Writing in Sunday’s Washington Post, Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief under Presidents Clinton and Bush, slammed Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice for invoking what he called “the White House 9/11 trauma defense” — namely, the shock of 9/11 was so great as to justify all and any actions taken in the name of national defense…:
Cheney’s admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.Speaking at the National Press Club today, Cheney struck back at Clarke…:
CHENEY: You know, Dick Clarke. Dick Clarke, who was the head of the counterterrorism program in the run-up to 9/11. He obviously missed it…When the moderator reminded Cheney that Clarke had repeatedly warned the administration about al Qaeda’s determination to attack the U.S., Cheney snarkily replied, “That’s not my recollection, but I haven’t read his book.”
  Which brings me to the winners of the 1boringoldman medal of freedom awards for 2009. Joseph Wilson and Richard Clarke were the two people who stood up and spoke out long before it was fashionable, long before the rest of us even knew there was something to speak out about. Richard Clarke lost his career, his reputation, and has had to endure "snark" for telling the truth. Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, lost her career, her reputation and her anonymity. They are two American heros, the real kind. I propose busts in the Rotunda of Congress to commemorate their service. Joseph Wilson’s words should be engraved below the statues:"Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
Followed by Richard Clarke’s introduction to his March 2004 appearance in front of the 9/11 Commission:
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But back to Cheney and the 2004 interview [see how I just took a detour?]. The foremost experts in the world on the Plame outing are also having the same trouble sticking to the task of dissecting the interview. Jason Leopold [t·r·u·t·h·o·u·t] and emptywheel [Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy] comment on aspects of it. Their loyal commenters WO, Mary, bmaz, Rayne, MadDog, etc. [all experts] pluck out pieces here and there. But they prefer reading the revolting new torture releases to focusing on the Cheney interview. I expect it will be a good while before all the fact checking will be done to document Cheney’s fiction. I’ll limit my comments to a broad stroke and leave the thorough vetting to the masters when they can stand it enough to give it their full attention.
In this interview Cheney is irritated that he’s even being questioned. Although we know from the Libby Trial and the numerous detailed books and articles that this was a period of a flurry of activity in the OVP, Cheney claims to remember nothing. "I don’t recall." All the questions he does answer have the form "we may have discussed…" or "that sounds like something we would have talked about…" If there’s a solid, specific answer in there, "I don’t recall" reading it. The general theme of his answers was that this whole episode was of minor importance, hardly registering in his mind. If Scooter Libby did anything, he did it on his own rather than because I told him to is spread throughout his answers. Or I am too important to have anything to do with the Press. And, by the way, this interview is a waste of my precious time. He is even more arrogant in private than in public. emptywheel points out how completely Cheney throws poor loyal Scooter Libby under the bus – over and over.
I guess we can’t blame Cheney for lying through his teeth. Freud would’ve been right about him too. In fact, Cheney’s defense mechanisms have more reason to be there than our own. He really didn’t want to hear what Joseph Wilson had to say in that New York Times op-ed. Joe Wilson had publicly [and correctly] accused the Bush Administration [AKA Dick Cheney] of lying to the American people so he could invade another country at a cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives for his [Cheney’s] own reasons. Who would want to face up to something like that? It would feel unpleasant.
Most of us have a piece of this inside of us – something we did that worked out to have cataclysmic negative consequences – something done casually, selfishly, naively, or even stupidly. I sure do. I doubt there’s any physician who hasn’t made a fatal error. Such things happen in regular life too, but there are some places where they show in bas-relief. Medical practice is such a place. I’ll bet battlefield commanders have the same experience. Then there’s being Vice President, if you’ve inserted yourself into the decision-making process like Cheney did.
In his mind somewhere, he knows who really "missed it." He knows who really "twisted" the pre-war intelligence. He knows who really "outed" Valerie Plame. Probably he is genuinely not conscious of knowing, but is instead haunted in his dreams or driven to spread his defensive denials far and wide with his venomous attacks. But unconscious is only relative. The defenses don’t remove the "knowing," they just hold it at bay – and the truth finds its way into every crevice of the mind in one form or another. Dick Cheney is getting sicker. In the 2004 F.B.I. interview, he was just irritable, vague, and dismissive. These days, he’s vicious and contemptuous – poisoned inside…
[…] guess I thought I could write about Dick Cheney’s obvious psychological deterioration [Cheney’s damned spot…] and lay things to rest, but that just didn’t happen. Since I read his F.B.I. […]