In Cheney's reply to Ms. Kelly's question, he resorted to the usual Neocon standard of blaming either President Clinton or the CIA. "We inherited a situation," he begins, and asserts that "we all agreed" on a conventional wisdom that turned out to be wrong in almost every respect.
However, much evidence leads back to the Office of the Vice President as to why that intelligence was so wrong. Why did Cheney and Scooter Libby make so many visits to CIA headquarters? Was it to twist analysts' arms an get them to say what he wanted them to say? Why was Cheney such a big believer in waterboarding? Torture -- and only a shyster like Liz Cheney would argue that waterboarding isn't torture, and perhaps only because she's defending her father from accusations of war crimes -- is a bust when it comes to gaining actionable intelligence. No one under that kind of duress should have his words taken at face value. However, torture is an excellent way of getting a subject to say what one wants to hear. American POWs in North Korea and North Vietnam were tortured in an attempt to put them behind a microphone and denounce US foreign policy. Were captured "terrorists" tortured in order to get them to say that Saddam had biochemical arsenal at his disposal or that he was "reconsituting" his nuclear weapons program? How did that crap, so easily discredited, find its way into the National Intelligence Estimate? Why did Cheney, or someone in his office, push a forged document regarding an attempt by Saddam to purchase yellow cake uranium from Niger? That document came from a seller of documents with a bad reputation, and it was even a poor forgery. Ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger to investigate, found nothing to indicate that any sale was being arranged or even remotely discussed, and reported so to the CIA. How did an assertion that Saddam actually tried to buy yellow cake end up in the subsequent State of the Union message?
There is a pattern of the Bush administration, including those in the Office of the Vice President, fabricating intelligence and willfully placing it official reports. If the intelligence were a good faith effort to gather facts, the law of averages would seem to suggest that those vetting the intelligence would have gotten something right. Beyond the general statement that Saddam was a brutal tyrant, the one thing everyone could actually agree on without much discussion, the Bushies got everything wrong.
It is clear that their mission was not one of fact finding. They were fishing for talking points. That goes long ways in explaining how every assertion made by the Bush administration to justify the invasion of Iraq, except the one already noted, failed to stand up under the slightest scrutiny. Those of us who paid attention were aware that case for war was falling apart even as Secretary Powell addressed the UN Security Council. Except in the United States with its supine press, which reported it as always according to the dictates of the powers that be, who wanted war. "People" like ExxonMobil and Halliburton.
It is difficult to see how this was even a result of self-deception. They were lying. They knew they were lying.
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- Somebody wake me up this has to be a dream!!!
