CHENEY KNEW Intell For War Had Been Cooked - How Libby Became Cheney's Pawn (Salon)

[kpete]

How Libby became Cheney's pawn
The vice president knew the intelligence for the Iraq war was cooked. So he launched his aide to smear the man who took the information public.

By Sidney Blumenthal


......................

Cheney was distraught over Wilson's revelation that on his mission to Niger he had discovered that Saddam Hussein was not purchasing yellow uranium to develop nuclear weapons and that the documents that allegedly proved it were forgeries. He could have ignored Wilson, whose complaint might have faded into the woodwork. But Cheney was not trying to correct the record, but to suppress it. He knew that what Wilson had written in his New York Times Op-Ed of July 6, 2003, and what Wilson had said earlier about it at a public forum, obliquely reported, were accurate. Wilson posed a potential menace not only to the legitimacy of the Iraq invasion but also to the reelection of Bush-Cheney.

Cheney knew that the intelligence for the war had been cooked. He was not obsessed with Wilson because he was angry that Wilson was allegedly falsifying information. Cheney was not seized with a feeling of injustice or a need to inform the public of the truth. Cheney is not a fool. "Cheney knows how to read intelligence reports. He knows how to read classified information," Richard Clarke, former director of counterterrorism on the National Security Council, told me. Of course, Clarke said, "Cheney had read the reports" that disproved the administration's line. "Cheney knew it was false," said Clarke. What worried Cheney was that he was keenly aware that the so-called intelligence the administration propagated was phony, shabby and shaky. What also peeved him was that Wilson had said that his mission had been triggered by a request from the Office of the Vice President.

In the aftermath of the invasion, as President Bush swaggered in a fighter pilot's flight suit on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, the administration's sway in Washington was at its zenith. The president's poll ratings were sky-high, the Republican control of the Congress airtight and the press corps embedded. Wilson was targeted as an enemy of the state. The same methods that had been used to whip up support for the war were now deployed against the straggler. Cheney's overbearing intensity was transmitted through his chief of staff. Once again, a compliant press would be exploited to do their bidding.

...............

Cheney is scheduled to testify soon at the federal courthouse as a defense witness, where he will be questioned about his direction of the operation in which Libby acted as his pawn. Meanwhile, a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue, Congress debates resolutions against Bush's escalation of the war, haunted by the original "Authorization for Use of Military Force," which was approved with a naive trust that on a matter of war the president and the vice president would tell the truth.

more at:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/02/01/libby_cheney/index1.html

[SpiralHawk]

1. "I had a perfectly good reason for lying to America and our troops." - Cheney

"How else was I going to boost the bottom-line on Massive War Profits
for myself and my republicon cronies?
I mean, we are the elite. Too bad about your kids in uniform.
Smirk, smirk, sneer, sneer."

- Dick 'Five Military Deferments' Cheney
Underling to Commander AWOL
YOUR CERTIFIED REPUBLICON HEROES


SMIRK SMIRK - SNEER

[mike_c]

2. Cheney was the executive chef, fer cryin' out loud....

K&R! :applause:

The shit is creeping further and further uphill.

[Mandate My Ass]

3. Of course Cheney knew the intel was cooked

He leaned on the CIA in every way possible to make sure their conclusions matched his intentions. He visited them repeatedly to make sure he got what he wanted.

Naive trust in Bush and Cheney? Hardly. They remembered the anthrax that was mailed to Dems and newspeople after 9/11 and acted accordingly.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

15. The stampede to pass IWR was fueled by the media snow job re: WMD

Even if the congressmen and senators knew there were no WMD, their constituents believed the hype.

The administration was playing the people's fear like a violin at that point.

We have a war of aggression based on a disinformation campaign. Congress is complicit and I'm proud of every Democrat that voted against the war.

[seemslikeadream]

4. hello Sidney

guess what, there's a little more to the story!

[TahitiNut]

5. As I've said on DU several times, there's never been a doubt in my mind that ...

... Cheney and the WHIG were going after BJ&A when they outed Plame. It was never about eroding Joe Wilson's credibility ... it was about destroying the single most effective source of intel that got in the way of the neocon globalists. It never made any sense whatsoever that outing Plame was an effective approach to dismissing Wilson. If anything, it made Wilson far more credible. But BJ&A was obtaining intel agoubt AQ Khan, Iraq, and Iran that was contrary to the neocon globalists' interests and the fictions they were peddling, so they had to go.

[Demit]

6. While I agree with you that that was the underlying reason (to foil Brewster Jennings)

I do think there was an element of "you dare to question the GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ???!!?" They were so dunk with hubris, after having duped the Congress and the UN, and seeing how well-received the spectacle of Bush parading on the aircraft carrier with his stuffed crotch was, I think they felt they could get away with anything from here on, that no one could dare stop them. The fact that Joe Wilson dared must have enraged Cheney to near apoplexy.

One of the letter writers responding to SB's piece has an interesting plaintive question that, of course, we all had, we who actually followed the whole affair. He asks, "What did it matter WHO sent Wilson to Niger? Whether it was Rice, or whether it was his wife, or whether he went as part of the Amazing Race—how does that discredit what he found there?"

I can only hope that this high profile trial will FINALLY get the American public to pay attention to the whole sordid story and ask themselves that question, and then ask WHY it was so important to discredit Wilson via revealing his wife's identity? And why, if she wasn't covert, did the CIA want the thing investigated?

[TahitiNut]

7. Choosing Joe Wilson was a brilliant maneuver by *someone* in the CIA.

Consider. They PROTECT people and methods ... literally with their lives. They KNOW that the intel dosn't show Iraq with WMD and the most reliable intel supports Saddam's claim of having complied as far back as 1992. (Remember the Iraqi data dump?) They also KNOW that there's Faux Intel being generated like someone's jamming their transmitters. OSP is one of the avenues for that Faux Intel.

What to do? They can't have any of the NOCs or field ops come forward - that'd compromise their lives. So, they reach out to Wilson, who's ALREADY done the same kind of thing in 1999. HE can go public. HE can talk about his trip. HE doesn't compromise people or methods.

That ENRAGED Cheney ... the CIA found a way to bypass him and say publicly what they'd been saying privately for years.

[leveymg]

9. The reason they sent Wilson in 2002 is because CIA sent him in 1999

to check upon what A.Q. Khan had been doing in Niger -- trying to buy uranium for Pakistan and Iran.

It only made sense to send him back to see if Iraq had made any overtures in the meantime.

This whole thing about an attempt to smeer Wilson on "wife sent him on a junket" charge is just a cover-story. All that Cheney and Libby wanted to do was to out Plame, knowing that this would screw things for the rest of the uncooperative nay-sayers who worked at the CIA Counter Proliferation Division. "If they won't get fully on board, we'll out the whole lot of them, and turn the job over to the boyz at OSP."

[TahitiNut]

11. I know. As I've said many times ...

4. One of the stinkiest red herrings in this whole case is the fabricated 'issue' ...

... of Wilson being 'sent' to Niger by Plame. I don't think I've ever seen a larger mountain made of a smaller molehill.

Let's first make something very, very clear. Cheney is the autocrat's autocrat ... and, when HE asks a QUESTION, HE expects ANSWERS. It's never "I don't know" ... it's "I'll find out." It must be made crystal clear that Cheney has cultivated a very clear LAW during his entire career. That LAW is that his 'questions' are ORDERS to his subordinates. All he wants to see is assholes and elbows working furiously to serve his every query. Korporate Amerika (and the military) is FULL of such people ... you damned well better get the information before asked a second time or your ass is on the street.

That said, there's abundant information regarding Cheney's "visits" to the CIA, doing absolutely everything he could to make damned sure that their intel was scrubbed and cleansed to match the regime's agenda. His demands regarding the Niger Uranium (hoax) story are more than good reason to send someone to Niger and who makes better sense than the man who did it before, in 1999 when the connection between AQ Khan and Niger had to be examined?

Thus, the pretended confusion/outrage/push-back regarding Wilson describing the Niger trip as the result of a demand for information from the OVP is ENTIRELY manufactured. Under no other circumstance would Cheney EVER quibble over someone doing research or investigation claiming that they were doing so due to Cheney's demands. Indeed, such autocrats LOVE to hear that the "lesser people" in their organizations are busting ass to serve their whims!

No way, no how was Plame EVER of 'interest' because she supposedly initiated this trip on her own. The Cheney/Libby/Rove/Bush/WHIG outing of Plame was a carefully orchestrated attack on the entire CPD covert humint program under the Brewster-Jennings cover because it was QUALITY intel that contradicted the frauds and fabrications of this corrupt regime ... in both Iraq and Iran ... and previously regarding AQ Khan.

Only the most naive recent turnip truck passengers would buy even the beginnings of the "pop" characterizations of this story. Anyone who's had more than the most closeted experience in corporate (and other autocratic) 'cultures' knows Cheney. When he says 'jump' people jump. Period. This is the kind of bastard that's the epitome of kiss-up-kick-down ... and when he's "in charge" you'd damned well better behave as though his whims are akin to the Voice From the Burning Bush.

No way no how was outing Plame merely some superficial exposure to embarrass Wilson. The stakes and targets were far, far more serious.



FWIW (on edit) ... I read your well-referenced posts quite often and regard them as some of the best on DU. I wish I were as organized. I read huge amounts but don't track and bookmark like a good researcher would in composing a footnoted report. In this area (poltics and the Boshoilinis), I research solely to form my own comprehension. It's nowhere nearly as persuasive an approach for those who don't know me personally.

[malaise]

8. Was David Kelly also

aware of the AQ Khan angle?

[TahitiNut]

12. That's a perverted can-of-worms I haven't unraveled.

I think there's so much in that one that hasn't yet come to the surface, it'd take years to see all the corruption.

[malaise]

13. Thanks - I can wait n/t

[whosinpower]

10. While I agree with the editorial-I do have a critical question

Why then--has Vice President Cheney not been formally charged??????

[TahitiNut]

14. The most hopeful hypothesis is ...

... that when he's charged it'll be far more serious than merely perjury. Harboring an almost unreasonable degree of hope, I want it to be t-r-e-a-s-o-n. (That statute has been referenced at least once in on-the-record remarks in the Libby Trial.)

We could only pray that the sealed indictment is US v. Cheney, et. al. for treason and conspiracy to commit treason. It's not a reasonable, rational prayer ... but right out there at the limits, imho.