Today, I want to be called papa bear

I picked this up on a radio news program yesterday. I apologize for not being able to point to the original link. I found the story again via Frameshop. Vice President Cheney would not let the press refer to him as the Vice President during an interview on his most recent trip abroad. What kind of rabbit hole does Cheney live in? This is one of the most bizarre things I've ever heard.

I hate to say it, but our Vice-President might just be a nutball.

Interview of a Senior Administration Official by the Traveling Press

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The reason the President wanted me to come, obviously, is because of the continuing threat that exists in this part of the world on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border -- a threat to Afghanistan, clearly, in our efforts there, the Taliban, cross-border operations; a threat to Musharraf and his government. There were something like seven or eight suicide bombings in the last week or two in Pakistan. And obviously also, the threat to the homeland from the standpoint of operations and activities of al Qaeda in this part of the world -- for example, you go back to the airliner plot last fall, second generation Pakistani militants living in the U.K., but with ties back in al Qaeda areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border. So we've all got an interest, obviously, in trying to address those issues.

Let me just make one editorial comment here. I've seen some press reporting says, "Cheney went in to beat up on them, threaten them." That's not the way I work. I don't know who writes that, or maybe somebody gets it from some source who doesn't know what I'm doing, or isn't involved in it. But the idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business.

I would describe my sessions both in Pakistan and Afghanistan as very productive. We've had notable successes in both places. I've often said before and I believe it's still true that we've captured and killed more al Qaeda in Pakistan than anyplace else. And I think we're making progress in Afghanistan.

My sense of it was Karzai was more positive and optimistic than I'd seen in my recent visits. That doesn't mean that there's no threat. That doesn't mean -- no rosy scenario. There's a hell of a lot of work to be done. The point is a lot of work has been done. I was struck by the luncheon we had with Karzai, he started reciting all the things that had been accomplished since we moved into Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11 -- in terms of economically, socially and so forth. He told a story to the group there about -- this was the immediate aftermath of 9/11 -- about meeting with a group of tribal elders in one of the remote parts of Afghanistan. He was trying to get them organized to participate in going after the Taliban and governing Afghanistan. And he said the only question they wanted to ask me was, is the United States with you.

Before we launched into Afghanistan, that was a big item with respect to the attitude of the Afghan people.

Read the whole crazy thing....

Does Cheney even have a right to do something like this? How does an elected public figure give a press conference without allowing his name to be referenced? What's the penalty for not complying? You get blackballed? What if Cheney had said - "Today, I want to be called papa bear?"

Two more years....

Technorati tags: politics, Dick Cheney, nutballs