Cheney, Dick

GIGObuster · May 25, 2009, 4:58am

There was no need to be a mind reader; among many items, Bush told the American people that he was going to get the second resolution passed in the UN to get the approval for the invasion, “no matter what”.

It is just idiotic to just say that “he just changed his opinion” when he learned that he was going to lose the vote. He just became a chicken and he did lie to the American people.

“no matter what”? My ass.

Starving_Artist · May 25, 2009, 5:16am

Even if one were to assume that you are correct (and one does not :D) and that Bush deliberately lied about getting the second resolution, how does that lie equate to his “getting us into war”?

Now with regard to the second resolution, several alternative explanations come to mind. Bush may have been trying to fake Hussein out and make him think he had more time than he really had to hide his WMD, spirit them out of the country or perhaps develop them to the point that they could have been used against American forces. Or he could have gotten some other intelligence that made him think immediate action was called for despite his previous statements on a second resoution. Or - like I said before and you are alluding to now - he could have simply changed his mind.

So yes, Bush said ‘no matter what’, but he also said ‘mission accomplished’, and that proved not to be the case either. Would it be your position that he ‘lied’ about that as well?

GIGObuster · May 25, 2009, 5:33am

Don’t move the goal post for that one, He did lie.

Yes, the Bush administration did say that the “mission accomplished” banner was the idea of the ship crew, this was later shown to be a lie.

But that was just a small one compared to others:

http://projects.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose “Duelfer Report” established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq’s nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

Consider, for example, these false public statements made in the run-up to war:
* On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly 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." In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?' "
* In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year." A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction — an analysis that hadn't been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn't requested it.
* In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: "Sure." In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of "compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda." What's more, an earlier DIA assessment said that "the nature of the regime's relationship with  Al Qaeda is unclear."
* On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team's final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.

Starving_Artist · May 25, 2009, 5:50am

Ahem…everyone knows that the claims were erroneous, which, when you look past the not so subtle shift from ‘erroneous’ statements to ‘false allegations’, is all your cite really says.

GIGObuster · May 25, 2009, 5:53am

Nope, read it again, several examples also show that evidence was available then that contradicted what the administration was saying, equivocating and misleading statements were made on purpose.

Early_Out · May 25, 2009, 5:54am

Hell, by that stage of the game, even I knew that Iraq had no WMD. Claiming that Bush Administration officials were merely “erroneous” really strains credulity.

GIGObuster · May 25, 2009, 6:05am

As for Dick Cheney, I guess only history can judge him, so I will let the judge of the Judicial trial (this was not the trial of the Nazi leaders but of the Judges that helped set the repression apparatus) at Nuremberg to tell him:

Judge Dan Haywood:

But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary – even able and extraordinary – men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination.

…

There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” – of “survival.” A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient – to look the other way.

Well, the answer to that is “survival as what?” A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.

From Judgment at Nuremberg.

Starving_Artist · May 25, 2009, 6:21am

Presidents get tons of information from hundreds if not thousands of sources. Some of it is accurate and some of it is not. To take the position that we would not go to war until every last piece of evidence against it has been thoroughly examined and disproved is not only impossible, but it sounds like something that Jimmy Carter would do.

Presidents have to weigh the information coming in in toto, and they must arrive at their decisions based upon the preponderance of the evidence. The evidence that Iraq either had or was developing WMD was overwhelming. The intelligence agencies of Russia, China, France and England all thought so, our own CIA thought so, and Bill and Hillary Clinton thought so.

Starving_Artist · May 25, 2009, 6:32am

Then you knew more than most of the nation’s leaders. This from Rich Lowry’s column in National Review:

In a demolition of the Bush-lied argument in the current issue of Commentary magazine, Norman Podhoretz recalls the other players who warned of Saddam Hussein’s WMDs. Democrats could have consulted Bill Clinton, who had talked of the “threat posed by Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction program.” They could have read the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that maintained “Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs.” They could have asked the State Department, which believed Saddam had chemical and biological weapons. They could have listened to former U.N. weapons inspectors, a group of whom said in the presence of Iraq expert Kenneth Pollack in 2002 that they all believed Iraq had WMDs.

<snip>

When Democrats claim they were duped, they are sidestepping an inconvenient truth: Many of them supported the war for the same reasons as the president. We now know Saddam didn’t have WMD stockpiles, but the only reason we know it with any certainty is that we crushed his regime. To pretend that, absent Bush’s deceptions, everyone would have known with exactitude the reduced state of Saddam’s weapons programs is juvenile and contemptible, especially from Democrats who want to shimmy their way out of their pro-war votes.

Link to full column

GIGObuster · May 25, 2009, 6:37am

So now you become like the administration, no surprise here.

Russia, France and Germany had realized weeks if not months before the invasion that there was no imminent threat, the inspections were working and not finding what the Bush administration said the UN would find.

GIGObuster · May 25, 2009, 6:43am

The National Review using out of date information, typical too.

http://usinfo.org/wf-archive/2003/030304/epf208.htm

Text: Senator Kennedy Argues Against War with Iraq
(Says inspectors can still do job of disarming Saddam Hussein regime)
March 4, 2003

Senator Edward Kennedy argued against war with Iraq at this time, in a March 4 speech on U.S. foreign policy to the United Methodist Church annual conference in Washington.

“War must always be a last resort,” the Massachusetts Democrat said. “All options must be pursued. Inspections still have a chance to work. Progress is difficult. No one said it would be easy. But as long as inspectors are on the ground and making progress, we must give peace a chance, so that war with Iraq does not distract us from dealing as effectively as possible with the obvious and ongoing threat of terrorism by Al Qaeda and the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons.”

Kennedy, a persistent Senate critic of the administration’s plans for Iraq, said “such a war will make the world even more dangerous for Americans – not less dangerous,” and alienate allies the United States needs to fight terrorism.

Starving_Artist · May 25, 2009, 7:27am

Perhaps I should have said, in regard to poring over and attempting to verify every last bit of evidence, that it sounds like something Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy would do.

Another way to put Kennedy’s stance is paralyzation by analyzation.

Again, presidents must make their decisions based on a preponderance of the evidence, and because time can be a crucial factor, one can’t simply sit around forever, for as we found with Bill Clinton, bin Laden and 9/11, when serious threats are at stake, he who hesitates risks American lives.

GIGObuster · May 25, 2009, 7:37am

You would be right…

That is if time had not demonstrated who was correct.

The reality shows that France, Germany and Russia were correct. And so were other nations that agreed that even if one assumed that Iraq had WMD the evidence pointed to them not being the threat that the Bush Administration and England claimed to be.

As the Downing street memos showed, the decision to invade was made way ahead of time, all the statements made by bush that war was going to be used as a last resort after that were lies.

GIGObuster · May 25, 2009, 7:58am

BTW the Public integrity link reports what Bush was **still **claiming a month before the invasion:

The civilized world has awakened to the growing danger posed by the Iraqi regime. Twelve years ago, Saddam Hussein agreed to disarm as a condition of suspending the Gulf War. Three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave him a final chance to meet that obligation. Saddam Hussein is not disarming, he’s deceiving.

America has laid out the facts for the world to see. Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons programs, and the means to use them. Saddam Hussein has a biological weapons program, and the means to deliver those weapons. He has secretly attempted to obtain materials needed to produce nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda. He harbors a senior Al Qaeda leader who ordered the assassination of an American diplomat—the same man who plotted against Spain and Italy in the Republic of Georgia, and Russia, and Great Britain, and France, and Germany. The Iraqi regime is engaged in a massive campaign to conceal its weapons of mass destruction, and its ties to terrorists. And that deception continues today.

At any moment during the last 97 days—and during the last 12 years—Saddam Hussein could have completely and immediately disarmed himself. Instead, he’s used all this time to build and to hide weapons. He must be hoping that by stalling he’ll buy himself another 12 years. He’s wrong. (Applause.) This country will not accept a serious and mounting threat to our nation, our people, and our friends and allies. (Applause.)

Military force is always this nation’s last option. Yet if force becomes necessary to disarm Iraq and enforce the will of the United Nations, if force becomes necessary to secure our country and to keep the peace, America will act deliberately, America will act decisively, and America will act victoriously with the world’s greatest military.

By the time the bolded part was mentioned the administration already had evidence that contradicted what Bush said, and there should be no need to mention it, but the items in that statement ended up being false.

I would add more items to that Public Integrity report.

Starving_Artist · May 25, 2009, 8:05am

You say lies, I say tactics. If I am the President of the United States, and I have seen history and a preponderance of evidence that has convinced me to go to war, I will be making plans in advance, I would be making statements that did not telegraph when and where I would be attacking, and I would know that I always had the option - based on my being the most powerful man in the world and all - of calling it all off on a moment’s notice.

If you will recall, Bush even gave Hussein and those reprehensible cretins that were his sons forty-eight hours to clear out of Dodge. If he was so dead set on going to war with Iraq and kicking its ass, he wouldn’t have done that. The popular conclusion to jump to is that he knew Hussein would reject the proposal, but the fact is that no one knew that for an absolute fact. Hussein and his sons could just as easily taken their billions in ill-gotten gains and gone off to live as playboys and schemers to regain power in any of a number of other countries, and I’m sure Bush would have loved to have avoided having to send American forces into harms way.

So to me it seems far from certain that Bush was determined to go to war no matter what. YMMV of course, but as I said in the other thread where we are also the last remaining combatants, it’s late and I gotta go.

GIGObuster · May 25, 2009, 8:15am

The time line still shows that it was a lie. Even if it was to support a tactic.

A lie can be a tactic, the terms are not mutually exclusive, even if it is demonstrated to be a reprehensible tactic in the end.

GIGObuster · May 25, 2009, 8:37am

Glad you brought that up because it takes us back to Cheney and the fact that he was part of the efforts to make sure that only the preferred evidence “preponderated”

The argument that Iraq could have provided weapons of mass destruction to terrorists such as al Qaeda was a key element of the Bush administration’s case for the March 2003 invasion. But after the invasion, Iraq was found to have dismantled its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, and the independent commission that investigated the 2001 attacks found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between the two entities.

Wilkerson wrote that in one case, the CIA told Cheney’s office that a prisoner under its interrogation program was now “compliant,” meaning agents recommended the use of “alternative” techniques should stop.

At that point, “The VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods,” Wilkerson wrote.

“The detainee had not revealed any al Qaeda-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, ‘revealed’ such contacts.”

Al-Libi’s claim that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s government had trained al Qaeda operatives in producing chemical and biological weapons appeared in the October 2002 speech then-President Bush gave when pushing Congress to authorize military action against Iraq. It also was part of Powell’s February 2003 presentation to the United Nations on the case for war, a speech Powell has called a “blot” on his record.

Al-Libi later recanted the claim, saying it was made under torture by Egyptian intelligence agents, a claim Egypt denies. He died last week in a Libyan prison, reportedly a suicide, Human Rights Watch reported.

Stacy Sullivan, a counterterrorism adviser for the U.S.-based group, called al-Libi’s allegation “pivotal” to the Bush administration’s case for war, as it connected Baghdad to the terrorist organization behind the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Hard to hesitate when you are cherry picking the evidence.

Robot_Arm · May 25, 2009, 11:10am

The people gathering and analyzing that evidence were part of the executive branch, and Bush is ultimately responsible for them. If the evidence did support the WMD claims (and I don’t concede that point) then they did a damn poor job of gathering it. If you want to defend Bush’s honesty, fine; but is it any better to say that in a vital role the administration was grossly incompetent?

Early_Out · May 25, 2009, 11:42am

Frankly, I was disappointed that more members of Congress refused to see what was staring them in the face. I assume they were being swayed by Bush Administration cherry-picked “intelligence.” Congress doesn’t have any means of gathering its own intelligence, particularly outside the U.S., and certainly not quickly.

In any event, it was obvious to me for one very simple reason. In the weeks leading up to the invasion, the U.N. inspectors were being given absolutely unfettered access to anything they wanted to see. They were pulling surprise inspections at all sorts of different sites, and weren’t being turned away from *any *of them. At one site, there was a minor delay because no one could find the guy with the key to the place. But otherwise, they were being allowed to waltz into any place they wanted to take a look at. And what were they finding? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I had to assume that their search efforts were being at least “nudged” by U.S. intelligence sources, who had had Iraq under intense scrutiny for years (satellites, overflights, etc., etc.). If any significant ground movement of WMD “stuff” had been taking place, we would have seen it, or would at least have had some good indications of where to look. U.S. intelligence must have been suggesting search targets to the weapons inspectors.

But still, nothing.

SteveG1 · May 25, 2009, 2:42pm

Clinton (well he didn’t put on a Batman suit and personally do it) did catch the bombers. And, he did it within the law, without torturing or renditioning anyone or getting bogged down in wars.
So how’s Bush’s/Cheney’s search for bin Laden going? Not so good. They got a piss ant dictator, and a bunch of people in Gitmo, and a few Canadians/British guys who had nothing to do with it, but the Big Boogeyman is still out there thumbing his nose at us.

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Cheney, Dick

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