UPDATE: Media Matters fact checked Cheney and confirmed that Halliburton WAS repeatedly accused of fraud by federal agencies.
----------
Arianna appeared as a guest on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, along with Liz Cheney, Markos Moulitsas, and George Will.
Arianna squared off with Cheney over the Gulf oil disaster, calling out the Bush-Cheney administration for its role in fostering the crisis.
"The truth is that right now we have precisely the regulatory system that the Bush-Cheney administration wanted: full of loopholes, full of cronies and lobbyists filling the very agencies that are supposed to be overseeing the industry," Arianna said. "We are seeing this as the inevitable result of what they wanted."
"It is truly amazing," Cheney responded. "I actually heard that George Bush was responsible for the breakup of Tipper and Al Gore's marriage, too. It's incredible, the extent to which people are now trying to shift blame. ... The left -- you guys have for years been demonizing Bush and Cheney, and I'm sure you’ll be demonizing them for years going forward. But we have a catastrophe on the Gulf coast, a catastrophe that happened on this administration's watch, which this administration is failing to clean up."
"We have the poster child of Bush-Cheney crony capitalism, Halliburton, involved in this," Arianna said. "They, after all, were responsible for cementing the well. Here's Halliburton, after it defrauded the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars -- "
"I don't know what planet you live on," Cheney shot back. "What you are saying has no relationship to the truth, no relationship to the facts."
"I live on this planet," Arianna said. "Halliburton was involved in this. How can you say there is no relationship?"
WATCH:
Cheney also addressed the Israeli raid on the Gaza aid flotilla, and conceded that it was a mistake for the Bush administration to push for the 2006 Palestinian elections.
"You were at the State Department in 2005, 2006 when these [Palestinian] elections were pushed," host Jake Tapper said. "And some people were saying 'Don't do it, they're not ready for it.' Do you think that was a mistake in retrospect?"
"I do," Cheney replied. "I don't think they were ready for it. I don't think we should have pushed it."
WATCH:
"A lawyer representing Kenneth Abbott, a British Petroleum (“BP”) contractor, wrote a letter to the Interior Solicitor’s office, on May 27, 2009, alerting Interior of the potential for a major oil spill due to BP’s carelessness on another platform in the Gulf (BP Atlantis) and a fundamental lack of oversight by MMS. That letter stated,
The threat to the marine environment of the Gulf of Mexico is immediately present; it threatens a catastrophic event which could dwarf the Exxon Valdez or Alaskan pipeline spill disasters. We urge MMS to act.
Secretary Salazar was copied on Mr. Abbott’s letter. On February 24, 2010, Rep. Raúl Grijalva urged MMS to act on these same concerns by conducting a full investigation of BP’s Atlantis Rig. On September 21, 2009, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wrote to MMS that its environmental analysis on off-shore oil drilling understated the frequency and magnitude of oil spills, underestimated the environmental effects of such spills, and was not based on science.
Despite a year’s notice and a wave of warnings rolling in, Secretary Salazar’s MMS allowed expansion of off-shore oil drilling in the Gulf with minimal environmental analysis. This lack of oversight set the stage for one of the nation’s most catastrophic environmental disasters and the tragic loss of human life: the collapse of BP’s Deepwater Horizon off-shore drilling platform on April 22, 2010."
http://dscriber.com/world/1796-should-interior-secretary-ken-salazar-resign.html
In the first clip, she CUT OFF Ariana in mid-sentence. Ariana was absolutely right on the substance, but she has to learn to cut to the quick much faster and more forcefully.
In the second clip, Cheney turned the issue around to be one of Israel's right to impose an embargo. Well, sure anything nation can impose an embargo on any other one, but that does NOT make it right!!
Second, Cheney went on about "second-guessing" the Israelis, but when Israel kills NINE (9) people, the situation calls for an international investigation.
But like with the USS Liberty and the massacres in Shatila and Sabrina during their first Lebanese invasion in the 1980s, Israel opposes investigations by third parties, and that includes those undertaken by the United States!!
An investigation does not include the USS Liberty, nor Shatila, or Sabrina. An honest just investigation centers itself around the event, and the event only. It doesn't backpedal, or we will be backpedaling thousands of years.
An honest investigation would investigate each and every party concerned; including those individuals who wanted and desired to be martyars; including the Free Gaza Movement and it's connections with Hamas, a known terrorists movement; and IHH, with it's ties to terrorism. They are also parties to this tragedy.
An investigation want the bullets that were retrieved from the bodies of those members who died on the ship, and it wants the guns that fired them to discern if all the bullets came from the guns on board the ship.
And honest investigation would want to preform an unbiased autopsy. An honest investigation seeks to remove any possible doubt as to what happened on that ship, the intentions of the parties involved, and the resposibilties of those actions.
It does not involve itself in irrelavent material, or events. Neither should we, if we are wanting honesty.
No one here is painting Hamas as good vs the bad Israelis. But it is normal for people to break an embargo against an entire people, especially when you look at all the food, medical and other items included in the embargo!
As for sanctions against Iran, that is a completely different story. Ahmedinejad is crazy, but confusing an embargo on Iran to prevent it from obtaining nukes is NOT at all the same thing as reducing the people of Gaza to malnutrition and famine.
The sad part is that some people only think about Israe, to the exclusion of the American people, but the actions you support actually hurt Israel AND the United States (for those few who care), because you strengthen Hamas in Palestine and you bolster al-qaeda throughout the rest of the world!!
Why?
On Larry King Live, T. Boone Picken's, and oil man, said that the procedures that BP was employing were not going to work (Top Hat ect). He said that the procedures had been tried before in other blowouts, in shallow waters and they had failed. Larry King asked him what would work and Mr. Pickens said that the only known thing to work was a relief well, a second well. Had an environmental impact study been done this would have been information included in the study.
But more important: what to do if a blow out occurred would have been included in the study. As it stands they are all now guessing, scrambling after the fact because they have no plan.
And things could get a lot worse.
A relief well are extremely difficult to drill, according to this article, and will be complicated by possible hurricanes dense rock, and all of the complications that the current well experienced. The article says that a similar disaster happened in the Timor Sea last year, and that the relief well itself exploded.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/media/bp-oil-spill-get-worse/19507816/
So when I see that government let the oil companies run wild and create this problem and work towards covering it up then I do point a finger at Halliburton, BP and the Bush Admin. When I see Obama going too slow to reign in Halliburton and BP and shut down this danger to the US soil and way of life in the gulf then I point a finger at him too.
But it is easy to see things more clearly when one is not a member of any political party:)
Sli.myy doings weren't all at the oil well"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/26/AR2010052605925.html?hpid=topnews
"Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501842.html
Analysis: Oil and the Bush cabinet"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1138009.stm
"Blatant Bush Tilt Toward Big Oil"
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0406-01.htm
Obama/Salazar knew in advance of all the problems surrounding the MMS and and BP.
Salon: Obama Could Have Prevented Disaster
http://open.salon.com/blog/jacob_freeze_x/2010/05/11/obama_could_have_prevented_the_deepwater_horizon_disaster
Obama Could Have Prevented Disaster:
He could have, but he and Salaza chose not to. Rather they chose to give BP a free pass.
Obama is 100% responsible for what happened.
Unless Obama was moonlighting as a roughneck down in the Gulf.
In 2009 under Obama more permits were granted (in terms of space approved for drilling) than in any year in the history of this country.
A fact you will not see on MSNBC.
Drill anywhere, drill without safeguards... just go get it anyway you can... and we'll back you if anything happens to hurt America!!!
A fact YOU will not see on FOX news.
Obama may or may not have provided more drilling permits, but such stats are meaningless when taken out of their political and historical context.
Regardless of the winner of the elections of Nov 2008, the new president had to increase drilling for oil. Just forget all the political campaign slogans, because that's the reality.
Obama may have indeed not been tough enough on the matter, but the guy has his plate more than full with other pressing matters.
In any case, I trust him over Sarah Palin and her partner (what's his name?) to make the decision going forward!
While Obama hasn't lived up to the hype, imagine where we would be if Maverick 1 and Maverick 2 were calling the shots.
During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64420A20100505
Bush and Cheny are 1000% responsible for the oil spill?
http://www.thefoxnation.com/arianna-huffington/2010/06/07/huffington-oil-spill-1000-bush-cheney-s-fault
Here are the inspection stats from both administrations.
http://www.thefoxnation.com/gulf-coast-oil-spill/2010/05/18/regulators-under-obama-failed-inspect-deepwater-horizon
A democrat and republican tongue lashing?
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/spil-m14.shtml
"President Obama's and my goal is to restore the public's trust, to enact meaningful reform...to uphold the law, and to ensure that all of us -- career public servants and political appointees -- do our jobs with the highest level of integrity."
Yet just three months later, Secretary Salazar allowed the MMS to approve -- with no environmental review -- the BP drilling operation that exploded on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and pouring millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The disaster will soon be, if it is not already, the worst oil spill in American history.
http://open.salon.com/blog/jacob_freeze_x/2010/05/11/obama_could_have_prevented_the_deepwater_horizon_disaster
Critical inspections were not carried out under Obama.
Unlike the criminals, Cheney and Bush, Obama doesn't break the laws of this land; I think he actually either follows them or tries to change them.