former Vice President Dick Cheney is out in the open and increasing his criticism on the Obama administration and even fellow Republicans. But Ed Rollins, a CNN contributor and GOP strategist, says Cheney's attacks are not helping the Republican image. "While he certainly has a right to defend what they did over the last eight years, since he was the architect of much of it ... at the end of the day, we need to be looking forward, not backwards," Rollins said Monday. "[Powell] is a man of great stature and...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday that he preferred Rush Limbaugh’s brand of conservatism to former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s, saying Mr. Powell had abandoned the Republican Party when he endorsed Barack Obama for president last year. “Well, if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh, I think,” Mr. Cheney said in an interview on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “I think my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican.” Mr. Cheney said he “assumed” Mr. Powell’s...

FORMER US vice president Dick Cheney insisted Sunday that intelligence extracted from tough interrogations of suspected Al-Qaeda militants had saved "perhaps hundreds of thousands" of lives. "No regrets. I think it was absolutely the right thing to do," he said on CBS television, arguing that techniques decried by critics as torture were essential to break the resistance of captured extremists. "I'm convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives," mr Cheney said, arguing again that al-Qaeda was bent on attacking a US city with a nuclear device. But at the annual dinner of the White...

Objecting to the Obama administration's refusal to use waterboarding and other interrogation procedures put into place by the Bush administration, former vice president Dick Cheney said that the U.S. should be "prepared to sacrifice American lives." Unlike former President George W. Bush, who (like many of his predecessors) has demurred from making public comments or criticisms about his successor and his policies, Cheney has been vocal in his attacks on the new president. (CBS) "The reason I have been speaking," Cheney (left) said on CBS News' Face The Nation, is because "the issues that are at stake here are so...

Cheney: Powell no longer a Republican Posted: 11:48 AM ET WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday he no longer views Colin Powell as a Republican. Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," Cheney was asked about a dispute between Powell — who was secretary of state in the Bush-Cheney administration — and radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh over the role each plays in the GOP. "My take on it was Colin had already left the party," Cheney said. "I didn't know he was still a Republican." The former vice president noted that Powell endorsed then-Sen. Barack...

It is a curious fact of American history that many of the great men of the Republic never ended up in the White House. Benjamin Franklin was too old, having turned 83 the year of the first presidential election. Henry Clay - despite five attempts to make it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - had to settle for being one of the most important members in the history of the U.S. Senate. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the late 20th century, was perhaps too blunt for the presidency, once telling a Third World audience "Food growing...

Dick Cheney became a one-of-a-kind vice president for two reasons: he cared deeply about governance, and not a bit about his future political standing. Those same factors, for better or worse, have turned him into a one-of-a-kind former vice president. In a sharp break with long-standing practice, Mr. Cheney has emerged as the highest-profile critic of the new administration. Repeatedly during Mr. Obama’s transition and his first 100 days in office, Mr. Cheney has carried his anemic favorability rating into the ring to slug it out with a successor who enjoys considerable public support on issues from the role of...

(CNN) -- It's time for the Republican Party to tell former Vice President Dick Cheney to put a sock in it. Here we are 100 days into the new administration of Barack Obama, and Darth Vader is still wandering around grumbling about why the new administration is all wrong. Nobody is interested anymore, Mr. Vice President. You and your gaggle of miscreants had your shot, and we are in the toilet because of it. Don't you get it? The election of this nation's first African-American president and his massacre of John McCain in the Electoral College is because of you...

Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008. Certainly Cheney himself seems to feel that way. Last week’s Sean Hannity interview, all anti-Obama jabs and roundhouses, was the latest installment in the vice president’s unexpected – and, to Republican politicians, distinctly unwelcome – transformation from election-season wallflower into high-profile spokesman for the conservative opposition. George W. Bush seems happy to be back in civilian life,...

The Obama administration is confused. The president says harsh interrogation techniques "do not make us safer," but his top intelligence adviser says the same techniques produced "high-value information" that gave the U.S. government "a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country." Obama White House officials routinely boast that theirs is "the most transparent administration in history," but then they release Justice Department memos about the interrogations in which the assessments confirming the value of those techniques are blacked out. Attorney General Eric Holder tells a congressional committee that he is unaware of memos about the...