1 Boring Old Man

A Different Understanding With the President

… Cheney made no sound. "I remember turning my head and looking at the vice president, and his expression never changed," said the witness, reading from a notebook of observations written that day. Cheney closed his eyes against the image for one long, slow blink.

Three people who were present, not all of them admirers, said they saw no sign then or later of the profound psychological transformation that has often been imputed to Cheney. What they saw, they said, was extraordinary self-containment and a rapid shift of focus to the machinery of power. While others assessed casualties and the work of "first responders," Cheney began planning for a conflict that would call upon lawyers as often as soldiers and spies.

More than any one man in the months to come, Cheney freed Bush to fight the "war on terror" as he saw fit, animated by their shared belief that al-Qaeda’s destruction would require what the vice president called "robust interrogation" to extract intelligence from captured suspects. With a small coterie of allies, Cheney supplied the rationale and political muscle to drive far-reaching legal changes through the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon.

The way he did it — adhering steadfastly to principle, freezing out dissent and discounting the risks of blow-back — turned tactical victory into strategic defeat. By late last year, the Supreme Court had dealt three consecutive rebuffs to his claim of nearly unchecked authority for the commander in chief, setting precedents that will bind Bush’s successors.

Yet even as Bush was forced into public retreats, an examination of subsequent events suggests that Cheney has quietly held his ground. Most of his operational agenda, in practice if not in principle, remains in place.

First off, we know from Richard Clarke, Paul O’neill, and now many others that Bush and Cheney were headed for Iraq from the very first days. Remember that they came from the world of Laurie Mylroie, Michael Ledeen, the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for the New American Century – the neocon world. They saw al-Qaeda as the peanut gallery. They had badgered Clinton and the C.I.A. unmercifully for being on a wild goose chase after al-Qaeda. Iraq and Iran – they were the real enemies. Putting aside our speculation that they were after the Iraq Oil Corrider from the very start, we know that they were after Iraq. They said it. This formulation that Cheney was pushing these policies because of a "shared belief" that he and Bush had seems off the mark to me. They didn’t really care about the Taliban, or al-Qaeda. I question that "al-Qaeda’s destruction" was ever their real goal. They believed the problem was the Middle Eastern States – primarilay Iraq and Iran.

But the contention in that paragraph that Cheney and Bush were in concert is incompatible with the rest of the article. "What they saw, they said, was extraordinary self-containment and a rapid shift of focus to the machinery of power. While others assessed casualties and the work of "first responders," Cheney began planning for a conflict that would call upon lawyers as often as soldiers and spies." He went into action almost immediately. Cheney was working behind the scenes, but was keeping people away from Bush. He was intercepting their communications to Bush. Cheney was mustering the legal [?] rationalizations outside of Bush’s awareness. He essentially conned Bush into quickly signing it without consulting other Cabinet members. He squeezed Bush by leaking the plan in his speeches before Bush had made any decisions. How could he be working on their "shared belief" if he was using subtrafuge with the President himself. It looks to me like he was working on his belief, Cheney’s belief. He was getting Bush to go along with him.

And why would he have such a strong belief? And why has he stuck to it for five plus years? Of all the things that needed doing after 9/11, why was this such a big deal? Why would he want to keep prisoners of war out of the legal system? Why would he want to torture them? Why does he still want to torture them? What did he want to find out from them? There’s little question that whatever it was [or is], it was plenty important to him. He pulled out every skill from his bag of tricks to make it happen.

I don’t know the answer to my own question. I just don’t buy the one given in this article – an explanation that’s not critically parsed – simply stated as if it were factual. I have some thoughts about it, but they’re embryonal at this point. I think I’ll let them percolate until I read the rest of the installments in this absolutely fine series [Pulitzer Prize?].

Main Stream Media – you rock today!