Reining in Cheney

[dweller]

by Ray McGovern

Quick! Anyone! Who can put the brakes on Vice President Dick Cheney before we have another war on our hands?
Current and former intelligence analysts are reacting with wonderment and apprehension to his remarks last week on
the nuclear program of Iran and his resuscitated spinning on why attacking Iraq was the prudent thing to do.

There he goes again, they say—trifling with the truth on Iraq and now taking off after Iran. Does he really have the
temerity to reach into the same bag of tricks used to convince most Americans that Iraq was an immediate nuclear
threat? Will his distinctive mix of truculence and contempt for the truth succeed in rationalizing attacks on Iran on
grounds that US intelligence may have underestimated the progress in Iraq’s nuclear weapons program 15 years
ago?

At this point the focus is no longer on the bogus weapons of mass destruction (WMD) rationale used to promote the
attack on Iraq, intelligence analysts say. It’s the claims the vice president is now making regarding Iran’s nuclear
capability...and, given the deliberate distortions on Iraq, whether anyone should believe him.

Appearing Thursday on MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning, Cheney warned that Iran has “a fairly robust new nuclear
program.” And besides, it sponsors terrorism. Sound familiar?

There is no such thing as a perfect crime

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