Cheney on Iraq...

[Edi]

An interesting article on Cheney's interview on Iraq, by The Washington Post. Bolded emphasis is mine.

Bush Team Stands Firm on Iraq Policy

By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 15, 2003; Page A01

Vice President Cheney, keynoting an aggressive defense by the Bush administration of its Iraq policy, rejected the full range of criticism of U.S. actions in Iraq and said there is no reason to "think that the strategy is flawed or needs to be changed."

In a rare television interview yesterday, Cheney expanded on an effort by President Bush and top aides to argue that there should be no further changes in Iraq policy despite bipartisan and international calls for different approaches. He declared "major success, major progress" in Iraq, said most of the country is "stable and quiet" and asserted that Americans are viewed as "liberators" there.

The vice president offered an unqualified defense of virtually all administration actions leading up to the war in March and its aftermath, even as the administration has opted to seek a U.N. imprimatur for the occupation after five months of resisting that. Cheney said the administration did not underestimate the financial cost, the resistance or the troop strength needed to pacify Iraq, and he said that prewar allegations about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction would be vindicated.

Further, Cheney argued that new evidence found in Iraq proved more ties between Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization, and he argued that Iraq was the "geographic base" for the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "If we're successful in Iraq . . . then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11," he said in an hour-long interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Cheney's rare appearance -- he almost never takes questions from reporters and had not granted such a television interview in six months -- comes as the public is expressing less faith in Bush and his Iraq policies. Cheney added his voice to other administration officials such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Bush himself to revive public support, weakened by rising fatalities, a failure to find illegal weapons stockpiles in Iraq and a higher-than-expected request from Bush for an additional $87 billion for military operations and rebuilding efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Administration officials said they think that any acknowledgment of a mistake only encourages critics, as when Bush included a suspect allegation in his State of the Union address that Hussein sought nuclear material in Africa -- despite CIA warnings not to cite the information. Cheney's vigorous defense of the administration's actions went beyond the current debate to Bush's record on jobs, tax cuts and the deficit. He said it would be a "serious mistake" to freeze the tax cuts for the top 1 percent of earners to pay for the Iraq war, as some Democrats have urged.

The vice president offered cautionary remarks yesterday. He said that he would "have to assume" that there will be another terrorist attack in the United States, and that he would not rule out requests for more spending in Iraq beyond the more than $150 billion spent or requested to date. While calling the effort "very successful" and asserting that "we're well on our way . . . to achieving our objective," he warned: "So how long will it take? I don't know. I can't say. I don't think anybody can say with absolute certainty at this point."

Cheney, discussing the situation in Iraq, where 158 American troops have been killed and 856 wounded since Bush declared major combat over on May 1, said, "We're making major progress" against the resistance, adding that there are fewer attacks against U.S. troops. Attacks have shifted to "soft," non-military targets.

"The fact is, most of Iraq today is relatively stable and quiet," Cheney said. He defended his earlier prediction that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators, arguing that "I think the majority of Iraqis are thankful for the fact that the United States is there."

Cheney vigorously defended the level of U.S. troops in Iraq at a time when lawmakers have said more than the current 130,000 American and 20,000 foreign troops are needed. Asked about his earlier dismissal of Gen. Eric K. Shinseki's prewar view that an occupation force would have to be "on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers," Cheney replied: "I still remain convinced that the judgment that we will need, quote, 'several hundred thousand for several years,' is not valid.

In fact, Shinseki had not mentioned "several years" in his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 25.

Similarly, Cheney argued that the administration did not understate the cost of the war in Iraq, saying it did not put a precise figure on it. Asked about previous assertions by then-White House Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. that the war would cost $50 billion to $60 billion and that a figure in the range of $100 billion to $200 billion was too high, Cheney replied: "Well, that might have been, but I don't know what his basis was for making that judgment."

On the subject of Iraq's link to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney connected al Qaeda to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by saying one of the participants was Iraqi and returned there. Newly searched Iraqi intelligence files in Baghdad, Cheney said, showed "this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven."

He then revived the possibility that Mohamed Atta, who led the Sept. 11 attacks, allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Baghdad five months before the attack. It is a story Cheney had repeated during a March 16 appearance on "Meet the Press" and one that his aides tried to have added to Powell's presentation in February at the United Nations.

"We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it," Cheney said yesterday. "We just don't know."

An FBI investigation concluded that Atta was apparently in Florida at the time of the alleged meeting, and the CIA has always doubted it took place. Czech authorities, who first mentioned the alleged meeting in October 2001 to U.S. officials, have since said they no longer are certain the individual in the video of the supposed meeting was Atta. Meanwhile, in July, the U.S. military captured the Iraqi intelligence officer who was supposed to have met Atta and has not obtained confirmation from him.

Cheney also seemed to broaden the intelligence on other alleged al Qaeda connections with Hussein, saying, "The Iraqi government or the Iraqi intelligence service had a relationship with al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s." Up to now, administration officials and CIA documents have said there had been eight meetings, primarily in the early 1990s, when bin Laden was in Sudan.

Cheney was less forthcoming when asked about Saudi Arabia's ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. "I don't want to speculate," he said, adding that Sept. 11 is "over with now, it's done, it's history and we can put it behind us."

On the subject of Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, which have not been discovered, Cheney said he still believes chemical weapons are "buried inside [Hussein's] civilian infrastructure." Of the weapons search, Cheney said, "We've got a very good man now in charge of the operation, David Kay, who used to run UNSCOM."

Kay, who is heading the 1,200-person search group, did not in fact run UNSCOM, the U.N. Special Commission that directed inspections in Iraq from 1991 through 1998; he was for one year the chief inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which handled the nuclear portion of those investigations for UNSCOM.

As evidence that Hussein had "reconstituted" his nuclear weapons program, as Cheney had said before the war, the vice president cited Hussein's prewar possession of "500 tons of uranium." But the material was low-grade uranium, the waste product of a nuclear reactor unusable for weapons production without sophisticated processing that Iraq could not do.

Cheney also spoke of a "a gentleman" who had 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." The man, Iraqi scientist Mahdi Obeidi, had denied that the nuclear program had been reconstituted after 1991.

Cheney said that two trucks found in northern Iraq in July were "mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing a capacity for an attack." The CIA report on the trucks said their "most likely use" was for biological weapons, though other scientists who have studied them in Baghdad, including the late British scientist David Kelly, doubted that finding.

Cheney also defended the administration's use of the claim that Iraq had sought to acquire uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons. The White House has acknowledged the information was suspect and challenged by the CIA, and it has said it should not have been in Bush's State of the Union address. But Cheney said a British investigation last week "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 Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee said that the documents its intelligence service obtained on uranium are being re-investigated and that the judgment that such a thing had occurred was "reasonable."
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 15, 2003

**************************

[SirNitram]

Wonder what color the sky on his planet is.

[Tsyroc]

Wonder what color the sky on his planet is.

Isn't he usually hiding in a cave somewhere?

[Frank Hipper]

Cheney was less forthcoming when asked about Saudi Arabia's ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. "I don't want to speculate," he said, adding that Sept. 11 is "over with now, it's done, it's history and we can put it behind us."

It's done, it's history, and we can put it behind us, eh?

I'm chilled to the core by that statement.


For Cheney, of all the fucking people in the godamned country, to be urging us to move on when faced with questions about Saudi Arabia and Al-Quaeda!
What the fuck?
Why the fuck didn't he just say they were citizens acting on their own? Is he so fucking stupid that he can't cover his unease any better than to say, in so many words, "that's nothing for you to be concerned about"?
Did sheer arrogance bring that out of him? This administration is becoming more of a caricature with every press release......
No wonder he doesn't give interviews much, he's got his fucking foot in his mouth half the godamned time!

[Edi]

Cheney was less forthcoming when asked about Saudi Arabia's ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. "I don't want to speculate," he said, adding that Sept. 11 is "over with now, it's done, it's history and we can put it behind us."

It's done, it's history, and we can put it behind us, eh?

I almost couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that myself, but fortunately the rest of the article before that point had managed to brace me and acted as a sort of cushion for it, but it was still shocking.

I'm chilled to the core by that statement.

Most people would be, I think. I certainly didn't see it coming, and coming right on the heels of the second anniversary of the NYC terrorist attacks, it's insensitive, hard-hearted, callous and disrespectful in the extreme, a direct insult to the memory of the victims and a slap on the face for their families. It certainly makes people wonder if Cheney has something to hide, especially with 28 pages of the 9/11 report that directly related to Saudi Arabia blacked out of the public release for "security reasons". I'm not sure I want to know what happens when Stravo reads this thread, we're probably going to see a mushroom cloud over the N&P forum....

For Cheney, of all the fucking people in the godamned country, to be urging us to move on when faced with questions about Saudi Arabia and Al-Quaeda!
What the fuck?

Of course, it wouldn't do to examine the relations between the current administration and the Saudi royal family in anything like a transparent manner, never mind Cheney's role in Halliburton and Halliburton's ties to to Saudi Arabia. No sir, you just keep looking at Iraq and swallowing the party line, there's a good citizen...

Why the fuck didn't he just say they were citizens acting on their own? Is he so fucking stupid that he can't cover his unease any better than to say, in so many words, "that's nothing for you to be concerned about"?

I don't know what the fuck the man was (or more probably, wasn't) thinking, but I strongly suspect that there is no way that comment can be put in favorable light, no matter what justifications and excuses someone might want to drum up.

Did sheer arrogance bring that out of him? This administration is becoming more of a caricature with every press release......

And not even a very benign caricature at that either...

No wonder he doesn't give interviews much, he's got his fucking foot in his mouth half the godamned time!

Try both feet and all the time, if this is typical of Cheney...

I'd love to see him try to explain himself in person to some of the people who lost friends and family in he WTC attack, they'd probably tear him limb from limb.

Edi

[Vympel]

Regarding the alleged trailers of mass destruction it should be noted that it wasn't just British scientists, but also DIA engineers who disputed the CIA's original finding- the statement that there was 'no other plausible legitimate use' also, not surprisingly, complete bullshit (lacking key components and being practically a tin can)- back when this story was first being talked about (or around near then) I posted the analysis that showed why they made piss-poor 'bioweapons' labs. They're hyrdogen generators for the system Marconi sold them in 1987.

[Alex Moon]

Cheney was less forthcoming when asked about Saudi Arabia's ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. "I don't want to speculate," he said, adding that Sept. 11 is "over with now, it's done, it's history and we can put it behind us."

It's done, it's history, and we can put it behind us, eh?

I'm chilled to the core by that statement.

That statement was apparently Dowdified.

See here. Here's MSNBC's transcript of the full interview.Link

[/url]

[Alex Moon]

Here's the full Cheney quote

MR. RUSSERT: There are reports that the investigation Congress did does show a link between the Saudi government and the hijackers but that it will not be released to the public.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t know want to speculate on that, Tim, partly because I was involved in reviewing those pages. It was the judgment of our senior intelligence officials, both CIA and FBI that that material needed to remain classified. At some point, we may be able to declassify it, but there are ongoing investigations that might be affected by that release, and for that reason, we kept it classified. The committee knows what’s in there. They helped to prepare it. So it hasn’t been kept secret from the Congress, but from the standpoint of our ongoing investigations, we needed to do that.
One of the things this points out that’s important for us to understand—so there’s this great temptation to look at these events as discreet events. We got hit on 9/11. So we can go and investigate it. It’s over with now.
It’s done. It’s history and put it behind us.
From our perspective, trying to deal with this continuing campaign of terror, if you will, the war on terror that we’re engaged in, this is a continuing enterprise. The people that were involved in some of those activities before 9/11 are still out there. We learn more and more as we capture people, detain people, get access to records and so forth that this is a continuing enterprise and, therefore, we do need to be careful when we look at things like 9/11, the commission report from 9/11, not to jeopardize our capacity to deal with this threat going forward in the interest of putting that information that’s interesting that relates to the period of time before that. These are continuing requirements on our part, and we have to be sensitive to that.

[TrailerParkJawa]

Cheney was less forthcoming when asked about Saudi Arabia's ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. "I don't want to speculate," he said, adding that Sept. 11 is "over with now, it's done, it's history and we can put it behind us."

It's done, it's history, and we can put it behind us, eh?

I'm chilled to the core by that statement.

This shocked me, although it does not surprise me. I sounds like a
statement from a man who is caught in a corner and does not know where to go. These guys wanted to go after Iraq to change the face of the middle east. 9-11, WMDS', etc where just excuse they thought the public would buy into.

[Stravo]

Amazing isn't it? What you can do with a completely out of context quote. I'm no fan of this administrations keystone kops handling of the occupation but at the same time you see the media bias that is just waiting with salivatating mouths for any stumbling by the adminstration and if they can't find one, hell we'll make one up.

[Alex Moon]

Yay! The Washington Post has posted a correction about the article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Sep15.html

A Sept. 15 article on Vice President Cheney's appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" mischaracterized the vice president's response to a question about releasing information on Saudi Arabia's ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. The article quoted Cheney as saying, "I don't want to speculate" about the ties, and said that the vice president went on to say that Sept. 11 is "over with now, it's done, it's history and we can put it behind us." The article implied that Cheney agreed with this point of view. In fact, in his full remarks, the vice president took the opposite view and argued that it is important, in discussing alleged Saudi connections to the hijackers, not to release information that would jeopardize the United States' ability to fight terrorism.

[Stravo]

What page was the corection on?

And more inmportantly WHY was such an error made? Seems pretty disingenuous to me that it was a simple reporting error. Its pretty clear that Cheney said precisely OPPOSITE of what the post was inferring in their selective quoting.

[Howedar]

Okay, I'm pretty fucking disgusted with the Washington Post.

[Alex Moon]

Okay, I'm pretty fucking disgusted with the Washington Post.

They're still better than the NYTimes, which hasn't printed corrections of any of Maureen Dowds little 'edits'.

[Alex Moon]

What page was the corection on?

And more inmportantly WHY was such an error made? Seems pretty disingenuous to me that it was a simple reporting error. Its pretty clear that Cheney said precisely OPPOSITE of what the post was inferring in their selective quoting.

I don't know what page it's on, only the link to the online site. As for why they ran with it, it's possible that it simply slipped by an editor who hadn't read the transcript of Cheney's interview. At the very least, they corrected it the next day.

[SirNitram]

While that misquote softens the blow, it still doesn't detract from the out and out delusion that seems to have enveloped Mr. Cheney.

[Alex Moon]

While that misquote softens the blow, it still doesn't detract from the out and out delusion that seems to have enveloped Mr. Cheney.

What blow? They lied about what he said. And what delusions are you talking about?

[SirNitram]

asserted that Americans are viewed as "liberators" there.

rejected the full range of criticism of U.S. actions in Iraq and said there is no reason to "think that the strategy is flawed or needs to be changed."

he said that prewar allegations about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction would be vindicated.

Just the obvious ones that seem to contradict what I've been seeing.

[Vendetta]

Trying to beat Comical Ali at his own game?

[Frank Hipper]

I had some doubts as to the veracity of that statement in the OP due to the quotation marks, but not they weren't strong enough to stop me from saying what I did.
One more reason to despise and mistrust the press in this country, and further vindication for my apolitical views.

[Edi]

Apparently the reporters who wrote that piece need some serious reprimanding for that misquote, I'm not one for tolerating shenanigans like that from any side. Cheney is still delusional about Iraq, though, as Nit pointed out.

Edi