Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld - The Terrorists' Greatest Allies
I am not going to comment on Stephen Harper's gushing press conference with George W. Bush yesterday. Alright, I lied. I will say that Canada just went far down the list of countries to be respected by the United States Government. Who could respect a county whose Prime Minister is so obsequious and fawning? As I mentioned earlier today in another forum, it looked like Harper was a geeky undergraduate who had finally been invited to rush the fraternity.
Frontline, on PBS, does some of the best investigative television journalism in the United States. The depth of its access and analysis makes 60 Minutes look like People magazine. On 20 June, Frontline ran a story called The Dark Side, which investigated the civil war in the Bush administration between the Cheney-Rumsfeld junta and, basically, everyone else. If you get a chance, go to Frontline's website at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/ and watch the show.
The gist is that Cheney and Rumsfeld have set up a shadow administration within the Bush administration. They have staffed appointments in the White House, CIA and State Department with their loyalists and use the Defence Department as their personal powerbase. In the aftermath of September 11th, Rumsfeld was humiliated to learn that the CIA could respond to the Taliban in Afghanistan in a matter of hours while the US military had no plan and was left scrambling. Cheney, who had essentially grabbed power on September 11th while George W. Bush was hiding over the Midwest in Air Force One, was humiliated when Bush gave the task of defeating the Taliban to George Tenet's CIA. Even more humiliating was the way that the CIA took down the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in a matter of weeks.
In a fit of pique which is truly breathtaking, Rumsfeld dragged his feet to avoid cooperating with or helping the CIA. The result was that Osama Bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora when the US Army failed to show up to seal off the area. As you may recall, he remains at large to this day.
Cheney and Rumsfeld are nothing if not ruthless. They may have lost the battle of Afghanistan, but won the war against Tenet and the CIA by shifting attention to Iraq and persuading Bush to put the CIA under the direction of the Defence Department. By way of explanation, Cheney and Rumsfeld apparently have a profound distrust for the CIA going back to the Iranian Revolution in 1978. Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence unit within the Defence Department - staffed by partisan Republican loyalists - and Cheney gave this brains trust the access to secret intelligence that few people outside the White House have ever had. The result was that the brains trust used stories about Iraqi links to Al Qaeda to justify the invasion of Iraq. Even the CIA thought these reports -- most of them from foreign intelligence agencies -- were spurious.
There is a particularly chilling moment where one CIA official recounts being confronted by Scooter Libby outside of the Capitol building and being told to shut up about his doubts over the authenticity of these reports. The implication is quite clear: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Libby and their army of neo-con hacks did not care whether the stories were true or not. They wanted political ammunition to use to persuade Congress to authorize war. Remember, the first three letters in the word congress are "c", "o" and "n". They also wanted to take Colin Powell off his game by neutralizing his bid to obtain approval from the United Nations. The implication of Powell's subsequent "retirement" is also clear: having been conned once by the Rumsfeld intelligence service, he did not feel like being made a stooge a second time in Bush Administration Part II.
Where does Bush fit into all of this? I have often argued that he is either a very smooth operator or a figurehead boob. Frontline is quite clear that Cheney is the most powerful (and, consequently, dangerous) Vice President in American history. The fact that his partisans are scattered throughout the administration implies that he is the power behind the throne. What is truly chilling is Frontline's backgrounder on the relationship between Cheney and Rumsfeld, which stretches back to the Nixon administration and includes their successful efforts to oust people like Henry Kissinger from the inner circles of the Ford administration.
Remember that guy in the X-Files who was always smoking cigarettes and controlling things behind the scenes? To this day he gets Christmas cards from Cheney and Rumsfeld.
These men are calculating, powerful and vicious. There is strong evidence that they are war criminals, friends of international terrorism, and just plain old-fashioned criminals. Whether they have driven America off the rails or not remains to be seen.
Frontline, on PBS, does some of the best investigative television journalism in the United States. The depth of its access and analysis makes 60 Minutes look like People magazine. On 20 June, Frontline ran a story called The Dark Side, which investigated the civil war in the Bush administration between the Cheney-Rumsfeld junta and, basically, everyone else. If you get a chance, go to Frontline's website at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/ and watch the show.
The gist is that Cheney and Rumsfeld have set up a shadow administration within the Bush administration. They have staffed appointments in the White House, CIA and State Department with their loyalists and use the Defence Department as their personal powerbase. In the aftermath of September 11th, Rumsfeld was humiliated to learn that the CIA could respond to the Taliban in Afghanistan in a matter of hours while the US military had no plan and was left scrambling. Cheney, who had essentially grabbed power on September 11th while George W. Bush was hiding over the Midwest in Air Force One, was humiliated when Bush gave the task of defeating the Taliban to George Tenet's CIA. Even more humiliating was the way that the CIA took down the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in a matter of weeks.
In a fit of pique which is truly breathtaking, Rumsfeld dragged his feet to avoid cooperating with or helping the CIA. The result was that Osama Bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora when the US Army failed to show up to seal off the area. As you may recall, he remains at large to this day.
Cheney and Rumsfeld are nothing if not ruthless. They may have lost the battle of Afghanistan, but won the war against Tenet and the CIA by shifting attention to Iraq and persuading Bush to put the CIA under the direction of the Defence Department. By way of explanation, Cheney and Rumsfeld apparently have a profound distrust for the CIA going back to the Iranian Revolution in 1978. Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence unit within the Defence Department - staffed by partisan Republican loyalists - and Cheney gave this brains trust the access to secret intelligence that few people outside the White House have ever had. The result was that the brains trust used stories about Iraqi links to Al Qaeda to justify the invasion of Iraq. Even the CIA thought these reports -- most of them from foreign intelligence agencies -- were spurious.
There is a particularly chilling moment where one CIA official recounts being confronted by Scooter Libby outside of the Capitol building and being told to shut up about his doubts over the authenticity of these reports. The implication is quite clear: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Libby and their army of neo-con hacks did not care whether the stories were true or not. They wanted political ammunition to use to persuade Congress to authorize war. Remember, the first three letters in the word congress are "c", "o" and "n". They also wanted to take Colin Powell off his game by neutralizing his bid to obtain approval from the United Nations. The implication of Powell's subsequent "retirement" is also clear: having been conned once by the Rumsfeld intelligence service, he did not feel like being made a stooge a second time in Bush Administration Part II.
Where does Bush fit into all of this? I have often argued that he is either a very smooth operator or a figurehead boob. Frontline is quite clear that Cheney is the most powerful (and, consequently, dangerous) Vice President in American history. The fact that his partisans are scattered throughout the administration implies that he is the power behind the throne. What is truly chilling is Frontline's backgrounder on the relationship between Cheney and Rumsfeld, which stretches back to the Nixon administration and includes their successful efforts to oust people like Henry Kissinger from the inner circles of the Ford administration.
Remember that guy in the X-Files who was always smoking cigarettes and controlling things behind the scenes? To this day he gets Christmas cards from Cheney and Rumsfeld.
These men are calculating, powerful and vicious. There is strong evidence that they are war criminals, friends of international terrorism, and just plain old-fashioned criminals. Whether they have driven America off the rails or not remains to be seen.
posted by Rob Stewart | 10:37 AM
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