http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/01/1417463/-Cheney-Congress-should-have-no-say-in-President-s-Iran-policy?detail=email
On Sept. 8, Dick Cheney will deliver an address at the American Enterprise Institute in the hopes of torpedoing the Iranian nuclear agreement. As his Wall Street Journal op-ed this week suggests, Cheney will argue that "the U.S. Congress should reject this deal and reimpose the sanctions that brought Iran to the table in the first place" because "the Obama agreement will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclear-arms race in the Middle East and, more than likely, the first use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
As turns out, Cheney's sabotage mission is more than a little ironic. After all, Vice President Dick Cheney was completely and catastrophically wrong about Iraq when he declared, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."
Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney railed against Bill Clinton's sanctions on Tehran, complaining that U.S. firms were "cut out of the action" because our "sanction-happy" government failed to recognize that "the good Lord didn't see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic governments." And the last time he was to address AEI on the subject of Iran in 1989, Rep. Dick Cheney insisted Congress had no right to interfere with the president's conduct of foreign policy at all.
You read that right. In the wake of the Iran-Contra crisis that rocked the Reagan administration, Cheney in March 1989 was scheduled to speak to AEI on "Congressional Overreaching in Foreign Policy." But while that address was never delivered due his nomination to Secretary of Defense, Cheney's draft describes almost unlimited executive power with no role for Congress:
Joined by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and other GOP leaders, Cheney didn't just denounce the majority's findings as "clearly cast in such a partisan tone," but also insisted President Reagan had the constitutional authority to ignore the congressional ban on aid to the Nicaraguan Contras:
"Judgments about the Iran-Contra Affair ultimately must rest upon one's views about the proper roles of Congress and the President in foreign policy. ... [T]hroughout the Nation's history, Congress has accepted substantial exercises of Presidential power -- in the conduct of diplomacy, the use of force and covert action -- which had no basis in statute and only a general basis in the Constitution itself. ...
[M]uch of what President Reagan did in his actions toward Nicaragua and Iran were constitutionally protected exercises of inherent Presidential powers. ... [T]he power of the purse ... is not and was never intended to be a license for Congress to usurp Presidential powers and functions."
