1 Boring Old Man

Modified Limited Hang-Out on Cheney’s Murder Inc.
at-Largely
by Larisa Alexandrovna
July 14, 2009

…

Modified Limited Hang-Out

Is a similar type of deception or partial deception, but slightly different. Here is how the San Francisco Chronicle describes a modified limited hang-out:

^{"That was the game plan; that was the playbook. The White House would admit to only those things that were already known; it would give ground with great reluctance and retrench rapidly; it would above all things protect the guy at the top from any whisper of scandal."}

I would go a step further to something I call it intelligence laundry. Here is an example of a modified limited hang-out – or intel laundry:

^{A former Vice President (really President) – we will call him Mr. Smith – gets wind that a reporter will soon be coming out with a book in which it is alleged that Smith ran a death squad, which operated in several countries, including our own. Smith knows that he will have to admit to some of this, because the reporter has managed to get some incriminating information. Smith decides that he will get ahead of this story by controlling it. Smith’s version will be that he had initiated a program to assassinate ONLY the really bad guys plotting to kill us. But, he decided against activating the program because it was illegal and he was having second thoughts. In Smith’s version of the story, it will be admitted that Smith did in fact mislead Congress and ordered others to do so, but ONLY because the program was never activated.}
^{Smith will then have a few loyal pals still active in government launder this version of events by planting the story in the press. Smith won’t comment for the story, but Smith’s daughter will do the TV rounds and point to the article(s) and say see, it never operated and if it had it would have only gone after the really evil guys who tried to blow up America.}

That is the reason the current version of Cheney’s Murder Inc., makes no sense. Because it is not true.

I love smart Russian poet expatriot bloggers, particularly when they agree with me. What she’s saying is the very fish we’ve all been smelling. The only question is whether Cheney is getting in front of a story of another real black-op like torturing already compliant witnesses to get them to confirm lies so he can start an illegal war, or whether this whole recent story is much ado about nothing – a smoke screen. Listening to Liz Cheney, I’m suspecting the latter, but always open to a Dick Cheney curve-ball.

^{From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.}

In the end, the Iron Curtain worked by blanking out and controlling information. It worked for a while, but then it began to leak, and finally down it came with a thud. I think of the early Bush Administration in the same way – they controlled what we knew, and for inapparent reasons, our information services [television, the newspapers] went along with it. When I read back over the 2001-2002 articles in the paper or the transcripts of "Meet the Press," I’m kind of astonished at the kind of things our leaders said. It’s very obviously misinformation – an American version Pravda of sorts:

^{MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the issue of Iraq. You have said that it poses a mortal threat to the United States. How? Define mortal threat.}

^{VICE PRES. CHENEY: You know, this will take some time, but it’s important for us, as I mentioned earlier, to remember that the world has changed. That prior to 9/11, we really focused our defense capabilities on the possibility, for example, during the Cold War the Soviet Union attacking, and we worked with strategies of deterrents and containment. If we could hold at risk the targets the Soviet Union cared about, then they wouldn’t attack us. That strategy, obviously, worked. What we found on September 11 is that the danger now is an attack that’s launched from within the United States itself, not from some foreign territory, as happened with respect to the hijackers on 9/11. Also that, in this particular case, it was backed up by a cell, terrorist cell, operating in Hamburg, Germany. You have to completely recalibrate your thinking in terms of how you deal with that. Now, if you start with that as background, then you deal with Saddam Hussein and his 11 years, now, since 1991, since the end of the war, his refusal to comply with the U.N. Security Council resolutions. If you look at the extent to which he has aggressively sought to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, over the years, the fact that he has previously used them-he used chemical weapons both against the Kurds and against the Iranians during the 1980s-the fact that he has twice invaded his neighbors. He’s launched ballistic missiles against four of his neighbors over the years. There’s a pattern and a track record there that one has to be concerned about.}

^{Now, the more recent developments have to do with our now being able to conclude, based on intelligence that’s becoming available, some of it has been made public, more of it hopefully will be, that he has indeed stepped up his capacity to produce and deliver biological weapons, that he has reconstituted his nuclear program to develop a nuclear weapon, that there are efforts under way inside Iraq to significantly expand his capability. There are other elements that need to be considered here. For some 10 or 11 years now, the international community has attempted to deal with this, but it’s been generally ineffective.}

^{The sanctions are breaking down. The willingness of nations to trade with Saddam Hussein is increased. He’s also sitting on top of about 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves and generating enough illicit oil revenue now on the sides that he’s got a lot of money to invest in developing these kinds of programs. So we find ourselves, on the one hand, with the demonstrated greater vulnerability of September 11; and, on the other hand, with the very clear evidence that this is a man who is resuming all of those programs that the U.N. Security Council tried to get him to forgo some 10 or 11 years ago. And increasingly we believe that the United States may well become the target of those activities.}

^{MR. RUSSERT: What, specifically, has he obtained that you believe would enhance his nuclear development program?}

^{VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, in the nuclear weapons arena, you’ve got sort of three key elements that you need to acquire. You need the technical expertise. You need to have a group of scientists and technicians, engineers, who know how to put together the infrastructure and to build a weapon. He’s got that. He had it because of his program that was there previously, which I’ll come back and talk about in a minute, but we know he’s been working for 20 years trying to acquire this capability. He’s got a well-established scientifically, technically competent crew to do it.}

^{Secondly, you need a weapons design. One of the toughest parts about building a nuclear weapon is knowing how to do it. And they’ve got that. He had it back prior to the Gulf War. We know from things that were uncovered during the course of the inspections back in the early ’90s that he did, in fact, have at least two designs for nuclear weapons.}

^{The third thing you need is fissile material, weapons-grade material. Now, in the case of a nuclear weapon, that means either plutonium or highly enriched uranium. And what we’ve seen recently that has raised our level of concern to the current state of unrest, if you will, if I can put it in those terms, is that he now is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium to make the bombs.}

^{MR. RUSSERT: Aluminum tubes.}

^{VICE PRES. CHENEY: Specifically aluminum tubes. There’s a story in The New York Times this morning-this is-I don’t-and I want to attribute The Times. I don’t want to talk about, obviously, specific intelligence sources, but it’s now public that, in fact, he has been seeking to acquire, and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel, the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge. And the centrifuge is required to take low-grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched uranium, which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb. This is a technology he was working on back, say, before the Gulf War. And one of the reasons it’s of concern, Tim, is, you know, we know about a particular shipment. We’ve intercepted that. We don’t know what else-what other avenues he may be taking out there, what he may have already acquired. We do know he’s had four years without any inspections at all in Iraq to develop that capability.}

That 2002 Cheney interview hasn’t got one certified fact in it anywhere. If anything, it’s a study in inneundo and outright lying. The Aluminum Tubes story Cheney is alluding to is one he leaked himself, or had leaked by his trusty sidekick. So, leak the Tubes story, then refer to it as an independent confirmation. It’s all staged, all lies, all the time. It’s not exactly an Iron Curtain like in the days of Pravda and the KGB. It’s more like a Puppet Theater, where the Puppets don’t exactly know they are Puppets. I expect it takes a lot of skill to bring off such a thing, but since we know of so many examples, I guess we have to marvel at their skills.