Cheney's Parting Shots

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright December 16, 2008
All Rights Reserved.                    

         Vice President Dick Cheney came out of seclusion to throw in his two cents together with President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the historical record on Iraq.  Cheney operated behind the scenes, calling the shots during the Bush presidency.  Few historians could recall a vice president with more power than Cheney to orchestrate a monstrous agenda, lining the pockets of the nation’s biggest energy and defense contractors during the Iraq War.  His former company, Halliburton, where Cheney was CEO before sworn in Jan. 20, 2001 as the nation’s 46th vice president, has made billions in defense-related contracts.  Since Sept. 11, Cheney controlled, through the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, much of the so-called “bad” intelligence he now blames for taking the nation to war.  Cheney shared his “frustration” about bad intelligences but offers no apologies.

            Bush, Rice and now Cheney have been on a PR blitz in recent weeks trying to get good press with presidential historians, busy writing the final chapters of the Bush White House.  With more that 4,200 dead U.S. troops, nearly $1 trillion spent from the U.S. treasury and an economy teetering on depression, Cheney finds it easy to justify his mistakes.  “I think we made the right decision in spite of the fact that the original [intelligence estimate] was off in some oft its major judgments,” said Cheney, doing his best to rewrite history.  While lamenting “bad” intelligence, Cheney often repeats the same talking points.  “Saddam Hussein still had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction.  He had the technology [and] he had the people . . . [he] had every intention of resuming production once the international sanctions were lifted.  This was a bad actor,” said Cheney, regurgitating the same script.

            Many dictators around the planet have the means and intent to build dangerous weapons.  That doesn’t justify the Bush-Cheney doctrine of preemption, giving a green light to attack any sovereign nation based on speculation or “future intent.”  In one bold swoop, Cheney revealed his true feelings about Iraq:  He didn’t care about Saddam’s alleged arsenal of WMD.  Saddam was evil, justifying the preemptive war that has cost thousands of lives and plunged the nation into the worst recession since the Great Depression.  For years, Cheney led the White House effort to link Saddam to Sept. 11, the ultimate excuse for war.  Every past excuse turned up more feeble explanations, including his recent explanation that toppling Saddam improved U.S. national security.  No credible appraisal of U.S. national security indicates the Iraq War improved the situation.

            Bush and Cheney believe the bottom line about national security is the fact that the U.S. hasn’t been attacked on the mainland since Sept. 11.  They point to several foiled plots, despite the upsurge of al-Qaida attacks in the U.K., Europe and elsewhere.  Cheney defends Guantanamo Bay, where battlefield detainees were taken after the fall of the Taliban Nov. 14, 2001, interrogated with controversial techniques and kept incommunicado without a legal representation.  It was former disgraced Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, when he served as Bush’s legal counsel, that helped define Guantanamo prisoners as “illegal combatants” or “battlefield detainees,” denying them rights under the Geneva Convention.  Cheney defends quasi-torture interrogation techniques like waterboarding, especially forbidden by the CIA and the Army’s Field Manual.

            Cheney points to the success of interrogating al-Qaida operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of Sept. 11, as proof that waterboarding works.  “Those who allege that we’ve been involved in torture, or that somehow we violated the Constitution or laws with the Terrorist Surveillance Program, simply don’t know what they’re talking about,” said the VP, praising Guantanomo interrogators that cracked Mohammed, preventing future attacks.  Cheney was just as persuasive defending the Iraq War because of Saddam’s long connection with al-Qaida-type terrorists.  While lamenting so-called “bad” intelligence, he insisted to the bitter end that Saddam in fact possessed mobile germ laboratories.  Cheney said the government gained from its interrogations as Guantanamo Bay while insisting a connection between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

            Cheney led the propaganda offensive for the Bush White House, justifying controversial anti-terror policies and the big lie about Iraq:  That the White House got faulty intelligence.  They like to point to Congress getting duped by the same bad intelligence, despite the fact Cheney ordered Feith and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans to supply bogus intelligence about Saddam’s nuclear and biological weapons’ programs.  “You can’t base public policy or tough decisions in a presidency simply on what’s happening in the polls . . .  It’s just a bad way to make policy.  And we didn’t do that.  What we did was what we thought was right for the country,” said Cheney, excusing Bush’s abysmal approval ratings.  Bush and Cheney ignored the polls because the White House was hell-bent on advancing the agendas of Big Oil and defense contractors getting fat on Iraq.

  John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

©1999-2012 Discobolos Consulting Services, Inc.
(310) 204-8300
All Rights Reserved.