McClatchy was one of the very few news outlets to challenge the Bush/Cheeny lies in the build up to the war. Two McClatchy reporters, Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, actually checked the facts in Cheney's speech. No surprise to most of us, while Cheney was stoking fear and condoning torture, he played fast and loose with the truth. And, Landay and Strobel used facts to rebut Cheney:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.The article easily deconstructs a series of Cheney's errors -- he's so blatant. There was no way Cheney could give a speech without invoking again his most famous lie -- the non-existent ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. And, he's still desperate to convince us that torture works. Cheney had detainees tortured to "prove" the Iraq/al Qaeda relationship:
In his address to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy organization in Washington, Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."
He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."
In a statement April 21, however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."
Cheney said that "the key to any strategy is accurate intelligence," but the Bush administration ignored warnings from experts in the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Department of Energy and other agencies, and used false or exaggerated intelligence supplied by Iraqi exile groups and others to help make its case for the 2003 invasion.There is, of course, this one:
Cheney made no mention of al Qaida operative Ali Mohamed al Fakheri, who's known as Ibn Sheikh al Libi, whom the Bush administration secretly turned over to Egypt for interrogation in January 2002. While allegedly being tortured by Egyptian authorities, Libi provided false information about Iraq's links with al Qaida, which the Bush administration used despite doubts expressed by the DIA.
A state-run Libyan newspaper said Libi committed suicide recently in a Libyan jail.
Cheney said that, in assessing the security environment after 9-11, the Bush team had to take into account "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."Cheney didn't "explictly" make the claim about Saddam and al Qaeda again, but he sure intimated it. Cheney never, ever let that one go.
Cheney didn't explicitly repeat the contention he made repeatedly in office: that Saddam cooperated with al Qaida, a linkage that U.S. intelligence officials and numerous official inquiries have rebutted repeatedly.
The late Iraqi dictator's association with terrorists vacillated and was mostly aimed at quashing opponents and critics at home and abroad.
The last State Department report on international terrorism to be released before 9-11 said that Saddam's regime "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President (George H.W.) Bush in 1993 in Kuwait."
A Pentagon study released last year, based on a review of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the U.S.-led invasion, concluded that while Saddam supported militant Palestinian groups — the late terrorist Abu Nidal found refuge in Baghdad, at least until Saddam had him killed — the Iraqi security services had no "direct operational link" with al Qaida.
It would hurt the heads of most D.C. reporter-types to read this McClatchy article. CNN's John King and NBC's David Gregory come to mind. But, it should me mandatory reading now that Cheney is back. He's still a liar.
And, again, Cheney and Bush weren't assessing the national security environment before 9/11. That's why bin Laden pulled off the horrific attacks. Our leaders weren't protecting us.
