Relation to presidents:
● Worked for Nixon, Ford, George H.W. & George W. Bush
● Reagan was the only Republican president since Eisenhower who managed to serve two full terms. Reagan is also the only one not to have appointed Dick Cheney to office.
● “White House Chief of Staff Richard Cheney is blamed by Ford insiders for a succession of campaign blunders.”
- Robert Novak
Education + Draft:
● Won a scholarship to Yale, partied it away, flunked, and dropped out after his freshman year.
● When the draft began for Vietnam, Cheney woke up and enrolled at Casper Community College. Cheney then transferred to University of Wyoming, which kept him out of the draft until 8/7/64. Married Lynne Vincent earning another deferment. On Oct. 26, 1965 the Selective Service announced that childless married men were no longer exempted from service: 9 months and 2 days later, Cheney’s first daughter Elizabeth was born. Received a total of five deferments between ‘63 & ‘66. Turned 26 in January 1967 making him safe from the draft and enabling him to abandon his mock-doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin.
The one time Cheney has answered the question as to why he avoided serving in Vietnam he said,
“I had other priorities.”
Experience:
1986:
● 1 of 21 members of the House to oppose the Safe Drinking Water Act
● Fought efforts to clean up hazardous waste because it was too costly
● Voted against funding for the Veterans Administration
● Opposed extending the Civil Rights Act
● Opposed the release of Nelson Mandela from jail in South Africa
● Voted to ok cop-killer bullets
1988:
● Was appointed as head of the Defense Department, yet he avoided service
● Pushed military duties over to private corporations
● Pushed “defense intellectuals” with no military experience into key posts at Pentagon, e.g. Paul Wolfowitz
1992:
● Selected as CEO of Halliburton. Picked up subsidiary that did business with Saddam Hussein. That same subsidiary resulted in multi-million dollar asbestos lawsuits, which plummeted stock. Cheney continues to receive $150,000 a year in deferred compensation. Halliburton has since been awarded $8 billion in contracts from the Iraq War.
1997:
● Was one of the founding members of the radical PNAC, which included Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. This group of leading neo-conservatives led a crusade to lobby President Clinton to topple Hussein. Their purpose was to influence American foreign and defense policy.
2000:
● Violated the Constitution, since it is forbidden that a state’s electors vote for president and vice president who are both “an inhabitant of the same state as themselves.” Cheney was an official citizen of Texas.
● Foisted fake and altered reports on the intelligence.
● Visited 9 Arab countries to enlist countries for the battle vs. Saddam. Not one nation provided troops and most refused to permit the US to use their territory for war.
● Insisted there were WMD in Iraq and that there was a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, even though none have ever been found.
