What does Hitchens know about Cheney daughter in M.E.?

[grasswire]

From the transcript of Hardball on Wednesday. Christopher Hitchens likes to drop hot tidbits. I'd like to know what he was about to say when Tweety cut him off:


MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. That was President Bush this week, zeroing in on Iran.

Here to talk about what he was saying there, and other hot topics, is “Newsweek’s” Evan Thomas and “Vanity Fair’s” Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher, who in the administration is pushing for some kind of military attack on Iran to deal with its nuclear potential?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, “VANITY FAIR”: Well, I wish it was easy just to find that person. You can’t tell if there’s anyone in the administration who is in charge of Iran policy at all.

MATTHEWS: What about the veep?

HITCHENS: He’s not in charge of the policy. Some people say that his daughter is interested in it. And apparently is she. I’ve talked to a lot of people who want to know is ...

MATTHEWS: There’s a daughter of the vice president who has a foreign policy?

HITCHENS: Well ...

MATTHEWS: That’s relevant?

(CROSSTALK)

[grasswire]

1. Is Elizabeth Cheney driving the policy on Iran?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2070419,00.html


THE war in Iraq is her father’s business but Elizabeth Cheney, the American vice-president’s daughter, has been given responsibility for bringing about a different type of regime change in Iran.

Cheney, a 39-year-old mother of four, is a senior official in the State Department, which has often been regarded as hostile territory by Dick Cheney’s White House team. Nonetheless father and daughter agree it would be better for the mullahs’ regime to collapse from within than to be ousted by force.

The question is whether democratic reform can be achieved before Iran becomes a nuclear power. That is the younger Cheney’s job. In the State Department she is referred to as the “freedom agenda co-ordinator” and the “democracy czar” for the broader Middle East. “She’s fantastic and dynamic,” said a colleague.

Her official title is deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs and she is in charge of spending the $85m (£48m) — up from $10m last year — recently allocated to promote democracy in Iran. Much of it will be spent on broadcasting the views of exiles, dissidents and reformers inside Iran.

Cheney is better known to Iranian listeners of Voice of America’s Persian service than she is to Americans, although she publicly backed her sister Mary’s right to privacy when Democrats made an issue of her lesbianism in the 2004 election.

She rarely gives interviews but set out her agenda in a speech to the Foreign Policy Association’s annual dinner last June. Cheney said there was a “direct parallel” between reform movements in the Arab world and Poland’s Solidarity in the 1980s, which lit the “spark of freedom” in the Soviet bloc.

[MADem]

2. Government by nepotism....way to go, BushCo! n/t

[grasswire]

3. she lets the contracts for the M.E., too

Why isn't the press covering this astounding cronyism?? Do even 1 percent of the American people know that Cheney's daughter is in charge over there?

[0007]

8. Elizabeth looks a lot like her mother. She probably has more marbles also

[susu369]

19. Why doesn't Elizabeth use her married name?

:shrug:

Guess she is so proud of that Cheney surname she just can't give it up....

[Old and In the Way]

4. Obviously, she's Dad's proxy.

Have to keep it in the family. Seriously, Dick couldn't trust anyone to cover his interests better than his flesh and blood.

[grasswire]

12. yeah, and we pay her to protect his interests

Do these people have any shame at all? The Cheneys are the real scum of the earth, worse than the Bushes even.

[Old and In the Way]

18. Dick Cheney: world-class war monger/war profiteer.

He and Rumsfield are a blight on humanity. No two other people have profited so much from their government-business CV's......at the expense of millions of innocent people.

They'd be 1st up in the docket at the Hague if I had any say.

[ShortnFiery]

21. And she's so smooth!

Easy on the eyes and talks as good as many AEI cronies.

She seriously freaks me out! When I listen to her speak, if my research efforts did not indicate the opposite, I could have considered her palatable bullsh*t as VALID.

IMO, she's a force to be reckoned with in the future. :scared:

[Suich]

5. I don't know whether to laugh or cry....

On the one hand I'm not surprised; on the other it scares the crap out of me.

I'm going to bed. Maybe everything will be better when I wake up in the morning...

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Warren DeMontague]

6. DTs can cause visual and auditory hallucinations.

I would take everything that fucking souse says with a grain of salt.

[deminks]

7. Wiki entry on Liz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cheney

In February 2005, she returned to the US State Department and was appointed the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State For Near Eastern Affairs and Coordinator for Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiatives.

In this position, Cheney supports the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, C. David Welch, and coordinates U.S. multilateral efforts to promote and support democracy, expanded education and economic opportunities in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Her position makes her the second-ranking U.S. diplomat for the Middle East.

Cheney also heads the Iran-Syria Operations Group (ISOG), a unit within the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. ISOG has an $80 million budget to promote democracy in Iran and to develop administration policy for Iran and Syria.

[Stinky The Clown]

16. Draconian words, to be sure: "Cheney also heads the Iran-Syria .......

..... Operations Group (ISOG), a unit within the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. ISOG has an $80 million budget to promote democracy in Iran and to develop administration policy for Iran and Syria."

Does this bother anyone else?

[grasswire]

20. I think it would bother the American people....

...if they ever were informed of this by the media. I told several people who are "up" on the news today, and they were stunned.

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. Hitchens looked a little under the influence.

He just didn't look all sober to me. Like Guadelupe in the reunion show of Project Runway 2.

[tishaLA]

14. He made Lupe look sober

at least Lupe's words were comprehensible. Hitchens just slurred endlessly.

[The Backlash Cometh]

17. Also, she atleast acknowledged she was babbling.

[Totally Committed]

10. This is how screwed up our country is right now....

Under our "Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell" policy, this woman can not serve in the armed forces, but she is allowed to shape our foreign policy????

Think about it. Unless she's the first Cheney in recorded history to be a peacenik, this is just plain wrong.

TC

[Dulcinea]

11. Wrong daughter.

Elizabeth Cheney is married (I think) & has kids.

Mary Cheney is a lesbian. I believe she has a longtime partner.

[leesa]

13. Sounds like she does propaganda work to me...PR stuff. I'm sure it

goes over about as well as Karen Hughes 'Reach Out' does.

[Doctor_J]

15. Just think if Chelsea or one of the Gore babes had been

making decisions in Bosnia. We would have had lynchings. These people are EVIL