Monday Cheney Games

Vice President Cheney and his lovely wife have snuck off to Dallas for a secret visit (h/t TP).

Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting Dallas on Monday for undisclosed reasons.

I was going to engage in some utterly irresponsible guessing about why the Vice President (and his lovely wife) would need to steal off to Dallas without any warning: heart surgery, quail hunting, and Halliburton meetings all came to mind.

But then I read Ken Silverstein’s account of mounting fighting between Turkey and the Kurds.

The Turkish offensive, which has been green-lighted by the Bush Administration, was criticized by the Iraqi government. “We know the threats that Turkey is facing, but military operations will not solve the PKK problem,” a government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told The Guardian. Meanwhile, Kurdish anger towards the United States is growing. “We are their friends and we thought we were their allies,” the newspaper quoted Muhammad Qadir, a shopkeeper in Irbil, as saying. “We don’t support the PKK, but we are angry that the Americans are allowing the Turks to wage war against our fellow Kurds.”

A former U.S. official who works in northern Iraq emailed me to say:

The United States is being skillfully handled by the Turks, who are dragging the U.S. into a policy disaster in Kurdistan. The Kurds have moved a lot of fighters and equipment quietly into the area, and are prepared to strike the Turks. Massoud [Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish leader] has issued all the press comments he can to publicly warn that Kurdish patience is gone. The United States is either ignoring the signals or missing them…The Kurds can and will bloody the Turks badly in a fight.

And I couldn’t help but recall that Ray Hunt, the spooked up oil billionaire who made his own private deals with the Kurds, lives in Dallas. Mind you, that recollection and the suggestion that perhaps Cheney (and his lovely wife) was off to do some off-the-books foreign policy is just as irresponsible as speculating about quail hunting. But these Bushies do like to blend business and diplomacy, and Hunt is precisely the kind of guy they like to work through.

They had to have had a reason for allowing Hunt to so blatantly undermine our stated goal of helping the Iraqis craft an oil law, after all. It would be just like them to encourage him to develop ties with the Kurds so they’d have some leverage for a time like this.

Update: Apparently, the story is they were house shopping.  I guess that Wyoming residency was always just a convenient way around the Constitutional prohibition on two-Texan Administrations.

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52 replies
  1. bobschacht says:

    The Kurds have reason to distrust Americans– we have let them down before. And since our current satrapy in Iraq is going so well, you know we’ll do right by the Kurds, don’t you?

    Bob in HI

  2. freepatriot says:

    I was going to engage in some utterly irresponsible guessing

    sounds like you got too much time on your hands

    that’s why we love you

    I couldn’t have tied fourth branch’s trip to the Kurds if I tried

    sounds like the Kurds are ready to kick some ass

    which side are we on ???

    • freepatriot says:

      I got a better question:

      whose side is Fourth Branch on ???

      Doesn’t really matter, put me down for 10 on which ever side the prince of darkness chooses. I’ll give up the points

  3. anwaya says:

    “Maybe we should tap his phones and internet servers…oh, wait….”

    You don’t have clearance to see that information.

    That’s OK, just treat Youffraita as though they did. You know, as though they were in the 4th branch of the government.

  4. CTMET says:

    Ouch, maybe Cheney knows that the Kurds can repel the Turks, so giving them the nod wouldn’t hurt the viability of Kurdistan (and Hunt’s business). Not that Cheney cares about lots of people dying or anything….

    • bobschacht says:

      “Ouch, maybe Cheney knows that the Kurds can repel the Turks, so giving them the nod wouldn’t hurt the viability of Kurdistan (and Hunt’s business). Not that Cheney cares about lots of people dying or anything….”

      Fighter for fighter, I’d put my money on the Kurds over the Turks. But Turkey has an airforce, and the Kurds don’t. Huge disadvantage. But, as we know by now, controlling the air doesn’t guarantee control of the ground, in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Vietnam, for that matter.

      Bob in HI

  5. LabDancer says:

    With the way this thread evolved so readily towards mixing connubiality with kanoodling, I’m not sure this is all that OT – but:

    I just watched on PBS Lehrer’s news hour a post-menopausal woman & quite possibly older man debating the merits of the Keller-endorsed NYT piece by Rutenberg et al on McCain’s Miss Vicki problem, and I just have to say this before the story gets old:

    What a load of humbuggery there has been on the “Miss Vicki angle” to this point!

    It’s sex, for crying out loud, not “romance”.

    Or it isn’t either, but I don’t live in NY or WDC or get much of a chance to hang out on the Strafe Talk Esspresso Bus with McCool, so that fact that all of folks who do tell me the inside skinny or plump on the goings on at the back of that bus are no worse than harmless Hollywood twitter which maybe I’m into a little bit one day & which maybe bore’s me the next.

    I don’t want to generate any irrelevancies about the man, but the artist Richard Wagner recognized the sales value in things kanoobial, particularly in his [the original] Ring Cycle, what with Woden’s stashing his wedding ring at every opportunity to populate the earth, with hero Siegfried’s being the product of an incestuous [& apparently eyes-wide-open] brief encounter between estranged brother & sister – what with Siegfried himself having tripped the firelight fantastic with [as that Canadian opera diva narrated] “his Auntie!”, & all the goings on with magic potions in the last opera, couples lurching from one bier to the next after a few shots of the old joy juice.

    I’ve worked in and around many offices and hundreds of lawyers, who are really no different from any other types of workers in any industry, and sex in and around the workplace or on the workbus happens. Ask Bill.

    Somehow I think that this must have occured with Keller, who is no dumbbell & has a fair exposure to the arts, & after all is but a taxi ride from the Met.

    Finally, the more I read & hear of what a hypocritical bullshitter is McCain about reforming government against private corruption, the more I wonder whether I can even watch again on the Daily Show — but I’d sure tune in to watch Stewart take him on about Miss Vicki — & it certainly would not hurt his presidential chances with me in the least — or with millions of others.

    Might even help.

  6. Synoia says:

    This was predicted. The Kurds will get screwed.
    The Kurds want a Kurdistan.
    They have since the Ottomans fell.
    They span, Turkey, Iraq & Iran.
    The US has tried to be on both sides,
    The Turkish side, and the Iraqi Kurds’ side.
    However, in the Kurds’ view there is only one side:
    And The Turks were always considered to be “Kurd Enemies”
    That’s why the suggestion to have Turkey help in the Iraq invasion,
    died very quickly.

    There are, and have been Oil pipelines from the Kirkuk oilfields
    to the med through the Syrian desert for over 70 years.

    The Kurds’ next best friend? Syria. Followed by China.

  7. FrankProbst says:

    I suspect the lovely wife was there only to ensure that the ambassador to Switzerland was not.

    As for Hunt, I don’t really see how his private oil deal gives him much leverage with the Kurds. The worst-case scenario for the Kurds would be that they just scrap the deal and sell their oil to someone else, no?

  8. marksb says:

    So. We back the Turks attacking the Kurds, then use Hunt (maybe) to create some kind of leverage with the Kurds? How’s that work?
    Does Cheney think the Kurds are so stupid to ignore our backing the Turks?
    And that the Turks are so stupid to ignore our feeble attempts to sort-of back the Kurds?
    God this is embarrassing.

  9. Bushie says:

    Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but another blogger at another blog (I forgot which) stated Cheney and Co. were house shopping in his upscale neighborhood & tying up traffic big time.

  10. Tom in AZ says:

    All the crappy details aside, how, after invading and occupying a country for five years, does the US just stand aside and let yet another country invade?

    Oops, forgot we haven’t secured one border in all this time.

    • emptywheel says:

      No. When they want to do something nefarious they do it off government property. When Bush plans war, he makes sure his allies go to Crawford. And when Cheney concocts cover stories with Libby, they got to Jackson Hole. It’s a fairly well-established pattern, actually.

      • selise says:

        i just had this picture of cheney telling hunt to meet him at cheney’s place for planning nefarious deeds. but maybe given the time of year, dallas makes more sense than wyoming.

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        Yes, just as Rove plans how to corrupt US and Alabama politics by meeting on street corners in downtown DC rather than his or someone else’s office. That he uses the tradecraft of a spy operating in an enemy’s territory should come as no surprise. His ends are the same, but it’s no foreign country he works for, just himself.

  11. earlofhuntingdon says:

    The local Fox Noise station in DFW referred to Cheney’s arrival as being on ”Air Force One”, a designation that applies only when el presidente is flying on board. A slip of the tongue, no doubt.

    DFW is also the home of SMU, soon to be the base for the permanent ReichWing noise machine to be known as the Bush Libwrary. Both its books and the dog-eared magaines he still keeps from his fraternity days (he hasn’t read the articles yet) will be supplemented by the papers and digital records that Rove and Cheney choose not to shred. (A likely outcome unless Congress immediately beefs up and puts teeth in the Presidential Records Act and the next president rescinds Bush’s egregious Executive Order on point.)

    Dallas is also expected to be where Dick will reside when he doesn’t continue to loom over Metro DC from his ”vacation” home on the Chesapeake. No doubt, Blackwater will have lucrative contracts to guard both. I can’t wait to hear what demands they will shortly make from the local zoning boards. Just how do you evaluate the neighborhood impact of sniper nests and rocket launchers, I wonder?

  12. Rayne says:

    How convenient, this house hunting. I hear it’s 2 hours closer and a lot easier to get a flight on short notice out of Dallas-Ft. Worth to Asuncion, Paraguay.

    Not to mention a lot closer to folks with privately owned fleets of jets.

      • Rayne says:

        It doesn’t matter where the bases are, really. It matters more how quickly BW can dispatch their folks; for all we know, they’ve got folks living in Dallas who can be called up on short notice to respond. We already know of a privatized security company whose business model works in this fashion; the “shock troops” arrive at a central point and deploy, but there might be widely dispersed deployment points. Like one or more in each state…

        • earlofhuntingdon says:

          My surmise would be that DFW is a mini-base for Blackwater, probably operating “below radar”, because of its ties to Cheney/Bush and many of its supporters.

  13. phred says:

    EW, where Hunt is concerned, I would consider putting the shoe on the other foot. Rather than Cheney (and his lovely wife) popping over to Dallas to do a little house hunting, asking Hunt to mend some Kurdish fences, it also seems possible to me that Hunt may have summoned Cheney to chew him out for jeopardizing his nice little oil arrangement with the Kurds. It’s all about the money and Hunt isn’t going to be pleased with Cheney messing up his lucrative investment.

    • emptywheel says:

      Good point. I’ve always assumed the Hunt deal was a ploy to ensure the flow of intelligence, come what may. But maybe he just wanted to get rich(er).

      Still, if they didn’t secretly approve of his Kurdish contract, why don’t they kick him of PFIAB and prevent him from using our intelligence to further his own business deals?

      • phred says:

        Still, if they didn’t secretly approve of his Kurdish contract, why don’t they kick him of PFIAB and prevent him from using our intelligence to further his own business deals?

        earlofhuntingdon @39 pretty much answered this the way I would have, so I’ll simply add my two cents, that BushCo is working for the rich and powerful. W and Darth got where they are because the big donors knew what their money was buying. Hunt is not likely to be the sort of person to let Cheney screw up a highly profitable business arrangement. And I think it would be unwise for Bush or Cheney to try to kick a major player like Hunt off their cozy little PFIAB. There are some people they cannot afford to offend.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      Good point. Hunt’s the billionaire, one of those who call the shots in the Cheney/Bush junta. Cheney’s government access and control over Bush and government makes him a player, but only so long as he helps those like Hunt increase their fortunes. Should he expose them to liability – or visibility or accountability – he would become expendable. Which is why the machinations won’t stop next January; the game will just start another quarter.

    • prostratedragon says:

      I suspect that the tallest member of that thicket of misconceptions through which Cheney tries to negotiate the world is a belief that governmental power trumps, or at least is a match for, money in the amoral crowd he wants to be at the top of.

  14. bmaz says:

    Why not just buy in Ray Ray’s new country principality free-trade zone subdivision with the bridge to nowhere somewhere else? I would assume it has a runway long enough for Lears and Gulfstreams.

  15. MadDog says:

    OT but some good news for a change via TPM:

    Controversial Pentagon Official Resigns…

    …The Department of Defense announced today that General Counsel of the Department of Defense William J. Haynes II is returning to private life next month…

    Can I have his law books? They’re almost new, never been opened and going cheap.

  16. prostratedragon says:

    I guess I was too subtle.

    No, no, this is how one conserves capacity. That way when you really have to let fly, it seems louder.

    The only way to live with an upper bound in this world.

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