Transcript of the interview excerpt in which Cenk Uygur and Rand Beers discuss how Dick Cheney is trying to subvert the President on Iran policy.
CU: Rand, there's - you know Steve Clemons of the Washington Note is reporting this
and so are several other organizations and press outlets, saying that Cheney is
perhaps doing an end run around the President on Iran. That the sane people are
winning and the President is leaning towards diplomacy, and Cheney thinks that he's
making a wrong decision, so he's putting out feelers to the American Enterprise
Institute and others to perhaps to get it - goad Israel to do a small bombing on
Natanz where they might have some of the nuclear program in Iran, and then
hopefully Iran retaliates against the US and then the President has no choice but
to do a larger attack against Iran. One, do you think that there's validity to that
reporting? And then I want to ask you later about the repercussions.
RB: Well, it is hard to think about the Vice President without thinking about
things that no sane human being might consider plausible. And so I don't have any
special information that that's what the Vice President is doing, but given his
track record I can't ignore that kind of a possibility.
CU: And if that were to be the case, wouldn't that call for his immediate dismissal?
I mean, isn't that at the very least gross insubordination against the President?
Let alone forget the Democrats, forget the country, forget the world, forget
everything else. But isn't it, if you're working for a President, isn't that the
worst thing you can do?
RB: This is in fact going around the President and thwarting what the President is
in fact trying to do. It is the clearest and strongest reason for the President to
ask the Vice President to step down - interruption - it is gross insubordination.
CU: Does anybody know what happened to Dick Cheney. Because, look this isn't a
Republican or a Democratic issue. This isn't a conservative or liberal issue. We're
supporting people like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who's as Republican as it
comes. But he just happens to be sane. What happened to Dick Cheney? Does anybody
know?
RB: One, I don't think anybody actually knows. There obviously the one theory that
the series of heart bypass operations and other life threatening events have changed
his personality, or the drugs that he's taking in order to prevent them from
happening again have changed his personality. The other insight that I had from Don
Rumsfeld at one particular point in time when I asked a similar history question
was, "Oh, the moderate Cheney was running for President. After that nasty heartache
when he realized there was no chance that he would ever have to be President of the
United States, changed him back to the hard nosed conservative that he was." -
interruption - He went back his old record when he was a member of Congress."
posted by yturks 
