Where's Dick Cheney on the BP oil spill?

[Better Believe It]

Where's Dick Cheney on the BP oil spill?
By Katrina vanden Heuvel | June 16, 2010

So where’s Dick Cheney? Writing for Newsweek, Ravi Somaiya observes that in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the former vice president has remained “notably silent.” What’s notable, Somaiya points out, is that, “When the Obama administration, or the media, or just about anybody contradicts Dick Cheney's views on national security, he is far from shy about responding.” So as a hawk for big oil, one might expect Cheney to defend his pro-petro views in the face of withering (and near-universal) opprobrium from both public and president.

For eight years, of course, Cheney played dual roles as vice president of the United States and as unofficial at-large congressman for the petroleum industry. The former vice president’s murky ties to Halliburton, the Houston oil services company he once ran, are well documented, and he continues to face ridicule for having allowed executives from oil companies to dictate American energy policy during the George W. Bush presidency.

At Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard looks extensively into the potential cause-and-effect relationship between Cheney’s infamous 2001 energy task force and the gulf catastrophe. “The task force's final report,” Sheppard writes, “…presented a rosy picture of the offshore drilling industry. Newer oil and gas drilling methods, it said, ‘practically eliminate spills from offshore platforms’ and ‘enhance worker safety, lower risk of blowouts, and provide better protection of groundwater resources.’”


Symbolic of Cheney’s connection -- past, present, and future -- to Big Oil is BP’s hiring of Anne Womack-Kolton as its chief of U.S. media relations. Womack-Kolton served as Cheney’s press secretary during the 2004 campaign and later worked for President Bush’s Department of Energy. While this small bit of employment news is far too circumstantial to gin up serious outrage, it nonetheless puts a nice bow around the questionable coziness between government and industry that Bush and Cheney encouraged during their time in the White House.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/06/wheres_dick_cheney_on_the_bp_o.html

[Captain Hilts]

1. In hiding. nt

[Lil Missy]

2. frantically shredding documents

[valerief]

Sucking on Gulf tar balls. Robots need to be oiled, after all. nt

[emulatorloo]

3. Sadly he has come up to the surface to trash Obama. Link:

Cheney crawls out from under his rock to criticize President Obama's response to the BP disaster
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x344979

[rocktivity]

5. "He pointed to the President's lack of action in the Gulf oil leak.

He said Obama doesn't have enough executive experience, or experience in Washington, to make things happen." Link

The day after Obama GETS action on the oil leak, THAT'S all he's got? You starting to slip, old man--or are you worried about BP's chickens coming to YOUR home to roost?

:evilgrin:
rocktivity

[rocktivity]

4. Trying to avoid incriminating himself.

He was happy to emerge from his lair and take potshots at Obama--and send out his daughter to take the return fire. Now he has to worry about the public taking too close a look at his relationship with Halliburton and big oil over the years.

:headbang:
rocktivity