Category Archives: Dick Cheney

Tears and solemnity at Cheney funeral – but no memorial for those killed in Iraq

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Great and good pay tribute in Washington but honouring of former vice-president was an exercise in omission

You suspected that Maga had not conquered the Washington national cathedral when Bill Kristol was spotted at a men’s urinal conversing with Chris Wallace. You knew it for sure when James Carville, Anthony Fauci and Rachel Maddow were seen sitting close to one another in the nave.

The funeral of the 46th US vice-president, Dick Cheney, who died earlier this month aged 84, was a throwback to a less raucous and rancorous time. Ex-presidents and vice-presidents, Democratic and Republican, made small talk, but Donald Trump, who spent Thursday crying treason and calling for Democrats to be put to death, and his deputy JD Vance were not invited.

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Dick Cheney created the ground for Trump’s excesses, despite their differences

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The ironies of Cheney’s parting of ways with Donald Trump and modern day Republicans are numerous

He was the embodiment of America-first ideals before Donald Trump and his Maga movement hijacked the phrase.

The principle of a strong president empowered to push through the agenda was core to his view of how US politics should function.

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Liz Cheney remains a conservative in her father’s tradition despite defying Trump

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Though their neoconservative vision may seem less relevant since Bush left office, signs of the Cheneys’ influence linger in Trump’s administration

Weeks before one of America’s best-known businessmen, Donald Trump, was sworn in as president on an overcast day in Washington DC, a different politician with a similarly familiar name took her oath of office elsewhere in the Capitol.

Liz Cheney was then both a freshman congresswoman from Wyoming and a stalwart of the neoconservative philosophy espoused by her father Dick Cheney, the former vice-president under George W Bush who died on Monday. Trump had repudiated Bush’s invasion of Iraq in his campaign for president, but the congresswoman nonetheless went on to become an ally in bending Republican lawmakers to his will.

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Dick Cheney’s role in ‘war on terror’ may have paved way for Trumpism

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Former US vice-president a key figure in expanding White House’s power and ‘corrupting the intelligence-policy relationship’ to sell Iraq war

Dick Cheney, who has died aged 84, came to be seen as a moderate in his later years for his staunch opposition to Donald Trump, but he also stands accused of paving the way for Trumpism by undermining the independence of the intelligence agencies and US adherence to international law.

As George W Bush’s second-in-command in the “war on terror” declared after the 9/11 attacks, Cheney made himself one of the most powerful vice-presidents in US history, and was a key protagonist in the push to invade Iraq, as well as the use of torture on suspected al-Qaida members detained without charge in the CIA’s offshore “black sites”.

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Former vice-president Dick Cheney confirms he will vote for Kamala Harris

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Lifelong Republican makes announcement day after daughter Liz also endorses Democratic candidate

The former vice-president Dick Cheney, a lifelong Republican, will vote for the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, in November’s presidential election, he said in a statement on Friday.

“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said of the former president and Republican nominee. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.

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‘Correct a black mark in US history’: former prisoners of Abu Ghraib get day in court

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Jury trial against military contractor CACI over ‘sadistic, blatant and wanton abuses’ comes 20 years after scandal broke

The first trial to contend with the post-9/11 abuse of detainees in US custody begins on Monday, in a case brought by three men who were held in the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The jury trial, in a federal court in Virginia, comes nearly 20 years to the day that the photographs depicting torture and abuse in the prison were first revealed to the public, prompting an international scandal that came to symbolize the treatment of detainees in the US “war on terror”.

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Adam McKay: ‘Leo sees Meryl as film royalty – he didn’t like seeing her with a lower back tattoo’

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After politics in Vice and finance in The Big Short, director McKay is taking on the climate crisis in his star-studded ‘freakout’ satire Don’t Look Up

Adam McKay calls it his “freakout trilogy”. Having tackled the 2008 financial crash and warmongering US vice president Dick Cheney in his previous two movies, The Big Short and Vice, McKay goes even bigger and bleaker with his latest, Don’t Look Up, in which two astronomers (Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) discover a giant comet headed for Earth, but struggle to get anyone to listen. It is an absurd but depressingly plausible disaster satire, somewhere between Dr Strangelove, Network, Deep Impact and Idiocracy, with an unbelievably stellar cast; also on board are Meryl Streep (as the US president), Cate Blanchett, Timothée Chalamet, Tyler Perry, Mark Rylance, Jonah Hill and Ariana Grande. It has been quite the career trajectory for McKay, who started out in live improv and writing for Saturday Night Live, followed by a run of hit Will Ferrell comedies such as Anchorman, Step Brothers and The Other Guys. “The goal was to capture this moment,” says McKay of Don’t Look Up. “And this moment is a lot.”

Was there a particular event that inspired Don’t Look Up?
Somewhere in between The Big Short and Vice, the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] panel and a bunch of other studies came out that just were so stark and so terrifying that I realised: “I have to do something addressing this.” So I wrote five different premises for movies, trying to find the best one. I had one that was a big, epic, kind of dystopian drama. I had another one that was a Twilight Zone/M Night [Shyamalan] sort of twisty thriller. I had a small character piece. And I was just trying to find a way into: how do we communicate how insane this moment is? So finally, I was having a conversation with my friend [journalist and Bernie Sanders adviser] David Sirota, and he offhandedly said something to the effect of: “It’s like the comet’s coming and no one cares.” And I thought: “Oh. I think that’s it.” I loved how simple it was. It’s not some layered, tricky Gordian knot of a premise. It’s a nice, big, wide open door we can all relate to.

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NBC Reporter Hails Sacha Baron Cohen as ‘Genius’ ‘Providing a Service’

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During a Tuesday panel discussion on NBC's Megyn Kelly Today about left-wing comedian Sacha Baron Cohen tricking and humiliating Republicans for his new Showtime series, NBC reporter Jacob Soboroff praised the deceptive entertainer as a "genius" who was "exposing the fault lines of our society" and "providing a service." Following a full report promoting Cohen's program, Who is America? which also aired on the Today show earlier that morning anchor Megyn Kelly hammered the comedian: "It makes me feel uncomfortable.

Baron Cohen pranks 2 more celebrity politicians for show

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Some politicians are going through the several stages of panic associated with an interview with Sacha Baron Cohen: remorse, damage control, anger and regret for being duped. One of the comedian's latest targets, defeated Senate candidate Roy Moore, is threatening a defamation lawsuit over an upcoming episode of the comedian's new television series.

Thompson: The message behind the pardons

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It should be clear by now: President Donald Trump believes he is above the law. It's apparent by his conduct in office and particularly related to the Russia investigation - helping manufacture "Deep State" conspiracy theories to undermine our law enforcement and intelligence institutions, concocting absurd spy stories with no merit, firing an FBI director for not letting things slide, belittling his attorney general for rightfully recusing himself from the probe and sending out his lawyer to act like they can dictate the terms of the investigation.

Hogan Gidley’s Big Lie: We Are Now Respected, We Are Now Feared, We Are Now Beloved

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Sweet jesus, I don't know what they're passing around in the West Wing, but it's some serious stuff for people to be this out of touch with reality. Or they've just taken a page about of Goebbel's book on " The Big Lie ": "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

McCain Still Up for a Fight, Even in Illness

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U.S. Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain of Arizona listens as he is introduced at a campaign rally in Fayetteville, N.C., Oct. 28, 2008. As in so much of the senator's extraordinary life, the rebellious Republican is facing this challenging chapter -- battling brain cancer -- in his own rule-breaking way, stirring up old fights and starting new ones.

Cheney: US should restart harsh interrogations, back HaspelAssociated Press

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney said the U.S. should restart the harsh detention and interrogation practices used on terror suspects after 9/11, and called on the Senate to confirm CIA nominee Gina Haspel. Brutal interrogation practices are currently banned under U.S. law, but debate on the issue has re-surfaced during Haspel's confirmation process because she was once involved in the CIA's interrogation program.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says the U.S. should restart harsh interrogations

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney said the U.S. should restart the harsh detention and interrogation practices used on terrorism suspects after 9/11, and called on the Senate to confirm CIA nominee Gina Haspel. Brutal interrogation practices are currently banned under U.S. law, but debate on the issue has re-surfaced during Haspel's confirmation process because she was once involved in the CIA's interrogation program.