Cheney Sweats Out the Summer

So far the summer has been mild in the Washington, D.C., area. But for
former Vice President Dick Cheney the temperature is well over 100
degrees. He is sweating profusely, and it is becoming increasingly
clear why.

Cheney has broken openly with former President George W. Bush on one
issue of transcendent importance -- to Cheney. For whatever reason,

Bush decided not to hand out blanket pardons before they both rode off
into the sunset.

Cheney has complained bitterly that his former chief of staff, I.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, should have been pardoned, rather than simply
having his jail sentence "commuted." The former Vice President told
the press that Bush left Libby "sort of hanging in the wind" by
refusing to issue Libby a pardon before Bush left office. Libby had

been convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to
federal agents investigating the leak of a former CIA operations
officer's identity.

"I believe firmly that Scooter was unjustly accused and prosecuted and
deserved a pardon, and the President disagreed with that," Cheney
said. He would disclose no details of his efforts to lobby Bush on
Libby's behalf, saying they would be "best left to history."

It is getting close to history time. You do not need to be a

cracker-jack analyst to understand that Cheney is feeling betrayed --
that he is thinking not of Libby, but of himself, and fearing that, if
our system of justice works, he could be in for some serious,
uncommuted jail time.

His situation has grown pathetic. Aside from the man himself, it has
fallen almost solely to faithful daughter Liz to defend her dad and to
start a political backfire to keep him out of prison. She is to be
admired for her faithfulness. In the process, though, she has
unwittingly given much away.

Liz on the Offensive

On Washington Times' "America's Morning News" radio program Monday,
Liz acted again as designated hitter, responding to the recent New
York Times report that her father had given "direct orders" to the CIA
to withhold "information about a secret counterterrorism program for
eight years." Not for the first time, Liz Cheney disclosed what has

her father so worried and agitated. She said he is "very angry" over
recent press reports that Attorney General Eric Holder may be about to
appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's
interrogation practices.

She branded this "shameful" -- worse still, "un-American." Not the
interrogation practices, mind you, but the notion that her father
should be held to account for them.

Typically, Ms. Cheney did well in sticking closely to her talking

points, arguing that the issue is "somebody taking office and then
starting to prosecute people who carried out policies that they
disagreed with, you know, in the previous administration." As if
unprecedented decisions to torture, in violation of international law
and the War Crimes Act of 1996, can be accurately described as
"policies" over which there can be honest disagreement. This is about
crimes, not "policies."

Pulling out all the stops, Ms. Cheney worried aloud over what this
does to "morale at the CIA," where the practitioners of what Bush
called "an alternative set of procedures" for interrogation were told
they were acting with the blessing of the Justice Department. Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity addressed that bromide frontally
on April 29, 2009, in a Memorandum to our new President. (See
https://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/042909e.html of April 29, 2009.)

Liz Cheney went on to argue that this could in the future inhibit CIA
functionaries from various actions, out of fear of criminal liability.
(Not a bad idea, it seems to me.)

The Decider

What has pretty much escaped notice in the Fawning Corporate Media
(FCM) is that the former Vice President has also reminded us all that
President Bush was the "decider." That unusual word sounded quite

macho as Bush strutted around and about reminding us regularly that he
was also "commander in chief." But now, it could be the kiss of death
-- for Bush, as well as for Cheney.

Here's what Cheney allowed himself to tell Face the Nation's Bob
Schieffer about "enhanced interrogation techniques" on May 10:

SCHIEFFER: How much did President Bush know specifically about the
methods that were being used? We know that you - and you have said -
that you approved this...

CHENEY: Right.

SCHIEFFER: ... somewhere down the line. Did President Bush know
everything you knew?

CHENEY: I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew -- he
knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I
mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to
the President. He signed off on it.

Small wonder that Republicans are wincing, although the winces have
been largely suppressed. The Washington Post reported recently that
many Republicans now consider Cheney a major problem, but cannot say
so.

The Post quoted one Republican strategist on the Cheney dilemma: "He
continues to be a force among many members of our base, and while he
is entirely unhelpful, no one has the standing to show him the door."

Spending four days in Dallas last week, I learned that George W. Bush
continues to be a lofty hero among many folks there -- with the notable
exception of the hardy activists of the Dallas Peace Center and Code
Pink. Hefty donations keep pouring in for his library and institute,
and any "mistakes" that may have been made during the Bush/Cheney
administration are laid at the door of the former Vice President.

Leading Republicans are passionate about this. And the phenomenon is
not limited to Dallas. Cheney is smart enough to know that he, too,
may soon be "sort of hanging in the wind" along with his former
subordinate, Libby.

It's Also About "Fixing" Intelligence

Approval of torture, assassination, warrantless eavesdropping -- hey,
there is quite enough to go on, and increasing signs that Cheney will
be called on the carpet.

What we have been focusing on, however, glosses over Cheney's key role
in purveying lies to get our representatives in Congress to approve a
war that qualifies for what the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal called
the "supreme international crime" -- a war of aggression.

We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) were on to
Cheney very early. Exactly six years ago, we took the unusual step of
sending a formal recommendation to President Bush that he "ask for
Cheney's immediate resignation." (See

https://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/042909e.html.)

Our unprecedented appeal even caught the eye of the FCM, since our
Memorandum for the President reviewed some of the deceit engineered by
the Vice President in concocting a rationale for war on Iraq and
leading the cheerleading for it.

We noted that Cheney, skilled at preemption, had stolen a march on his
vacationing colleagues by launching, in a major speech on Aug. 26,

2002, a meretricious campaign to persuade Congress and the American
people that Iraq was about to acquire nuclear weapons. That campaign
mushroomed, literally, in early October, with Bush and senior advisers
raising the specter of a "mushroom cloud" threatening our cities. On
the inside of the synthetic clouds one could almost read the label --
"manufactured out of thin air in the Office of the Vice President."

In his memoir, the pitiable former CIA Director George Tenet complains

that Cheney's assertion that Iraq would acquire nuclear weapons
"fairly soon" did not square with the intelligence community's
assessment. Tenet adds, "I was surprised when I read about Cheney's
assertion that, 'Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein
now has weapons of mass destruction.'"

Tenet whines that the Vice President did not send him a copy of the
speech for clearance. But the malleable CIA director quickly got over

it, and told CIA analysts to compose the kind of National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) that would provide ex post facto support for Cheney's
bogus assertions. Just what Cheney (and Bush) ordered.

Tenet explains lamely, "I should have told the Vice President
privately that, in my view, his speech had gone too far ... and not
let silence imply agreement."

Yes, George; and you should have resisted White House pressure for a
dishonest NIE to grease the skids to unnecessary war.

In fact Cheney, as well as Tenet, knew very well that Cheney's
assertions were lies.

How? Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, whom Saddam had put in charge
of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as well as missile
development, told the United States when he defected in mid-1995 that
all (that's right, all) such weapons had been destroyed at his order
by the summer of 1991.

And in mid-2002, the Iraqi foreign minister, whom CIA operatives had
recruited and persuaded to remain in place, was telling us the same
thing.

Unwelcome Intelligence

When they briefed the President and his senior advisers on this, CIA
operations officers were astonished to learn first-hand that this
intelligence was unwelcome. These officers, who had used every trick

in the book to "turn" the foreign minister and get him working for us,
were told that further reporting from this source was not needed:
"This isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change," they
were told.

Tenet was hardly astonished at reports of the non-existence of WMD.
From documentary evidence in the Downing Street Minutes we know that
Tenet on July 20, 2002, told the chief of British intelligence that
the intelligence was being "fixed" around the policy. And former UN

inspectors like Scott Ritter could verify that some 90 percent of the
WMD Iraq earlier possessed had been destroyed -- some during the Gulf
War in 1991, but most as a result of the inspections conducted by the
UN.

The reporting from Hussein Kamel and the Iraqi foreign minister,
sources with excellent access, was suppressed in favor of "evidence" --
from forgeries, for example, like the infamous Iraq-Niger yellowcake
report. When finally U.S. officials were forced to concede that the

Iraq-Niger information was based on a forgery, lawmakers like Rep.
Henry Waxman, D-California, protested loudly -- but too late.

Three days before President Bush let slip the dogs of war, NBC's Tim
Russert braced Cheney with the assertion by the head of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Saddam Hussein did not
have a nuclear weapons program.

Cheney strongly disagreed and claimed support for his view from the
CIA and other parts of the intelligence community. He even ratcheted

up his bogus assessment of Iraq's nuclear capability: "We believe he
has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

We? Maybe his wife, Lynne, and Liz were on board for that judgment;
few others believed it.

Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, retired CENTCOM commander but still
enjoying access to the most sensitive information on Iraq, was sitting
in the audience on Aug. 26, 2002, and later described himself as
astonished at the way Cheney hyped the Iraqi threat. And the most

knowledgeable analysts -- those who knew Iraq and nuclear weapons --
scoffed at Cheney's faith-based intelligence.

In our July 14, 2003, appeal to President Bush to ask for Cheney's
resignation, we warned of the likelihood that intelligence analysts
would conclude that the best way to climb the ladder of success is to
acquiesce in the cooking or "fixing" of their judgments, since neither
senior nor junior officials would ever be held accountable.

This remains as acute a concern as the tolerance for torture and the like.

We shall have to demand that Attorney General Eric Holder do his duty
and move quickly to start the process to hold accountable those
responsible for dragging our country down into a moral abyss.

This article appeared originally on Consortiumnews.com.