From WaPost: “On Tuesday, Cheney, serving in his role as president of the Senate, appeared in the chamber for a photo session. A chance meeting with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, became an argument about Cheney’s ties to Halliburton Co., an international energy services corporation, and President Bush’s judicial nominees. The exchange ended when Cheney offered some crass advice.
“Fuck yourself,” said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.”
… Make that a weak, wheezing, somewhat unreliable heartbeat from the Presidency. Unfortunately, no press accout I have read thusfar gives Leahy’s reaction— which in my book is an essential part of the story.
Cheney Dismisses Critic With Obscenity
Clash With Leahy About Halliburton
By Helen Dewar and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A04
A brief argument between Vice President Cheney and a senior Democratic senator led Cheney to utter a big-time obscenity on the Senate floor this week.
On Tuesday, Cheney, serving in his role as president of the Senate, appeared in the chamber for a photo session. A chance meeting with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, became an argument about Cheney’s ties to Halliburton Co., an international energy services corporation, and President Bush’s judicial nominees. The exchange ended when Cheney offered some crass advice.
“Fuck yourself,” said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.
Leahy’s spokesman, David Carle, yesterday confirmed the brief but fierce exchange. “The vice president seemed to be taking personally the criticism that Senator Leahy and others have leveled against Halliburton’s sole-source contracts in Iraq,” Carle said.
As it happens, the exchange occurred on the same day the Senate passed legislation described as the “Defense of Decency Act” by 99 to 1.
Cheney’s office did not deny that the phrase was uttered. His spokesman, Kevin S. Kellems, would say only that this language is not typical of the vice presidential vocabulary. “Reserving the right to revise and extend my remarks, that doesn’t sound like language the vice president would use,” Kellems said, “but there was a frank exchange of views.”
Gleeful Democrats pointed out that the White House has not always been so forgiving of obscenity. In December, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry was quoted using the same word in describing Bush’s Iraq policy as botched. The president’s chief of staff reacted with indignation.
“That’s beneath John Kerry,” Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said. “I’m very disappointed that he would use that kind of language. I’m hoping that he’s apologizing at least to himself, because that’s not the John Kerry that I know.”
This was not the first foray into French by Cheney and his boss. During the 2000 campaign, Bush pointed out a New York Times reporter to Cheney and said, without knowing the microphone was picking it up, “major-league [expletive].” Cheney’s response — “Big Time” — has become his official presidential nickname.
Then there was that famous Talk magazine interview of Bush by Tucker Carlson in 1999, in which the future president repeatedly used the F-word.
Tuesday’s exchange began when Leahy crossed the aisle at the photo session and joked to Cheney about being on the Republican side, according to Carle. Then Cheney, according to Carle, “lashed into” Leahy for remarks he made Monday criticizing Iraq contracts won without competitive bidding by Halliburton, Cheney’s former employer.
Leahy, Carle said, retorted that Democrats “have not appreciated White House collusion in smears” that Democrats were anti-Catholic for blocking judicial nominees such as William H. Pryor Jr. Democrats demanded that Bush disavow the allegations by conservative groups, but the White House did not.
The Democratic National Committee has declared this to be “Halliburton Week” to portray administration ties to the controversial company. “Sounds like it’s making somebody a little testy,” Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton said.
Republicans did their best to defend the vice president. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), while pointing out that he was unaware of the incident, described Cheney as “very honest” and said: “I don’t blame anyone for standing up for his integrity.”
There is no rule against obscene language by a vice president on the Senate floor. The senators were present for a group picture and not in session, so Rule 19 of the Senate rules — which prohibits vulgar statements “unbecoming a senator” — does not apply, according to a Senate official. Even if the Senate were in session, the vice president, though constitutionally the president of the Senate, is an executive branch official and therefore free to use whatever language he likes.
a technology job is no excuse 
From 1957 when the first Special Forces teams in Vietnam began training the nucleus of the Vietnamese Special Forces and Airborne Ranger units, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) had strongly resisted any proposal that the SF be used in their basic mission of operating in the enemy’s rear areas. This was due to a number of reasons; principally the caveat imposed that US Forces not engage in combat and they not go into Laos, Cambodia or North Vietnam. Secondly, President Nixon’s blessing on Special Forces at Fort Bragg infuriated the higher commands who had been trying to squash Special Forces for years.
Investigative reporter, Simon Marshall in Cheney: The Story He Cannot Tell (Doubleday) to be released next month, reveals Dick Cheney was recruited into a secret black-ops team called Alpha Major within the Special Forces. Although he “took to the training like a salami to a pizza” it quickly became apparent that Cheney was one of the anti-gods who would not play the game according to the rules of war. Additionally, in defiance to Army regulations, when Cheney went into the field, he defied orders that the officially-damned beret of the Green Beret would not be worn.
As soon as he jumped into an operational area during maneuvers, he violated the official regulations against “the wearing of the green” and gleefully turned many maneuvers into chaos. In an early 501s maneuver Louisiana, Cheney and some of his buddies turned road signs around, sending convoys of equipment, rations and fuel heading off into completely different directions than intended. Units preparing for an assault were visited at night, preceding their assault, and received a briefing by a “Lt. Col Cheney” who brought XVIII Airborne Corps’ revision to their original attack plan, sending their regiment in another direction, in which they attacked one of their own units.
The confusion caused the Commanding General of XVIII Airborne Corps to stop the operations. All Alpha Major personnel were sent back to Fort Bragg and the maneuvers resumed. However, upon return to Fort Bragg, the Commanding General wrote a new regulation which made the wearing of the beret a Courts Martial offense.
The North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and their southern cousins the Viet Cong (VC) operated with impunity in the sparsely-settled countryside. One reason was the excellent camouflage discipline of the NVA and the fact that most of their movement was at night. While bombing raids on the trail caused some delays, the absence of ground action against their main supply route permitted the NVA to move staggering amounts of men and material into South Vietnam to prepare for an extended war.
The NVA established power bases in South Vietnam from the rugged mountains of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) a strip of land extending from the Yellow Sea to the borders of Laos, established to divide North and South Vietnam and Central Highlands in the north to the jungles, rice paddies and flat expanses of the Mekong Delta in the South. In the South, in addition to using the natural camouflage of the jungles, the VC dug and lived in miles of sophisticated caves and tunnels. MACV intelligence analysts were certain that these bases existed, but the enemy’s strict camouflage and security discipline made the bases almost impossible to locate by air reconnaissance.
The only American troops which might be in position to challenge them were Cheney’s men aligned along these borders. They also suffered the most from the enemy’ utilization of the zone to Marshall their troops to attack the SF camps. Small wonder the battered teams began to feel the buffer zone was MACV’s revenge and that a courts martial for violating the zone was preferable to filling the insides of body bags. Instead of stopping at the zone, they began to follow enemy troops across and attacking them in their bivouac areas.
Cheney was careful to insure that the map coordinates given higher headquarters for any troop movements or operations were well out of the zone. A little judicious lying, perhaps, but the A-Teams in the field had little or no support in the event they were attacked. Cheney and his team were responsible for dramatically shortening the war, wrote Military brass began court marshal proceedings against Cheney when it was discovered that his team violated border restrictions on a regular basis. But with Nixon’s intercession they agreed to give Cheney an honorable discharge and swore Cheney to silence. An oath that he has kept to this day despite the fact that he’s been derided constantly for the seeming lack of military service.
Dick Cheney is truly an American Hero.
Stacy
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good ole pottymouthcheney, don’t mind him, he’s just getting old and confused
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I believe Kerry’s remarks were made to a publication.
Cheney and Bush’s remarks were said in “private” conversation. Look out everyone —big brother is watching you!
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