1 Boring Old Man

I was in the military for three years and have a few friends who are/were career military types. I’ve always marvelled at the way they talk whenever the topic turn to matters military. I’m sure every profession has it’s jargon. Lord knows, my own certainly does [psychoanalysis]. But I don’t think anyone can match the Military. So I remember when I first heard this term, "actionable intelligence," come out of Dick Cheney’s mouth, I instantly recognized it as  a militar-ism. And since Dick Cheney spent the first half of his life avoiding the military [and the second half running it], I thought, "that guy is hanging out with a bunch of career soldiers."

In spite of that definition up there from the types that talk like soldiers talk, "actionable intelligence" just means information you can immediately use – something like, "There’s a bad guy in that tree over there aiming his rifle at your head" [It was easier back when you just yelled "Duck!"]. Over the years, we’ve listened to Dick Cheney talk about "Actionable Intelligence" and how much we’ve gotten from using "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" on our "High Value Detainees." He couldn’t yet tell us about the other great success, "Extraordinary Rendition" – sending people to other governments to torture for us.

Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was the Emir of the Al Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan. As I understand it, the camp trained mujahideen for jihad. There is apparently defensive jihad and offensive jihad, and this camp specialized in the former. It was actually closed by al Qaeda because of this differing philosophy – though many of the al Qaeda jihadi had been through Al Khaldan. He was captured by Pakistani officials in November 2001, as he attempted to flee Afghanistan following the collapse of the Taliban after the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. There are many versions of what happened after that, but the central point is that he was turned over to the Egyptians who tortured him resulting in his saying that al Qaeda and Iraq were working together. In February and again in July, the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] said they believed he was lying based on inconsistencies in his story. When the CIA regained custody of al-Libi, he recanted saying he was just trying to avoid further torture.

By the time we actually invaded Iraq, all of our reasons had been thoroughly debunked. The Niger Uranium story was a forgery. Douglas Feith’s bullet points about Iraq/al Qaeda ties were untrue and known to be untrue. "Curveball," the Iraqi expatriot interrogated by the Germans was known to be a colossal bullshit artist. The aluminum tubes were not suitable for centrifuges but made fine rocket shields which is what they were. The only not completely discounted piece of "Actionable Intelligence" they had to justify war with Iraq at the time we invaded was the reported confession of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi obtained under torture in Egypt.

• Rafid Ahmed Alwan known by the Central Intelligence Agency pseudonym "Curveball" – an Iraqi immigrant con-man trying to score a German Green Card by saying Iraq had mobile Chemical/Biological weapons.
• Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was a captured Lybian Jihadi trying to avoid torture by connecting al Qaeda and Iraq.
• Rocco Martino was an Italian con-man trying to make a buck on the intelligence market with his forged documents about Uranium sales to Iraq.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I’m going to be careful here, Tim, because I – clearly it would be inappropriate for me to talk about operational matters, specific options or the kinds of activities we might undertake going forward. We do, indeed, though, have, obviously, the world’s finest military. They’ve got a broad range of capabilities. And they may well be given missions in connection with this overall task and strategy. We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

MR. RUSSERT: There have been restrictions placed on the United States intelligence gathering, reluctance to use unsavory characters, those who violated human rights, to assist in intelligence gathering. Will we lift some of those restrictions?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Oh, I think so. I think the – one of the by-products, if you will, of this tragic set of circumstances is that we’ll see a very thorough sort of reassessment of how we operate and the kinds of people we deal with. There’s – if you’re going to deal only with sort of officially approved, certified good guys, you’re not going to find out what the bad guys are doing. You need to be able to penetrate these organizations. You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if, in fact, you’re going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities. It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. I’m convinced we can do it; we can do it successfully. But we need to make certain that we have not tied the hands, if you will, of our intelligence communities in terms of accomplishing their mission.