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One Nation, Two Presidents
House of Representatives - November 8, 2005

Mr. Speaker, across the country today, Americans are going to the polls to vote for candidates and issues. A year ago, the Americans went to the polls and voted for a President, but they got two instead. We have George W. Bush, the President of domestic policy, like appointing a self-described fashion God who left the gulf coast unprotected; and we have Dick Cheney, the President of foreign policy, including secret CIA presence around the world.

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Now, today the President of foreign policy is trying to round up votes in the Senate to exempt the CIA from an amendment that would ban the torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. It is a sure sign that America has lost its way when we even have to talk about banning torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners.

America has never had two Presidents until now, and America has never had a question about its moral integrity, until now. The President of foreign policy would have us believe that we must become the enemy to defeat the enemy. Like so much from this administration, this is not true. America's moral imperative is true enough, strong enough, and safe enough to keep this Nation a shining light of freedom without secret, black ops demanded by someone who was never elected President.

Throughout our history, Presidents have led this Nation through wars at home and abroad by remaining true to America's principles and values. In the mid-19th century, America had never before faced a more ferocious enemy than the one from within that reduced us to the Civil War. President Lincoln never lost sight of what we were fighting for. He said: "Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors."

In the early 20th century, America had never before faced a ferocious foe like the one that plunged the whole world into war, but President Woodrow Wilson did not forget what America stood for. He said: "The present and all that it holds belongs to the nations and the peoples who preserve their self-control and the orderly processes of governments; the future to those who prove themselves the true friends of mankind."

In the mid-20th century, America had never before faced an enemy more like one that had plunged us again into a world war, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt never wavered in his defense of his country: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

And with the world on the brink of nuclear terror during the Cuban Missile Crisis, John Kennedy kept America free and safe without subverting American values. JFK knew a lot about winning a war without losing the peace. He said: "When at least at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each one of us, our success or failure in whatever office we may hold will be measured by the answers to four questions: Were we truly men," and I would add women, "of courage, men and women of judgment, men and women of integrity? Were we truly men and women of dedication?"

Presidents Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Kennedy knew a thing about freedom and liberty; and they knew a lot about America. We are the land of the free and not the home of the afraid. But the President of foreign policy would have it otherwise. His demands for black ops is a black eye on this Nation. American history, not the unelected President of foreign policy, should be our guide.

Great American Presidents have led this Nation in times no less frightening than today. Ask any veteran of the Second World War what was at stake. They called it a world war for a reason. They did not shrink from their duty, and we must not forget that we did our best and we are the best hope of this world. We keep America free without losing America's moral integrity.

The unelected President of foreign policy wants an exemption on an amendment that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. He wants the CIA to be free to do whatever they want. We have come a long way from the days of great Presidents to arrive at the day of an unelected President. He acts not in the shadow of the White House, but standing in front of the person elected President. We used to shine light into the darkness of regimes where people disappeared into secret prisons, gulags. Now, the unelected President of foreign policy would have us become the custodians of gulags.

For a long time, people have wondered just how President Bush could get it so wrong so often. Now we know: he has help. America has a second President we never elected.

I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an article from the village voice. (see below)

President Should Dump Cheney
Firing the vice president is Bush's only chance to get back on his feet
by James Ridgeway
The Village Voice
November 8th, 2005
(Entered into the Congressional Record by Congressman McDermott)

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Politicians across the political spectrum are hoping against hope that President Bush can take control of the nation and jumpstart a second term, kicking out chief adviser Karl Rove--who remains at risk in the Plame Affair--and changing policy in Iraq, where U.S. soldiers continue to die.

But as everyone in Washington knows, Rove isn’t the real problem here. The real problem for Bush is Vice President Dick Cheney—it's Cheney's now former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, who has been indicted in the Plame Affair, and it's his pushing that has the administration taking a hard line on the handling of detainees. And the best way, perhaps the only way, for Bush to take charge of the country is to dump the vice president, forcing him into retirement before he can be charged by Plame Affair prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald with violating the espionage laws.

These last few days, while Bush wandered around South America from one fruitless meeting to another and fended off charges of prisoner abuse in Iraq with bland statements such as "We do not torture," Cheney was busily working away behind the scenes seeking to persuade Congress not to impose restrictions on the CIA torture interrogators. The Washington Post revealed last week the CIA was running interrogations in secret jails for suspected terrorists in eastern Europe.

Cheney, even more than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is the man behind the Iraq war. Fitzgerald’s indictment of Libby bluntly states that Cheney’s top aide learned Valerie Plame, the covert CIA agent, was administration critic Joe Wilson’s wife from Cheney. Given that, how can Cheney avoid testifying in a Libby trial? He does not have the immunity of a president.

"Libby is the firewall protecting Vice President Cheney," writes John Dean in his FindLaw column:

The Libby indictment asserts that "[o]n or about June 12, 2003 Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division. Libby understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA."

In short, Cheney provided the classified information to Libby - who then told the press. Anyone who works in national security matters knows that the Counterproliferation Division is part of the Directorate of Operations -- the covert side of the CIA, where most everything and everyone are classified.

If Fitzgerald were successful in flipping Libby--and that seems pretty clearly to be his intention--then Cheney himself would face charges of violating the espionage act.

The outcome? Libby will probably hold fast through the 2006 election, his lawyers dragging out the case by interviewing reporters, etc, and then Libby, if convicted, can expect a pardon. As for Cheney, he could save face, resigning for health reasons--that suspect ticker of his coming to the rescue.

At that point, Bush could appoint a new vice president to serve out the remainder of his term. This appointment would require majority approval of both houses of Congress under the 25th Amendment.

Meanwhile, its business as usual, Bush drifting from day to day with the currents. Yesterday just as Bush uttered his denial of torture, the army charged five Rangers with abusing prisoners in Iraq. This morning, Italian state TV aired a documentary describing how the U.S. used white phosphorous bombs against civilians in Falluja. The U.S. admits using the weapons to illuminate battlefields. We are not signatories to a treaty banning the use of white phosphorous weapons. The film is being broadcast on the first anniversary of the U.S. attack on Falluja, which destroyed much of the city and displaced its population of 300,000.

Tomorrow, Ahmed Chalabi, a deputy prime minister of Iraq, the man who fed the gullible American press wrong information on Saddam’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, is visiting Washington to address neocon headquarters at the American Enterprise Institute. Chalabi also is to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A thoroughly disgraced liar, the conduit of so much of the phony information that led us to war, a man with no political base outside the conniving neocon circles, Chalabi is now seriously discussed in Washington as a possible American-backed compromise candidate for Iraqi prime minister because he might appeal of the Shiite southern part of the country. As it stands, he is now in control of the oil industry, and in the minds of U.S. policymakers, that counts for a lot.