In the dawning moments of 2003, the march to war in Iraq became a public farce. On January 28th, President Bush gave his
State of the Union speech – the one with the now famous
sixteen words, "
The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This will be in the logic books of the future as an example of a new kind of fallacy. We had the same information, but the CIA thought it was false. Since the British hadn’t yet debunked it, we attributed it to them without mentioning we didn’t believe it. The Niger forgeries said "bought," but in the speech, Bush said "sought." How come? There was no proof or possibility that he could have bought such a large quantity of Uranium Ore undetected. But when Joseph Wilson visited Niger, he was told that the Iraqis had approached a government official at a meeting asking for a chance to talk. Nothing came of it, but this became "sought" in the speech. A week later, Colin Powell made his equally famous
speech to the U.N. He
later said:
Former US secretary of state Colin Powell says his United Nations speech making the case for the US-led war on Iraq was "a blot" on his record. Mr Powell has also said that he had "never seen evidence to suggest" a connection between the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States and the Saddam regime…
"I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and (it) will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It’s painful now," he said. Mr Powell spent five days at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters ahead of the speech studying intelligence reports, many of which turned out to be false. He said he felt "terrible" at being misinformed.
However, he did not blame CIA director George Tenet. Mr Tenet "did not sit there for five days with me misleading me," he said. "He believed what he was giving to me was accurate." Some members of the US intelligence community "knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn’t be relied upon, and they didn’t speak up," Mr Powell said. "These are not senior people, but these are people who were aware that some of these resources should not be considered reliable," he said. "I was enormously disappointed."
We now know for sure that there were never any al Qaeda/Iraq ties, and Hussein’s WMD programs were long ended. We found nothing there, and we’re still there after six years. Hans Blix, the UN official in charge of inspections doubted that we’d find anything. The IAEA declared that the Niger documents were forgeries before our invasion. The UN Security Council refused to order military action. In spite of the resumption of inspections and all the skepticism, we carried on with our war plans and invaded Iraq in March. And speaking of "spin," I recall at the time being floored that we called our invasion, "Operation Iraqi Freedom."
When I look back on all of this, I see one force threaded through the story from the start – Dick Cheney. In his Congressional career, he was an effective power broker, but not much of a legislator – voting the Conservative "party line" exclusively. He wrote the dissenting opinion in the Iran-Contra Hearings defending the Executive’s right to do anything. And he was in cahoots with the oil lobby. After the Gulf War, his Defense Department produced the Defense Policy Guidance that introduced the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" [preemption, unilaterality, superpower strength, and active promotion of democracy]. During the Clinton years, he headed a huge oil exploration company, and made speeches pointing to the oil reserves in the middle east and suggested that commercial interests become part of foreign policy. He was a founder of the PNAC, whose first act was a letter to Clinton encouraging "regime change" in Iraq. In their Military review, his Defense Guidance was exhumed. When tasked by George Bush to find him a running mate, he picked himself. And his first act as VP was to assemble a secret Energy Task Force that focused of oil exploration in Iraq.
After 9/11, he was an epicenter of activity, in his words assuring that the president had the powers he needed to deal with the problem. In retrospect, that’s odd. The President had all the power he needed to go after al Qaeda. Yet Cheney’s Lawyer, David Addington, and OLC lawyer, John Yoo, were working overtime to establish an Executive with unlimited power. What’s odd about it is that we’d have given Bush the moon to go after al Qaeda. Likewise, Cheney and his staff micromanaged intelligence gathering – not about al Qaeda, but about al Qaeda/Iraq ties. Cheney and Libby visited the CIA to talk to analysts about that topic eg the Niger yellowcake Uranium. Addington went to Gitmo to check on the interrogations. The torture program focused on al Qaeda/Iraq ties., shepherded by Wolfowitz and Feith. In fact, the DoD OSP under Douglas Feith was on that al Qaeda/Iraq connection full time, stovepiping information to the OVP. So while Cheney said he was mobilizing powers and info, moving us to the "dark side" to deal with the Terrorists, what he did was look for evidence damning Iraq. And he continued to use 9/11, al Qaeda/Iraq ties, and Iraq WMDs in his defense of the Iraq War long after others had given them up. He still talks about it that way, even now.
A lot of people obsess about how to hold him responsible for master-minding the unjust Iraq War that has been so expensive to us in so many ways. But it’s hard to come up with anything to prosecute, because he’s covered himself with a sea of legal decisions, classified records, and absent documentation. But even his seeming "bullet-proofness" is further evidence of his guilt – the operative phrase being "covering his tracks." He knew what he was doing and was careful to remain legally insulated as he did it. In my mind, Cheney is a criminal. He diverted the entire US system to follow his dream of Middle Eastern oil, and he did it at a very tender time in American history. He may think he was working in America’s interest, but that’s a delusion. And even by his own standards, he failed – miserably. It didn’t work. He got his war, but not his oil. There’s some consolation in that. Both he and Bush claim that history will exonerate them, and that’s his biggest failure of all. History is not constrained by the standards of habeas corpus, due process, innocent until proven guilty. History is about the simple truth, and has access to all documentation, sooner or later. History also knows how it all played out. His story is going to look increasingly pitiful as time goes on. Like so many that came before him, he’s skilled at brokering power, but hasn’t a clue what to use it for. I spent a couple of days rereading all these documents, and it still comes out the same way. Dick Cheney had a personal dream, and he turned it into a collective nightmare…
Mickey — these posts are a wonderful, clear presentation of what we all need to know. You should publish it. I know that makes me sound old-fashioned — you have “published” it on your blog. I guess I still think in terms of books.
I think Patrick Fitzgerald said it as clear as he could when he said there is a dark cloud over the Vice President. I do wish someone who was formerly with the justice dept and resigned in disagreement. like James Comey, would be selected as a special prosecutor to examine the voluminous records of theBush/Cheney administration for any and all misjudgement of justice for the sake of our country and the world so that this terrible history will never happen again. Cheney took our country and ignored our laws giving a pen and paper to one of his servants John Yoo who actually took down dictation to say it was legal under the law. Cheney and Yoo should occupy the same cell so that they can talk about old times.