| TheTip.org |
| Polls | Members | Refer | Forums | Write for TheTip! | Home | Impeach Bush |
Impeach George Bush
In Case You Haven't Heard, Cheney Lied Too
Dick Cheney is not a public relations man for the Bush administration, not a spinmeister nor a political operative. He's the vice president of the United States, and when he speaks in public, which he rarely does, he owes the American public the truth.
Source: BuzzFlash, 2003-09-19
Candidate: Dick Cheney
In his appearance on "Meet the Press" Sunday, Cheney fell woefully short of truth. On the subject of Iraq, the same can be said for President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. But Cheney is the latest example of administration mendacity, and therefore a good place to start in holding the administration accountable. The list:
• Cheney repeated the mantra that the nation ignored the terrorism threat before Sept. 11. In fact, President Bill Clinton and his counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, took the threat very seriously, especially after the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000. By December, Clarke had prepared plans for a military operation to attack Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, go after terrorist financing and work with police officials around the world to take down the terrorist network.
Because Clinton was to leave office in a few weeks, he decided against handing Bush a war in progress as he worked to put a new administration together.
Instead, Clarke briefed national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Cheney and others. He emphasized that time was short and action was urgent. The Bush administration sat on the report for months and months. The first high-level discussion took place on Sept. 4, 2001, just a week before the attacks. The actions taken by the Bush administration following Sept. 11 closely parallel actions recommended in Clarke's nine-month-old plan. Who ignored the threat?
• Cheney said that "we don't know" if there is a connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. He's right only in the sense that "we don't know" if the sun will come up tomorrow. But all the evidence available says it will -- and that Iraq was NOT involved in Sept. 11.
Cheney offered stuff, but it wasn't evidence. He said that one of those involved in planning the attack, an Iraqi-American, had returned to Iraq after the attack and had been protected, perhaps even supported, by Saddam Hussein. That proves exactly nothing about Iraq's links to the attack itself.
Cheney also cited a supposed meeting in Prague between hijacker Mohamed Atta and a senior Iraqi intelligence officer -- but the FBI concluded that Atta was in Florida at the time of the supposed meeting. The CIA always doubted the story. And according to a New York Times article on Oct. 21, 2002, Czech President Vaclav Havel "quietly told the White House he has concluded that there is no evidence to confirm earlier reports" of such a meeting.
Moreover, the United States now has in custody the agent accused of meeting with Atta. Even though he must know how much he would benefit by simply saying, "Yes, I met Atta in Prague," there has been no announcement by the administration trumpeting that vindication of its belief in an Iraq-Sept. 11 link.
• In trying to make that link, Cheney baldly asserted that Iraq is the "geographic base" for those who struck the United States on Sept. 11. No, that would be Afghanistan.
• On weapons of mass destruction, Cheney made a number of statements that were misleading or simply false. For example, he said the United States knew Iraq had "500 tons of uranium." Well, yes, and so did the U.N. inspectors. What Cheney didn't say is that the uranium was low-grade waste from nuclear energy plants, and could not have been useful for weapons without sophisticated processing that Iraq was incapable of performing.
Cheney also said, "To suggest that there is no evidence [in Iraq] that [Saddam] had aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons, I don't think is valid." It's probably not valid; Saddam wanted nuclear weapons. But Cheney is changing the subject: The argument before the war wasn't Saddam's aspirations; it was Saddam's active program to build nuclear weapons.
Cheney also said "a gentleman" has come forward "with full designs for a process centrifuge system to enrich uranium and the key parts that you need to build such a system." That would be scientist Mahdi Obeidi, who had buried the centrifuge pieces in his back yard -- in 1991. Obeidi insisted that Iraq hadn't restarted its nuclear weapons program after the end of the first Gulf War. The centrifuge pieces might have signaled a potential future threat, but they actually disprove Cheney's prewar assertion that Iraq had, indeed, "reconstituted" its nuclear-weapons program.
Cheney also said he put great store in the ongoing search for Saddam's WMD program: "We've got a very good man now in charge of the operation, David Kay, who used to run UNSCOM [the U.N. inspection effort]." In fact, Kay did not run UNSCOM; for one year he was the chief inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency's team in Iraq.
But it's funny Cheney should mention Kay. Last summer, the leader of the 1,400-person team searching for WMD expressed great confidence that they would find what they were looking for. He said he wouldn't publicize discoveries piecemeal but would submit a comprehensive report in mid-September. Apparently he has submitted the report to George Tenet at the CIA. The question now is whether it will ever be made public; several reports in the press have suggested that Kay has come up way short. In five months, 1,400 experts haven't found the WMD locations that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said before the war were well-known to the United States.
Cheney also said that an investigation by the British had "revalidated the British claim that Saddam was, in fact, trying to acquire uranium in Africa -- what was in the State of the Union speech." The British investigation did nothing of the kind. A parliamentary investigative committee said the documents on the uranium are being reinvestigated, but that, based on the existence of those documents, the Blair government made a "reasonable" assertion and had not tried to deliberately mislead the British people.
To explore every phony statement in the vice president's "Meet the Press" interview would take far more space than is available. This merely points out some of the most egregious examples. Opponents of the war are fond of saying that "Bush lied and our soldiers died." In fact, they'd have reason to assert that "Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz lied and our soldiers died." It's past time the principals behind this mismanaged war were called to account for their deliberate misstatements.
Add a comment to this Message in our Forums.
While you're at it, check out our forums too!
User Originated Comments:
From: Beau Graves
2004-03-10 04:05:54
correction: the statement, 'in as many years,' is
meant to be understood as 3, not 3 million. just
wanted to clarify for all of you right-wingers out
there.
From: Beau Graves
2004-03-10 04:00:24
in response to the narrow-minded, fact-less
statements presented by marvin,(by the way, that's
the name of my cat, probably just as smart as
you,) where should i begin. well first of all,
treason is the act of attempting to overthrow by
illegal means, the government to which a person
owes allegiance. it is not, however, presenting
facts, basing your own opinion on those facts, and
speaking out against a government of which you
disagree with about their current policies. that
is the basis of a democracy, and is expected if a
democracy is to work properly. too many of you
right-winged conservatives take the bush
administration at their word, without ever giving
anything they do or say a second thought. that
sir, leads to a complacent society in which power
runs rampant and un-checked, kinda like what's
going on right now. secondly, no one hates the
"president." i'm sure in his wee little dyslexic
mind, (honestly, nothing against anyone with
dyslexia here, i know it's a tough disease to live
with, i just believe that the leader of the most
powerful country in the world should be able to
fully comprehend any large, intricate document
handed over to him to read, which many times he
has demonstrated that he cannot,) that he believes
he is doing the right thing, as long as it's what
god has told him to do, (hitler was another kooky
leader who liked to mention that he was doing the
chosen work of god every time he had the chance
to.) some of us 'free-thinkers' just disagree with
bush, something we again, are allowed to do in a
democratic society. many of us believe that this
war is of reasons other than to "liberate the
iraqi people", (or kill over 10,000 of them in the
process,) or to "fight terrorism," (meanwhile
giving the other 80% of the world population,
which happens to despise the united states, more
of a reason to become a terrorist, or freedom
fighter, it just depends on whether you're
fighting for or against the u.s. at the time,)
which are very nice side effects of a war in iraq,
but not necessarily the initial factor of which
the bush admininstration chose to go to war.
thirdly, you are sorely mistaken about your 12
years of prosperity remark about presidents
reagan, (not reagen,) and ghw (or daddy, as he's
so affectionately referred to by his grown-up
son.) the clinton administration brought forth 22
million new jobs to the american workforce,
meanwhile your buddy dubya has managed to lose 3
million in as many years, the first time any
president has had a net loss in jobs since herbert
hoover(70 years ago, for those who are unaware.)
so in conclusion, you sir/maam, are living in a
blind, narrow-minded conservative shell, and you
are the one who needs to wake up, and realize that
just because someone puts on a smile, and says
he's fighting the good fight, isn't always
necessarily telling the whole truth. maybe if you
did a little bit of reading outside of the gop
website, you might learn some useful information
now and again.
From: TIM WORDEN
2004-01-09 00:00:00
george w. bush makes me ashamed to call myself an
american.
From: TIM WORDEN
2004-01-09 00:00:00
From: joe
1999-11-30 00:00:00
does anyone notice that those who are criticizing
the administration, and rightfully so, are the
only ones who are actually presenting hard
evidence. in addition, where the hell did marvin
get the idea of this building up of the economy
for twelve years and then having clinton destroy
it. the national deficit quadrupled after reagan
took office. saying that reagan and bush built it
up and that clinton destroyed it is as untrue as
saying that nixon was committed to getting america
out of vietnam. contrariwise, nixon sent in
troops to attack north vietnamese stations in
cambodia in april of 1970 after he had promised to
"wind down the war," and to "not send any more
soldiers" to vietnam.
Related News
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
owned by TheTIP.
[ Skip Next | Next | Random Site | List Sites |Previous ]
NEWS | ACTION | RESULTS | POLLS | MEMBERS | SEARCH