Liz Cheney, a daughter of the Vice President, took to the Op-Ed page of the Washington Post to imply that Americans who didn’t get in line behind George W. Bush’s Iraq War were aiding al-Qaeda. She reprised one of Bush’s favorite refrains, that al-Qaeda wants U.S. forces to leave Iraq and that to do so would “help the terrorists.”

But intelligence analysts have captured internal documents indicating the opposite, that al-Qaeda actually wants U.S. forces to remain bogged down in Iraq. So, the question becomes: Who is helping the terrorists now?

For the full story of what al-Qaeda leaders really want and who’s giving it to them, go to the independent ConsortiumNews.Com.

Sometimes you don’t have to have a high speed Internet connection, cable or satellite TV or a subscription to a newspaper to find some of the best investigative reporting in the U.S. Just check the schedule for public television, available on any TV with an antennae.

Learn about Vice President Dick Cheney’s role as chief architect of the botched Iraq war. After 9/11, Vice President Cheney seized the initiative, pushing to expand executive power, transform America’s intelligence agencies and bring the war on terror to Iraq. But first he had to take on George Tenet’s CIA for control over intelligence.

You can read the in-depth interviews with CIA analysts for yourself and even join the discussion on the show’s Website. But be warned. It will piss you off…

Frontline: The Dark Side

Tenet was scapegoated – then given the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell also resigned, only to be replaced by Coni Rice, who went along with Cheney’s plan.

Cheney is still Veep, at least for now, and guess who is still in the White House being protected from impeachment, also at least for now?

George the Second…

Are you pissed off yet?

A written report from Secret Service agents guarding Vice President Dick Cheney when he shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington on a hunting outing two weeks ago says Cheney was “clearly inebriated” at the time of the shooting, according to Capitol Hill Blue.

Agents observed several members of the hunting party, including the Vice President, consuming alcohol before and during the hunting expedition, the report notes, and Cheney exhibited “visible signs” of impairment, including slurred speech and erratic actions, the report said.

According to those who have read the report and talked with others present at the outing, Cheney was drunk when he gunned down his friend and the day-and-a-half delay in allowing Texas law enforcement officials on the ranch where the shooting occurred gave all members of the hunting party time to sober up.

We talked with a number of administration officials who are privy to inside information on the Vice President’s shooting “accident” and all admit Secret Service agents and others saw Cheney consume far more than the “one beer’ he claimed he drank at lunch earlier that day.

“This was a South Texas hunt,” says one White House aide. “Of course there was drinking. There’s always drinking. Lots of it.”

Cheney has a long history of alcohol abuse, including two convictions of driving under the influence when he was younger. Doctors tell me that someone like Cheney, who is taking blood thinners because of his history of heart attacks, could get legally drunk now after consuming just one drink.

If Cheney was legally drunk at the time of the shooting, he could be guilty of a felony under Texas law and the shooting, ruled an accident by a compliant Kenedy County Sheriff, would be a prosecutable offense.

But we will never know for sure because the owners of the Armstrong Ranch, where the shooting occurred, barred the sheriff’s department from the property on the day of the shooting and Kenedy County Sheriff Ramon Salinas III agreed to wait until the next day to send deputies in to talk to those involved.

Sheriff’s Captain Charles Kirk says he went to the Armstrong Ranch immediately after the shooting was reported on Saturday, February 11 but both he and a game warden were not allowed on the 50,000-acre property.  He called Salinas who told him to forget about it and return to the station.

“I told him don’t worry about it. I’ll make a call,” Salinas said. The sheriff claims he called another deputy who moonlights at the Armstrong ranch, said he was told it was “just an accident” and made the decision to wait until Sunday to investigate.

“We’ve known these people for years. They are honest and wouldn’t call us, telling us a lie,” Salinas said.

Like all elected officials in Kenedy County, Salinas owes his job to the backing and financial support of Katherine Armstrong, owner of the ranch and the county’s largest employer.

“The Armstrongs rule Kenedy County like a fiefdom,” says a former employee.

Secret Service officials also took possession of all tests on Whittington’s blood at the hospitals where he was treated for his wounds. When asked if a blood alcohol test had been performed on Whittington, the doctors who treated him at Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial in Corpus Christi or the hospital in Kingsville refused to answer. One admits privately he was ordered by the Secret Service to “never discuss the case with the press.”

It’s a sure bet that is a private doctor who treated the victim of Cheney’s reckless and drunken actions can’t talk to the public then the memo that shows the Vice President was drunk as a skunk will never see the light of day.

We suspected as much. Is the mainstream media covering this up? Or are they just too incompetent to dig this up and report it?

Vice President Dick Cheney accepted full blame for shooting a fellow hunter on Wednesday and defended his decision to not publicly disclose the accident until the following day. He called it “one of the worst days of my life.”

Cheney Breaks Silence on Hunting Accident

He also tells the world he only had one beer at lunch. Everybody knows you can’t drink just one. And besides, no one goes quail hunting without a flask of good whiskey. But, you can fool enough of the people some of the time.

Cheney Admits Drinking One Beer at Lunch

Vice President Dick Cheney defended the administration’s handling of the fight against terrorism, including a warrantless eavesdropping program drawing fire from critics in Congress, during a fundraising stop Monday in north Alabama, according to the Associated Press.

There was no protest of the event, according to Ashley Reynolds of Decatur, a member of the local affiliate of the War Resisters League, because she was not able to obtain a permit from the city of Priceville and was afraid of being arrested.

“I was scared,” she said. “I would have been the sole protester in a small Southern town where the mayor doesn’t want me and the crowds are full of the Secret Service.”

Ms. Reynold’s also said the following in her full statement in an e-mail message.

My opposition to Halliburton’s war profiteering through defense contracts negotiated both ‘before the war ever started’ and after were publicized and circulated to far more people than a simple protest would have, she said, talking about a news story that appeared in the Decatur Daily.

It is not uncommon for activists to be arrested as a harassment tactic, she said. I felt I was too vulnerable in regard to any retaliatory actions law enforcement or government officials might instigate. Being rendered to Egypt or Syria is not how I want to spend Valentine’s Day.

Third, the article highlights the fear one woman with a sign can provoke. Is truth-telling really so threatening?

I find it interesting that, according to Mayor Duran, the seniors were not going to be in the park today. As I understand it, the Budget Reconciliation Bill was passed very recently. While there are cuts in social services, especially Social Security, there were no cuts in the war-making budgets. Are the officials in Priceville trying to keep the senior citizens ignorant of the reasons why Halliburton is making billions in “cost-plus, no bid” contracts, but there is little federal money to help the elderly, the poor, and the sick stay alive? As I said before, people are dying. This war is being fought on two fronts. One is Iraq. Military spending is a direct assault on the most vulnerable members of our society, including those seniors who were “protected” from hearing this truth.

President Eisenhower said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., a pacifist, said of the Vietnam War, “And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”

Both men spoke truth. Perhaps Cheney, Aderholt, and Mayor Duran did not want anyone to speak that truth or for those affected to hear it. Fear for my personal safety kept me from Veteran’s Park. My message, however, has not changed, nor will it. People of the Tennessee Valley, I beg you to stop working in the war-making industry, at Boeing, at Lockheed-Martin, at Halliburton/KBR. Money that goes into war-making, including the outsourcing military jobs to companies like Halliburton, is money stolen from the poor, the sick, the young, and the elderly.

“In the name God then, in the name of this suffering people I ask you, I beg you,” martyred Oscar Romero pleaded, “stop the repression.”

Dick Cheney will be in Priceville, Ala. on Feb. 6 to promote the re-election of Rep. Bob Aderholt. The local chapter of the War Resisters League’s Stop the Merchants of Death campaign is planning to protest the event in order to draw attention to the fact that Halliburton, Cheney’s previous employer, has enough influence in the government to dictate foreign policy, to make war for profit, and then to profit from war.

For more information, contact Ashley Reynolds at equalaccessalabama(at)hotmail(dot)com.

Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled appear Feb. 6 at a $250-per-plate luncheon for the re-election campaign of U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville, at Celebration Arena in Priceville, home of the World Racking Horse Show. Aderholt represents portions of Decatur and Morgan, Marshall, DeKalb, Cullman and 10 other counties.

Alabama Democrat Joe Turnham has some questions for the Veep on energy policy, deficits, confusion with the new Medicare perscription drug plan, CAFTA, campaign finance reform, renewal of the Voting Rights Act, lifting restrictions on trade with Cuba, funding for the military reserves, mining safety, the No Child Left Behind Act and national health care.

He also wants to know: “When will our troops start coming home?”

And he wants to know if the Bush administration ever found those “Bush-Abramoff” photos?

Questions for Cheney

At least according to the account by the Alabama bureau of the Associated Press, Vice President Dick Cheney avoided talking about politics Friday morning in his commencement speech to Auburn students.

They say he was funny.

Of course the story will be in the newspaper on Saturday for those who like to get their news a day late. And it will not be that interesting tonight to watch the local newscasters fawn on about the grand fact that the veep graced our presence down here in red-state Alabama.