Category Archives: Dick Cheney

Dick’s a Weenie

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If you watched yesterday’s Scotty McClellan press briefing you saw reporters attempt, with mounting frustration, to tease a simple chronology of events out of the press secretary. Transcript at Raw Story —

Q But when did the president specifically know that the vice president had shot somebody?

MR. MCCLELLAN: I’m sorry?

Q When did the president know that the vice president —

MR. MCCLELLAN: He was learning additional details into that evening, on Saturday —

Q (Off mike) — it was the vice president that pulled the trigger —

MR. MCCLELLAN: Yeah, but we didn’t know the full details. But I think he was informed because Karl —

Q (Off mike) —

MR. MCCLELLAN: — I think his deputy chief of staff had spoken with Mrs. Armstrong and provided him additional update in that evening. So there were more circumstances —

Q The deputy chief of staff —

MR. MCCLELLAN: — more circumstances known Saturday evening, so the president was getting more information about who was involved, and that was in — that was late Saturday evening.

Q Scott —

Q So he knew — so he knew Saturday evening —

Q Scott, definitively, did the president know —

MR. MCCLELLAN: Some additional information, yes, and that the vice president —

Q — (inaudible) —

MR. MCCLELLAN: — and that the vice president was involved, but didn’t know the full facts of what had occurred.

Q How is that possible?

At one point, a frustrated reporter asked, “Was the vice president immediately clear that he had accidentally shot his friend or not, or did that information become available later?” One wonders.

Today Maria Newman reports in the New York Times that President Bush did, in fact, learn that the veep had shot someone. He learned it about 8 pm Saturday, from Karl Rove.

Now, Scottie, was that so hard?

Reading on, however, we find that Karl Rove got his story not from the Secret Service or the veep’s staff, but from Katherine Armstrong, the lady on whose property The Incident took place. The veep didn’t bother to report this to the President himself, or direct anyone on his staff to make a report. Hmmm. Then we learn from Jim VandeHei and Sylvia Moreno at the Washington Post that

… the White House allowed Cheney to decide when and how to disclose details of the shooting to the local sheriff and the public the next morning.

So, who’s in charge here? And does the President serve any actual function beyond smirking?

Cheney, in fact, has yet to make a public statement about The Incident. VandeHei and Moreno continue,

Cheney, who had a private White House lunch with Bush yesterday, did not comment on the shooting. Late yesterday, he issued a statement that did not mention the shooting but acknowledged not having paid $7 for a permit that allows him to shoot upland birds; it said he is sending a check to the state. Cheney said he expects to be issued a warning by state authorities for not obtaining the permit.

Further, local law enforcement could not interview Cheney until Sunday morning, about 14 hours after the shooting.

I can think of only three possible explanations for the veep’s behavior: (1) He’s hiding something; (2) he was so emotionally unhinged by The Incident he cannot deal with it; or (3) he doesn’t give a rat’s behind about accountability to the public or the law. Any one of those possibilities disqualifies the Dick from being a heartbeat away from the presidency. And, of course, all three explanations could be true.

An editorial in today’s New York Times says Dick’s behavior is juvenile:

The vice president appears to have behaved like a teenager who thinks that if he keeps quiet about the wreck, no one will notice that the family car is missing its right door. The administration’s communications department has proved that its skills at actually communicating are so rusty it can’t get a minor police-blotter story straight. And the White House, in trying to cover up the cover-up, has once again demonstrated that it would rather look inept than open.

Also true to form, the White House is blaming the wounded Mr. Whittington for the shooting.

Time for a Bush quote!

In a compassionate society, people respect one another, respect their points of view. And they take responsibility for the decisions they make. The culture of America is changing from one that has said, if it feels good, do it, and if you’ve got a problem, blame somebody else, to a new culture in which each of us understands we are responsible for the decisions we make in life. If you are fortunate enough to be a mom or a dad, you’re responsible for loving your child with all your heart. (Applause.) If you are concerned about the quality of the education in the community in which you live, you’re responsible for doing something about it. If you’re a CEO in corporate America, you’re responsible for telling the truth to your shareholders and your employees. (Applause.)

And in this new responsibility society, each of us is responsible for loving our neighbor just like we would like to be loved ourselves. We can see the culture of service and responsibility growing around us.

Oooo, but this responsibility thing is haaaaaard work. We don’t wanna do it ourselves. That’s what the help is for.

And if Dick’s a weenie, but the President defers to his bad judgment, doesn’t that make the President a worse weenie?

Where’s Dick?

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Dead-Eye Dick is nowhere to be found. He hasn’t spoken to the press or the public since The Incident.

That is beyond strange, people. No politician in my memory would have behaved like this. Any politician in my memory would have hustled to be sure his version of what happened was the first version the press heard. If he wasn’t able to get in front of cameras himself, he would have had a spokesperson hold a press conference asap. The politician or his surrogates might have been lying, but he certainly wouldn’t have gone into hiding without issuing a statement.

Dan Froomkin writes,

Why isn’t Dick Cheney on TV right now?

The vice president of the United States shoots someone in a hunting accident and rather than immediately come clean to the public, his office keeps it a secret for almost a whole day. Even then, it’s only to confirm a report in a local paper.

And still from the White House, no details, no apologies, and no Cheney.

The excuses: The veep’s first concern was getting medical help for Mr. Whittington. What, did the veep assist in surgery? I can undetstand waiting for a doctor’s prognosis, but by all accounts there was a prognosis late Saturday afternoon. Effects of a shotgun blast aren’t all that hard to diagnose, I suspect.

The other excuse: The White House was waiting to get more information. Lordy, no wonder they couldn’t deal with levee breaks. This story is (I assume) simple: There was an accident. The Vice President accidently shot his friend while hunting. The friend will be fine. The veep is real sorry. You can throw in the Official Story — the friend stepped into the veep’s line of fire. If more details come to light we will share them.

Yet something as simple as a hunting accident seems to have confounded them. The White House is struggling just to get its story straight about who knew what, when; and who told what to whom. The veep cannot pull himself together to even issue a statement. This is exceeding strange.

Stop Cheney

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Stop him, before he shoots again …

Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.

Harry Whittington, 78, was “alert and doing fine” after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong.

Armstrong said Whittington was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.

Maybe Dick the Dick thought Mr. Whittington was a Muslim oil-producing nation.

The Talking Dog notes that the Dickster was so rattled he forgot to blame Democrats. Wow.

See also: Jane Hamsher and James Wolcott.

Update: Steve M knows what really happened.

Catching Up

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By now you don’t need me to tell you that THE story today is by Murray Waas, National Journal: “Cheney ‘Authorized’ Libby to Leak Classified Information.”

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been “authorized” by Cheney and other White House “superiors” in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein’s purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. …

… Libby testified to the grand jury that he had been authorized to share parts of the NIE with journalists in the summer of 2003 as part of an effort to rebut charges then being made by former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson that the Bush administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make a public case for war.

Jane Hamsher comments:

Whether it was legal for Cheney to declassify these documents or not for purely propaganda purposes is for legal experts preferably not named Victoria Toensig to debate. Given the fact that Cheney and Libby knew as of June 17, 2003 that the Niger uranium claims were bunk and Libby began this crusade with Judy Miller anyway on June 23, the service to which these documents were put remain safely outside of “ethical” territory.

Steve Soto:

Keep in mind this revelation comes days after Libby’s “faulty memory” defense was neutered when it was revealed that Cheney and Libby were aware in mid-June 2003 that the CIA had discredited the Niger claim, weeks before Libby began talking to reporters. Both of these taken together indicate what we have suspected all along: Cheney and Libby, as well as others in the White House, engaged in a payback campaign to destroy Joe Wilson and his wife in July 2003, even after they knew weeks before that the Niger story was about to unravel, and Congress had been told of such.

Andrew Sullivan:

So some intelligence matters are so important that the administration will not divulge them even to critical members of Congress. But others are leaked to journalists to win a political war. This is a pointed reminder that when the administration says it is withholding information to protect national security, a hefty dose of skepticism is in order. The same goes for their assurance that their wire-tapping has never been abused. Remind me again: at this point, why should we trust them?

Well, hell if I know, Andrew.

In other news, the President today reminded us how scared we’re supposed to be of terrorists by revealing details of a 2002 al Qaeda plot to slam an airplane into a Los Angeles tower. This is, I believe item #1 on the official White House list of foiled terrorist plots released last October. Certain details given by the President — the use of shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door, for example — have met with some skepticism. But, hey, if some guy could take apart the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch without anyone noticing, then why not shoe bombs?

Finally, this Associated Press story — “Reid Aided Abramoff Clients, Records Show” has been hailed on the Right Blogosphere as the Missing Link between Democrats and Jack Abramoff that they all fervently believed would be found. But Scott Shields at MyDD smells a smear:

The first clue was that Senator Reid has a long history of protecting gambling in Nevada from outside competition. He does, after all, represent Las Vegas. So the fact that he sought to keep Indian casinos from expanding off of their reservations, while I may not necessarily agree, makes sense. He didn’t need lobbyists telling him what to do on the issue, as he’d held that position long before they’d ever come knocking. But still… the article’s a long one. I wasn’t quite ready to dismiss it.

However,

The story totally lost credibility for me when it got to mentioning the Marianas Islands. By now, you’re probably aware of the fact that one of Abramoff’s pet projects was maintaining a low minimum wage in U.S. territories not subject to the federal minimum wage. This was of interest to the Republicans because manufacturers could exploit the territories’ low wages to essentially create a sweatshop environment without completely having to leave America. This AP story tries to imply that Reid was complicit in this plot.

But the AP story, as Josh Marshall notes, leaves out an important detail — there was no quid quo pro. No indication that Reid took any action to support Abramoff’s position. So Abramoff lobbying partners may indeed have billed hours for phone calls and meetings with Reid’s office, but it didn’t get ’em anything from Reid.

Of course, this detail will be lost on the Right Blogosphere. In the next few days they’ll persuade themselves that Senator Reid was Abramoff’s chief accomplice.

More great moments in journalism: MSNBC ran a headline “Top Democrat Reid Met Often With Abramoff” over this same AP story, which makes no claim Reid and Abramoff ever met at all.

Moron, Idiot, or Nefarious Bastard?

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Is Dick Cheney guilty of war crimes? Today former Colin Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson participated in a BBC radio program and said that is an “interesting question.”

“It is certainly a domestic crime to advocate terror, and I would suspect that it is, for whatever it’s worth, an international crime as well,” he told the programme.

Wilkerson accused Cheney of ignoring a decision by President Bush on the treatment of prisoners in the war on terror.

He said that there were two sides of the debate within the Bush administration over the treatment of prisoners.

Mr Powell and more dovish members had argued for sticking to the Geneva conventions, which prohibit the torture of detainees.

Meanwhile, the other side “essentially wanted to do away with all restrictions”.

Mr Bush agreed a compromise, that “Geneva would in fact govern all but al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda look-alike detainees”.

“What I’m saying is that, under the vice-president’s protection, the secretary of defence [Donald Rumsfeld] moved out to do what they wanted in the first place, even though the president had made a decision that was clearly a compromise,” Col Wilkerson said.

He said that he laid the blame on the issue of prisoner abuse and post-war planning for Iraq “pretty fairly and squarely” at Mr Cheney’s feet.

But what about Bush?

“I look at the relationship between Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld as being one that produced these two failures in particular, and I see that the president is not holding either of them accountable… so I have to lay some blame at his feet too,” he went on.

I think we’re seeing how much of a weenie Bush truly is. One some level he may realize that Dick and Rummy are screwups, but I think he’s afraid to try to be president without them.

Wilkerson said yesterday that President Bush was “too aloof, too distant from the details” of post-war planning. And much of the muck that we call “U.S. foreign policy” is the result of exploitation of that detatchment by underlings.

Anne Gearan of the Associated Press wrote,

In an Associated Press interview Monday, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides who argued that “the president of the United States is all-powerful,” and that the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant.

The foundation theory of the Bush Administration is, “Our shit don’t stink.” If you understand that’s where they are coming from, they almost make sense.

You’ll like this quote:

Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. Wilkerson said that Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because “otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.”

I’m seeing hands go up for “nefarious bastard.” But “fool” probably would work as well. I think it’s entirely possible that Cheney and Bush both believed their own hype about the dangers of Saddam and his mighty WMDs. If so, in a strict sense of the word, they didn’t lie. Bush is, I suspect, just too lazy and detatched to have questioned what his staffers put in front of him. And Cheney is just plain delusional.

I stumbled on this paper about delusional thinking —

One common misconception about delusions–reflected in the DSM-IV definition–is that the thinking processes of delusional individuals are defective, or different from those of normal people. In fact, research suggests that delusional people use the same rules of reasoning as everyone else. Indeed, once a normal individual forms a belief, he or she is also reluctant to change it, and will actively seek out confirmatory evidence (“confirmation bias”) and ignore contradictory evidence. Rather than making false inferences, then, some experts now believe that delusional individuals have different experiences from other people, and that their delusional beliefs stem from their attempts to understand these experiences. Thus, it might be more useful to conceptualize delusions as disorders of experience. Delusional individuals also tend to be more alert, and indeed hyperattentive to their environment, and to notice coincidences that other people would likely think of as trivial.

I don’t know about the “different experiences” part, but can’t you just see Cheney obsessively sniffing out anything, corroborated or not, that confirmed his beliefs about Saddam Hussein? Cheney’s are the actions of a delusional man. And he had enablers at the Pentagon Iraq Group who were just too eager to give Cheney what he was looking for. One big dysfunctional family.

Cheney cherry picked intelligence with a certainty born of delusion. Whatever confirmed Cheney’s beliefs were hyped, and whatever contradicted them were ignored.

In his BBC interview, Wilkerson indicated the Secretary of State must’ve had about the same prewar Iraq intelligence that the Senate did. That is to say, some critical parts were left out.

Mr Wilkerson told the BBC he had believed intelligence supported the claim Iraq had a WMD programme, and had then initially accepted the administration’s argument that the major western intelligence agencies had been fooled.

He said he had recently been troubled by disclosures that one key informant was unreliable, while the evidence for claims that Saddam Hussein had contacts with al-Qaida may have been obtained by torture and was the subject of internal dissent prior to the March 2003 US-led invasion.

Mr Wilkerson said a statement from an al-Qaida detainee that allowed Mr Powell to present “some pretty substantive contacts” between Iraq and al-Qaida to the UN security council was “obtained through interrogation techniques other than those authorised by [the] Geneva [convention].”

“More important than that, we know that there was a Defence Intelligence Agency dissent on that testimony even before Colin Powell made his presentation,” he told Today. “We never heard about that.”

Now an increasingly isolated Cheney is still pushing for torture, absolutely certain he is right and everyone else is wrong. No amount of empirical evidence would shake him, I suspect. Bush is isolated in his own bubble, in a “gray world of religious idealism.” And neither one of these guys has the mental clarity to make rational decisions.

Can we survive three more years like this?

See also : David Corn; transcript of BBC interview.

Dick the Dick Roundup

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There are a number of significant Dick Cheney articles on the web now, and I want to link them before they get stale. So, in no particular order and without further ado …

Frank Rich, New York Times, “Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt …”:

If Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney believe they were truthful in the run-up to the war, it’s easy for them to make their case. Instead of falsely claiming that they’ve been exonerated by two commissions that looked into prewar intelligence – neither of which addressed possible White House misuse and mischaracterization of that intelligence – they should just release the rest of the President’s Daily Briefs and other prewar documents that are now trickling out. Instead, incriminatingly enough, they are fighting the release of any such information, including unclassified documents found in post-invasion Iraq requested from the Pentagon by the pro-war, neocon Weekly Standard. As Scott Shane reported in The New York Times last month, Vietnam documents are now off limits, too: the National Security Agency won’t make public a 2001 historical report on how American officials distorted intelligence in 1964 about the Gulf of Tonkin incident for fear it might “prompt uncomfortable comparisons” between the games White Houses played then and now to gin up wars. Continue reading →

What’s Up With This?

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CNN reports that today Dick Cheney praised Congressman John Murtha and called him a patriot.

Vice President Dick Cheney continued the Bush administration’s efforts Monday to pull back on attacks against a decorated war veteran who called for the near-term withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq….

… He used the top of his speech — televised live by CNN and other news networks — to praise U.S. Rep. John Murtha, “my friend and former colleague.” The 17-term Pennsylvania Democrat made news last week when he called for U.S. forces to leave Iraq over a six-month period.

“I disagree with Jack and believe his proposal would not serve the best interest of this nation. But he’s a good man, a Marine, a patriot, and he’s taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion,” Cheney said.

President Bush similarly praised Murtha on Sunday while on his trip to Asia. …

… Bush’s and Cheney’s comments were a far cry from initial comments by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who last week accused Murtha of “endorsing the policies of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party.”

What do you want to bet the Bushies saw some poll numbers showing that Murtha is more popular than they are?

Not Like a Virgin

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It’s kind of like virginity. It is hard to get back.” — John Zogby on President Bush regaining public trust

Steven Thomma of Knight Ridder writes that “Bush has lost his aura of invincibility” and Republicans are losing cohesion and direction. “‘There’s been an erosion of power at high levels,’ California Institute of Technology’s Alvarez said. “They’re not able to focus on maintaining the kind of cohesion that has been their hallmark since 2000. They’re not able to put the energy into cracking the whip.'”

House Republicans looked back in form last night as they pulled a political stunt to block serious discussion of Congressman Murtha’s Iraq redeployment proposal. However, seems to me yesterday’s episode in cowardice and misdirection could easily backfire on the Republicans. In spite of the GOP’s shameless mockery of his serious proposal, I don’t believe John Murtha is going away. Much depends on whether Dems get some spine and back him up. Early yesterday that looked iffy, but last night’s House debacle may have pissed off enough of ’em that maybe they’ll finally form a line of battle and start fighting together.

One of Congressman’s Murtha’s points, that Iraqis are not going to “stand up” as long as we’re there to do the standing for ’em, has a nice “tough love” ring to it that could be very appealing to a lot of Americans. It even sounds kinda conservative; it makes me think of old conservative arguments about welfare dependency — that some people won’t get serious about working as long as they can live on the public dole. Considering that at least 60 percent of the public has turned against the war, I think Murtha’s is a much stronger argument than Bush’s mushy “As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down,” which leaves control of when we leave in the hands of Iraqis. Continue reading →

More Pitiful Than Persuasive

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The Bigus Dickus himself came out swinging yesterday against critics who say the administration misled us into war in Iraq. Michael A. Fletcher and Peter Baker write in today’s Washington Post:

President Bush and Vice President Cheney lashed out again against Democratic senators who have questioned the handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq, with the vice president accusing critics of engaging in “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.”

Speaking before a Washington dinner of the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, a conservative research organization, Cheney said last night that Democrats who say they were misled by the administration are “making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war.” The criticism, Cheney said, threatens to undermine the morale of U.S. troops while “a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie.”

I’d normally feel obligated to wade through The Dick’s rhetoric and refute it. Fortunately, many others have already done this job, including — praise be! — some reporters.

James Kuhnhenn and Jonathan S. Landay of Knight Ridder write that in defending its old lies, the administration has come up with some new ones. The reporters present each of the administration’s arguments and knock them down. I’m not going to paste it here; just go read it. And bookmark it.

Sidney Blumenthal writes in Salon that Bush “has retreated from the ruins of his grandiose agenda into a defense of his past.” And in the past few days Bush, and now Cheney, have been caught up in a “paroxysm of revenge.”

In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, Bush was the man of action who never looked back, openly dismissive of history. When asked shortly afterward by Bob Woodward how he would be judged on Iraq, Bush replied, “History. We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.” But his obsessive interest in the subject is not posthumous. The Senate’s decision last week to launch an investigation into the administration’s role in prewar disinformation, after the Democrats forced the issue in a rare secret session, has provoked a furious presidential reaction.

Josh Marshall writes that the administration’s counterattack is right out of Karl Rove’s playbook:

How do you go after a decorated war veteran running against a quasi-draft-dodger? Hit him hard for cowardice and disloyalty to country.

How do you knock out a respected juvenile court judge? Spread rumors that he’s a pedophile.

You can see pretty clearly that Karl Rove is back in the saddle because what we’re seeing now is straight from the Karl Rove play book. You throw them off balance by charging directly into their line of fire.

When the veil is finally being lifted on your history of lies, hit hard against the other side for ‘rewriting history’ or trying to deceive the public.

This strategy has served the Bushies well for many years, but I don’t believe it will work this time.

Oh, the Big Lie strategy will work on the bitter-enders; the hard-core 37 percent 34 percent who still believe, after all that’s happened, that Bush is doing a good job. These people would believe in the Tooth Fairy if Bush made her part of his attack on the Dems. But now a solid majority — 57 percent last I checked — of American adults believe that Bush deceived them into going to war. I don’t think screaming at them and calling them traitors for their lack of blind faith will bring them back to Bush’s side.

Robert Scheer writes in The Nation (web only) that “Bush now sounds increasingly Nixonian as he basically calls the majority of the country traitors for noticing he tricked us.”

Here’s a nice little detail from Scheer:

… the idea that individual senators and members of Congress had the same access to even a fraction of the raw intelligence as the President of the United States is just a lie on its face–it is a simple matter of security clearances, which are not distributed equally.

It was enormously telling, in fact, that the only part of the Senate which did see the un-sanitized National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq–the Republican-led Senate Select Intelligence Committee–shockingly voted in the fall of 2002 against the simple authorization of force demanded by a Republican President. Panicked, the warmongers in the White House and Pentagon pressured CIA Director George Tenet to rush release to the entire Hill a very short “summary” of the careful NIE, which made Hussein seem incalculably more dangerous than the whole report indicated.

And, of course, in recent days we’ve learned much of this “intelligence” had been flagged as untrustworthy by the Defense Intelligence Agency several months earlier –a flag the Senate never saw.

Even Richard Cohen catches on now and then:

In one of the most intellectually incoherent major speeches ever delivered by a minor President, George W. Bush last week blamed “some Democrats and anti-war critics” for changing their minds about the war in Iraq and now saying they were deceived. “It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began,” the President said. Yes, sir, but it is even more deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how history was rewritten in the first place.

It is the failure to acknowledge this that is so troubling about Bush and others in his administration. Yes, the President is right: Foreign intelligence services also thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; Saddam Hussein simply ignored more than a dozen UN resolutions demanding that he reopen his country to arms inspectors.

We can endlessly debate the facts. More important, though, is the mind-set of those in the administration, from the President on down, who had those facts – or, as we shall see, none at all – and mangled them in the cause of the war.

For example, the insistence that Saddam was somehow linked to 9/11 tells you that to Bush and his people, the facts did not matter. It did not matter that Mohamed Atta never met with Iraqis in Prague. It did not matter that Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was finding no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program. None of that mattered to Vice President Cheney, a fibber without peer in the realm, who warned of a “reconstituted” nuclear weapons program, promoted the nonexistent Prague meeting and went after legitimate critics. “We will not hesitate to discredit you,” Cheney told ElBaradei and Hans Blix, the other important UN inspector. ElBaradei recently won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The President’s recent speech conflates all sorts of terrorist incidents – neglecting that they are specific to their regions and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda. Every bombing somehow becomes an attack on Western values.

Like his pathetic attempts to re-create a “bullhorn moment” after the Katrina disaster, Bush’s desperation to take back the narrative on how we got into his war is more pitiful than persuasive.

Update: See “In Lawsuit, Team Bush Swore Saddam Was Behind 9/11” at DU.

Update update: Big MUST READ and big smooch to the Heretik for finding it … read about Iraq War deceptions by Stephen Zunes in Foreign Policy in Focus.

Adventures With Dick

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While we’re tripping down Memory Lane today … do you remember Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force? If not, quick refresher: Organized in January 2001 about ten minutes after Bush’s first inauguration, the task force was charged with writing the Bush Administration’s energy policy and met in secret. The Dick refused even to divulge the identity of task force members. In May 2001, the Bush Administration announced policies that appeared to be written by oil industry executives for the benefit of the oil industry. Which, of course, they were.

And now the Veep, softened up somewhat by the Libby indictment and the Bush Administration’s unpopularity, could be vulnerable to more charges.

Dana Milbank and Justin Blum write in today’s Washington Post:

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney’s energy task force in 2001 — something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

These guys lied to Congress? Isn’t that a crime? Oh, wait, they weren’t sworn in, were they? Committee chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) denied a motion to swear them in and charged ahead with the proceedings. Makes you wonder if Stevens knew they were about to lie (ya think?). Still, they may be in trouble:

The executives were not under oath when they testified, so they are not vulnerable to charges of perjury; committee Democrats had protested the decision by Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) not to swear in the executives. But a person can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years for making “any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation” to Congress.

We should all email our senators about this.

But the executives are not the first task force participants who lied to Congress. The first was the Big Dick himself.

Back in August 2003, John Dean wrote for Findlaw:

This month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) – the investigative and auditing arm of Congress – issued a report that contains some startling revelations. Though they are couched in very polite language, they are bombshells nonetheless.

The report – entitled “Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy” – and its accompanying Chronology strongly imply that the Administration has, in effect, been paying off its heavy-hitting energy industry contributors. It also very strongly implies that Vice President Dick Cheney lied to Congress.

Right; the first thing on BushCo’s mind after the 2001 inauguration was to find ways to reward the loyal industrialists whose fundraising helped made Bush’s “victory” possible. And energy policy was a hot-button issue at the time because of the ongoing California energy crisis, a crisis that was in large part caused by Enron manipulation. And by some coincidence, George W. Bush flew to Washington for his inauguration in an Enron jet. But I digress. Let’s go back to John Dean:

The Background: How Cheney Stonewalled GAO

In a sense, this story begins during the close 2000 Presidential election, when energy industry special interests were big-dollar contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. (In 2004’s re-election campaign, they will doubtless be called upon once again.)

After he was elected – and very much beholden to those contributors – Bush put Cheney in charge of developing the National Energy Policy. To do so, Cheney convened an Energy Task Force. (Details about the Task Force can be found in my prior column.)

Cheney’s selection alone was ominous: He had headed Halliburton, just the kind of big-dollar Republican energy industry contributor that had helped Bush-Cheney win the election in the first place.

The Energy Task Force might have operated in absolute secrecy, were it not for GAO. GAO is a nonpartisan agency with statutory authority to investigate “all matters related to the receipt, disbursement, and use of public money,” so that it can judge the expenditures and effectiveness of public programs, and report to Congress on what it finds.

To fulfill its statutory responsibility, GAO sought documents from Vice-President Cheney relating to Energy Task Force expenditures. But in a literally unprecedented move, the White House said no.

On August 2, 2001, Vice President Cheney sent a letter – personally signed by him – to Congress demanding, in essence, that it get the Comptroller off his back. In the letter, he claimed that his staff had already provided “documents responsive to the Comptroller General’s inquiry concerning the costs associated with the [Energy task force’s] work.” As I will explain later, this turned out to be a lie.

In the end, GAO had to go to court to try to get the documents to which it plainly was entitled. On December 9, 2002, GAO lost in court – though, as I argued in a prior column, the decision was incorrect.

Then, on February 9, 2003, the Comptroller General announced GAO’s decision not to appeal. He said he feared that another adverse decision would cause the agency to lose even more power, more permanently. Several news accounts suggest that it was the Republican leadership of Congress that stopped the appeal.

There’s corruption inside of corruption inside of corruption in this story. It just doesn’t stop.

The GAO, thus stonewalled, issued a report that, says John Dean, revealed fibs on the part of The Dick. “The Report shows that Cheney’s claim to Congress, in the August 2, 2001 letter, that responsive documents were provided to GAO, was plainly false,” wrote Dean. From Dean’s account, it appears that the Veep sent a lot of bogus paper (including phone bills, columns of unidentified figures, and a pizza receipt) to the GAO instead of documents requested. And he got away with this.

Maybe.

Let’s go back to today’s WaPo article:

The task force’s activities attracted complaints from environmentalists, who said they were shut out of the task force discussions while corporate interests were present. The meetings were held in secret and the White House refused to release a list of participants. The task force was made up primarily of Cabinet-level officials. Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club unsuccessfully sued to obtain the records.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who posed the question about the task force, said he will ask the Justice Department today to investigate. “The White House went to great lengths to keep these meetings secret, and now oil executives may be lying to Congress about their role in the Cheney task force,” Lautenberg said.

Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on the document. She said that the courts have upheld “the constitutional right of the president and vice president to obtain information in confidentiality.”

I believe that is court, singular. U.S. District Judge John Bates dismissed the GAO’s suit in December 2002, and as exlained above the GAO decided not to appeal. John Dean and Rep. Henry Waxman, among others, believed strongly the opinion was incorrect.

The Congressman’s web site maintains lots of good background material on the Energy Task Force and the BushCo relationship with Big Oil.

John Dean was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last week, explaining why he believed The Dick will resign after next year’s midterm elections, if not sooner. He explains his reasons in this Findlaw column on the Libby indictment. Dean argues that Patrick Fitzgerald is ultimately after Dick the Dick for violation of the Espionage Act, and Libby’s obstruction blocked charges against Cheney. After presenting the legal thinking behind this argument, Dean concludes:

It has been reported that Libby’s attorney tried to work out a plea deal. But Fitzgerald insisted on jail time, so Libby refused to make a deal. It appears that only Libby, in addition to Cheney, knows what Cheney knew, and when he knew, and why he knew, and what he did with his knowledge.

Fitzgerald has clearly thrown a stacked indictment at Libby, laying it on him as heavy as the law and propriety permits. He has taken one continuous false statement, out of several hours of interrogation, and made it into a five-count indictment. It appears he is trying to flip Libby – that is, to get him to testify against Cheney — and not without good reason. Cheney is the big fish in this case.

Will Libby flip? Unlikely. Neither Cheney nor Libby (I believe) will be so foolish as to crack a deal. And Libby probably (and no doubt correctly) assumes that Cheney – a former boss with whom he has a close relationship — will (at the right time and place) help Libby out, either with a pardon or financially, if necessary. Libby’s goal, meanwhile, will be to stall going to trial as long as possible, so as not to hurt Republicans’ showing in the 2006 elections.

So if Libby can take the heat for a time, he and his former boss (and friend) may get through this. But should Republicans lose control of the Senate (where they are blocking all oversight of this administration), I predict Cheney will resign “for health reasons.“

And now the Energy Task Force deal may be about to bite him, too. He can run, but he can’t hide.