Elizabeth Cheney

Elizabeth "Liz" Cheney, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and Coordinator for Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiatives, currently heads the Iran-Syria Operations Group.

Previously, Liz Cheney ran the Office of Iranian Affairs, the reincarnation of the Office of Special Plans, "apparently housed in the same Pentagon offices inhabited by its predecessor and involving some of the same slimy personnel," Gary Leupp wrote May 29, 2006, in Dissident Voice. In Spring 2006, Cheney left the State Department to have her fifth child.

Cheney is also credited with the launch of the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), "an effort to provide funding for programs to advance political and educational reform and women's rights in the region," CNN reported May 19, 2005.

Elizabeth Cheney is the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney and Lynne Cheney of the American Enterprise Institute.

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Bush's Democracy Tsarina

"Aaron Friedberg, who served as [Dick] Cheney’s director of policy planning for three years, ... says that he worked on issues of 'terrorism, Asia, Europe, Russia, North Korea, Iran, just about everything outside of Iraq,' suggested that the biggest issue on which Cheney had to confront the bureaucracy was over the administration’s push for democracy, especially in the Middle East. That program’s overseer is his daughter Liz Cheney, a top State Department official," Robert Dreyfuss wrote April 17, 2006, in The American Prospect.

Elizabeth Cheney and Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority's "civil administrator of Iraq", were among the 1,400 foreign ministers and businessmen who attended the June 22, 2003, World Economic Forum at Shuneh on the Jordanian coast of the Dead Sea, the DEBKAfile reported. [1] The gathering "brought to the fore mainly in behind the scenes conversations" that "the United States has big plans for Iraq and is forging ahead in its drive for a new Middle East."

According to the DEBKAfile, "Bremer informed anyone who wanted to listen, including UN secretary general Kofi Annan and European foreign ministers, that Washington has not been sidetracked by the guerrilla attacks which has taken the lives of 50 US troops in the weeks since the war ended. The plague will be overcome but, in the meantime, two key plans have taken form [as stated]:

1. "On July 15 , the US administration begins building the New Iraqi Army, starting with the 1st Brigade of 5,000 armed men who will serve under Iraqi officers. Conscription of 40,000 men is targeted by the end of this year, roughly one tenth of the size of Saddam Hussein’s armed forces at the outset of the war in March 2003.
2. "On the political side, Bremer has selected 25 to 30 prominent Iraqis to serve on a national council to select ministers for a future Iraqi government and create commissions to frame a new Iraqi constitution."

Additionally, Elizabeth Cheney reportedly "turned up at the World Economic Forum not only with a plan of action but a $100 million budget to support it: The money is there to promote democracy and advance women's rights in the Middle East," the DEBKAfile reported. [2]

Office of Near East and South Asian Affairs (NEA)

"Contrary to prevailing wisdom, members of the Bush team contend that what the press took to be [then Secretary of State Colin] Powell's defiance was as often as not the defiance of a bureaucracy only nominally under his supervision," Lawrence F. Kaplan reported in The New Republic Onine, December 7, 2004. "In this telling, instances of Powell flouting official policy tended to be exceptions to the norm. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Kyoto, direct negotiations with North Korea, the war in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--in each of these cases, Powell lost the policy arguments and, without skipping a beat, went on to implement the very policies he had just lobbied against.

"The only problem was, the bureaucracy continued to lobby," Kaplan wrote. "The bureau that most concerns [Condoleezza] Rice and her colleagues in this regard is NEA. When, for instance, [President George W.] Bush proposed an ambitious and concrete plan to promote democracy in the Middle East [in 2004] (a plan that Powell enthusiastically supported), NEA, responding to the objections of Arab leaders, watered down the eventual proposals beyond recognition--contributing to, among other things, the departure of Liz Cheney, the project's driving force."

Note: Powell resigned November 15, 2004.

Profiles

In May 2006, Liz Cheney left "her senior-level post at the State Department to have a baby," CNN reported May 19, 2006.

"Cheney, 39, has served as the principal deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs since February 2005. In that role, she launched the Middle East Partnership Initiative, an effort to provide funding for programs to advance political and educational reform and women's rights in the region.

"She also worked in the State Department from 2002 to 2003, before leaving to work on her father's re-election campaign.

"Cheney and her husband, Philip Perry, the general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, have four other children, including a son born in the middle of the 2004 campaign," CNN wrote.

External Links

Profiles

• Profile: Elizabeth Cheney, Right Web.

Speeches, Comments by Liz Cheney

• "Liz Cheney: Morocco could be a model for countries of the region," Arabic News, April 14, 2005.
• Remarks by Elizabeth Cheney, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and Coordinator for Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiatives, Foreign Policy Association Annual Dinner, June 14, 2005.

Articles & Commentary

2003

• "US Starts Building New Iraq Army," DEBKAfile, June 23, 2003.

2004

• Lawrence F. Kaplan, "State's Rights. Condi Should Tame Foggy Bottom," in The New Republic Onine, December 7, 2004.

2005

• Michael Hirsh, "The Rise of Dr. Rice," Live Talk/Newsweek (MSNBC), March 9, 2005.
• "The Reorganization of Bureaus to Better Address the Threat From Weapons of Mass Destruction and to Promote Democracy," Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph and Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, On-The-Record Briefing, Washington, DC, July 29, 2005.
• Maha Akeel, "Correcting Perceptions About America Is My Job: Liz Cheney," Arab News, November 16, 2005: Liz Cheney "said that Syria and Iran are a concern for the United States, that capturing Osama Ben Laden is not a key issue in winning the war on terrorism and that new methods need to be used in this war."
• Robert Dreyfuss, "What 'staying the course' really means," Asia Times, December 1, 2005: "Liz Cheney and other top US officials are already meeting with Chalabi-like Syrian exile leaders to plot 'regime change'."

2006

• Sarah Baxter, "Cheney daughter leads 'cold war' on mullahs," Times Online (UK), March 5, 2006.
• Steven R. Weisman, "U.S. Program Is Directed at Altering Iran's Politics," New York Times (Information Clearing House), April 15, 2006.
• Robert Dreyfuss, "Vice Squad," The American Prospect, April 17, 2006.
• Juliette Kayyem, "All in the Family: Cheney and Iran," TPM Cafe, April 17, 2006.
• Gary Leupp, "'Echoes of Germany Under Hitler'. The Office of Iranian Affairs, Embedded Journalism, and the Disinformation Campaign for War on Iran," Dissident Voice, May 29, 2006; CounterPunch, May 30, 2006.
• Robert Dreyfuss, "The Commissar’s in Town. Very little happens at State regarding the Middle East without the knowledge and approval of Cheney -- not Dick, but Liz, his powerful, secretive daughter," The American Prospect, June 6, 2006.
• Robert Dreyfuss, "Liz Cheney Runs Iran-Syria Group at State Department," The American Prospect, June 15, 2006; AlterNet, June 16, 2006.