[samanthalueus]

Cheney:Lieberman Loss ‘Disturbing’ Because al Qaeda Is ‘Betting They Can Break The Will of The American People’ thinkprogress.org

As the Mideast sits on the brink of regional war, Vice President Dick Cheney spent his time yesterday holding a teleconference to discuss the outcome of the Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut.

Cheney said that to “purge a man like Joe Lieberman” was “of concern, especially over the issue of Joe’s support with respect to national efforts in the global war on terror.” He explained:
The thing that’s partly disturbing about it is the fact that, the standpoint of our adversaries, if you will, in this conflict, and the al Qaeda types, they clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task.Cheney’s argument assumes that the war in Iraq is helping the United States defeat terrorists. He’s wrong. His own State Department found last April that Iraq had become a safe haven for terrorists and attracted a “foreign fighter pipeline” linked to terrorist plots, cells and attacks throughout the world. An overwhelming bipartisan majority (84%) of national security experts believe we are losing the war on terror, and 87 percent think Iraq has had a negative impact.

Cheney should spend less time analyzing the Democratic primary in Connecticut and more time acknowledging the administration’s critical policy failures and trying to fix them. (A good place to start is the American Progress plan, Strategic Redeployment 2.0.)

Read the full Cheney transcript HERE.

[T1ivuQGS]

Watch it and see what you think!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbFzY...e=related&sear ch=

[quedry36]

http://www.woostercollective.com/2004/05/02-week/

[bely832new]

Arrest over Cheney barb triggers lawsuit

rockymountainnews.com
By Charlie Brennan
October 3, 2006

A Denver-area man filed a lawsuit today against a member of the Secret Service for causing him to be arrested after he approached Vice President Dick Cheney in Beaver Creek this summer and criticized him for his policies concerning Iraq.

Attorney David Lane said that on June 16, Steve Howards was walking his 7-year-old son to a piano practice, when he saw Cheney surrounded by a group of people in an outdoor mall area, shaking hands and posing for pictures with several people.

According to the lawsuit filed at U.S. District Court in Denver, Howards and his son walked to about two-to-three feet from where Cheney was standing, and said to the vice president, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," or words to that effect, then walked on.

Ten minutes later, according to Howards' lawsuit, he and his son were walking back through the same area, when they were approached by Secret Service agent Virgil D. "Gus" Reichle Jr., who asked Howards if he had "assaulted" the vice president. Howards denied doing so, but was nonetheless placed in handcuffs and taken to the Eagle County Jail.

The lawsuit states that the Secret Service agent instructed that Howards should be issued a summons for harassment, but that on July 6 the Eagle County District Attorney's Office dismissed all charges against Howards.
The lawsuit filed today alleges that Howards was arrested in retaliation for having exercised his First Amendment right of free speech, and that his arrest violated his Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful seizure.

2006 © The E.W. Scripps Co.

***

Dick Cheney in Beaver Creek

puntiki.blogspot.com
posted by Rob Good
Saturday, June 17, 2006

BEAVER CREEK, Colorado. A man was arrested by Secret Service agents when he tried to approach Vice President Dick Cheney in Beaver Creek Village yesterday afternoon, said Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren.

This explains to me why I saw 2 armor plated Cadillac Limo's when I arrived at the Eagle Vail airport being followed by 2 secret service Surburbans. There was also a C17 Globemaster parked on the tarmack.... There have been military copters flying past the house also....All comes to place now.

Cheney is attending the AEI World Forum conference in the Vail Valley, an unofficial summit, created and hosted by former president Gerald R. Ford. Former world leaders, current government officials, scholars and business leaders from around the world are invited to discuss important global issues, organizers say.

I wonder who is here? HMMM, maybe they will invite me next year.

***

[Illirmpipse]

But he was a "national security threat" and therefore, by the Constitutional Rape act, oh, I mean Patriot Act and all corollaries, he can be arrested for no reason if the VP does not like him... I mean, "sympathises with the terrorist forces or poses a terrorist threat to myself, the US, or any US citizen"....




I hope they take Cheney for every PRIVATE asset he has.

[Haibundadam]

Let's see ...this is the USA ...right?

[TheReallyBest]

Let's hope Bush stays alive; otherwise, we'll get this nut as the President.

[Nesskissabe]

"Nut" is right. In the film "Death of a President" that I just watched, Cheney becomes Pres after Bush is assassinated. He promptly manufactures the pretense to bomb Syria.
Cheney is pure evil, through and through.

[Teligacio]

Dick Cheney in Beaver Creek

Dick's wife, Lynne, might have visited there, as well (despite her protestations) ...

MRS. CHENEY'S LITERARY MASTERPIECE

Lynne Cheney's "lesbian" novel--free down load!! >>> http://www.whitehouse.org/administration/sisters.asp

[NodePark]

Let's hope Bush stays alive; otherwise, we'll get this nut as the President.

cheney was the perfect choice as vice president for bush.....no one in their right mind was gonna "off" bush with this guy as next in line. it must have been reassuring for bush to know that he'd make it through his presidency alive. let's not forget the tendency to see presidents "elected" ( i use the term lightly as we all know he wasn't elected) in years ending in "0" to be asassinated or die in office.

[sabbixsweraco]

Cheney and Rumsfeld are the two pillars of evil acting as the frontmen for the neocons and the military/industrial complex that even Eisenhower warned us against all those years ago - unfortunately those warnings were not heeded and we are today in the grip of a new secret government that wishes to terrorise its own people in order to control them and secondly wishes to impose its will on the world through military/economic force.

[Dkavtbek]

The trouble with being as dishonest and evil as Dick Cheney is that everything you do in all walks of life is questioned.


Below is a short article on his Christmas party. As soon as I saw that it was "sponsored" by Snow Queen Vodka, I assumed either:

(1) Cheney owns a share in the company, or

(2) He has a hidden political agenda for Kazakhstan, or

(3) Both.


But.. suppose he really does just love Snow Queen Vodka?
Nah.


Brought to you by Kazakhstan’s finest vodka

Borat wasn’t on the list, but at least one product of Kazakhstan managed to gain access to Vice President Dick Cheney’s holiday party on Tuesday night [12/12/06] at his Massachusetts Avenue residence.


Snow Queen vodka, a product of the central Asian country, was the “official liquor donor” at the 400-strong party of high-powered pols and their staffers. Among those on the list who braved the “blinding” lights on Mass Ave. and the long security procedure to rub elbows with the Veep: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Afghan Ambassador Said Jawad, Jordanian Ambassador Karim Kawar, former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rima Al-Sabah, wife of the Kuwaiti ambassador.


“People were amazed at the cheap decor (think IKEA),” writes our source, but they were amazed at the “fabulous artwork throughout (on loan, one would assume).”


Despite the free-flowing vodka, no one in the “stuffy” crowd “lost their composure,” we hear.

http://www.examiner.com/a-455441~Yea...__Dec__14.html

[Wluwsdtn]

Lately Rangel has been a jerk with his proposed military draft, but sometimes you can't help liking the guy:


The New York Post
January 6, 2007

RANGEL BOOTS VEEP

EVICTS CHENEY FROM CHOICE CAPITOL DIGS


Vice President Dick Cheney points out a
feature of his palatial — and now-former —
Capitol office to staffers.
It now belongs to Rep. Charles Rangel.


By GEOFF EARLE and IAN BISHOP,
Post Correspondents

January 4, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - Rep. Charles Rangel has evicted Vice President Dick Cheney from his office in the Capitol, and the Harlem heavyweight is moving into the prime digs today, The Post has learned.

Gilded letters were freshly painted atop the office door yesterday proclaiming "Ways and Means Committee" - confirming that the office now belongs to Rangel, the House panel's new chairman.

Sources said Cheney's and his staff's belongings were removed over the holidays.

The new digs give Rangel some of the choicest and most politically central real estate in all of Washington - as well as a measure of sweet revenge.

Rangel moved at lightning speed to boot the man he once told The Post is a "son of a bitch."

Even before Rangel officially took charge as the new chairman - which will happen at noon today - Capitol workers expunged the last traces of Cheney and brought in Rangel's plush furniture.

The ornate room is just yards off the House floor and the Democratic cloakroom where power brokers meet, and has a spectacular view of the Capitol's East Front.

Rangel was giddy at the prospect of giving Cheney the boot the day after Democrats delivered Republicans a crushing defeat on Election Day.

"Mr. Cheney enjoys an office on the second floor of the House of Representatives that historically has been designated for the Ways and Means Committee chairman," Rangel said after the election.

Republicans gave the historic room to Cheney after he captured the vice presidency, but got him to sign a letter saying the gift wasn't permanent.

"I'm trying to find some way to be gentle as I restore the dignity of that office," Rangel chuckled at the time. "You gotta go, you gotta go."

Rangel was so eager to bounce Cheney from the office, he phoned new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) less than 12 hours after the polls closed to get her approval.

Cheney's office took the high road yesterday. Spokeswoman Mary McGinn told The Post, "It was always our understanding that that office was on loan."

geoff.earle@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01042007...espondents.htm

[EjPWyPm4]

NBC: CIA leak case figures reject Cheney immunity
Wilson, Plame claim that vice president is not shielded from civil lawsuit
By Joel Seidman
Updated: 11:05 p.m. ET Jan 16, 2007

As jury selection began Tuesday in the criminal trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, claim that the vice president cannot assert immunity from their complaint.

The Wilsons have sued Libby, Cheney, senior White House adviser Karl Rove, former deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and nine unnamed government officials, accusing them of conspiring to destroy Plame's career at the CIA.

The Wilsons claim they were seriously injured by "retaliatory revelation" in revealing Plame's CIA employment. The court filing states the Wilsons' "fear for their safety and for the safety of their children." And, the filing says, "disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's covert identity makes her and her family a target for those persons and groups who bear hostility to the United States and/or its intelligence officers."

Attorneys for the Wilsons write that, "No case ever has accorded the Vice President absolute immunity." The court filing states that the fact that Cheney is a part of the executive branch "does not warrant according him absolute immunity."

The Wilsons allege that Plame's name was leaked to reporters in retaliation for a July 2003 op-ed column published in The New York Times by Wilson, refuting U.S. pre-war intelligence on Iraq's nuclear program.

The Wilsons' attorney, Melanie Sloan, writes they are seeking "money damages as compensation for the substantial harms they have suffered from the violation of constitutional and common right laws."

Statements to 'Hardball'
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who is presiding over Libby's criminal trial, strongly admonished Sloan on Dec. 20 for her appearance on the MSNBC program "Hardball," where she predicted a jury could find Libby guilty of making false statements.

Sloan told MSNBC's Chris Matthews, "I think a jury could easily still find him guilty without being the first to leak because that's not what he's been charged with. He's not charged with leaking. He's charged with making false statements."

Walton wrote in an opinion that "The Court would not tolerate this case being tried in the media."

Walton added that “making disparaging comments in a television interview about a criminal defendant in a highly publicized case on the eve of trial could cause potential members of the jury pool to engender negative attitudes about the defendant.”

In Tuesday's filing, Sloan writes that after syndicated columnist Robert Novak published Plame's name, Rove called Matthews and told him that Plame was "fair game."

Sloan adds, "Rove attempted to make this statement targeting Mrs. Wilson off the record and on the condition that he not be identified as its source, so as to avoid detection for the wrongdoing."


Motions to dismiss
Lawyers for Cheney and Libby have filed motions to dismiss the civil complaint. Cheney's attorneys argue that the suit should be dismissed on various grounds including that, "the Vice President is entitled to qualified immunity," and that Cheney is "absolutely immune from suits for civil damages."

The lawyers for the Vice President, who is expected to be a witness for Libby, also contend that the Wilsons' civil action arose after the statute of limitations for such filings had passed. Cheney's attorneys write that the Wilsons "have not pled that the Vice President ever made any public disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's alleged CIA employment status. The sole pertinent factual allegation is that the Vice President communicated the fact of her CIA employment to his national security advisor and chief of staff."

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has spent nearly three years investigating who revealed Plame's identity to Novak and Washington Post editor Bob Woodward in 2003, but no one was ever charged with that leak. Armitage last summer revealed that he was the first source of Plame to both reporters.

Joel Seidman is an NBC producer based in Washington, D.C.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16661267/

[Unamannuato]

More on America's unelected ruler:

Ex-Cheney aide shares media manipulation

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer, January 27, 2007

WASHINGTON - A smorgasbord of Washington insider details has emerged during the perjury trial of the vice president's former chief of staff.

For example, when Dick Cheney eally needed friends in the news media, his staff was short of phone numbers.

No one served up spicier morsels than Cheney's former top press assistant. Cathie Martin described the craft of media manipulation — under oath and in blunter terms than politicians like to hear in public.

The uses of leaks and exclusives. When to let one's name be used and when to hide in anonymity. Which news medium was seen as more susceptible to control and what timing was most propitious. All candidly described. Even the rating of certain journalists as friends to favor and critics to shun — a faint echo of the enemies list drawn up in Richard Nixon's White House more than 30 years ago.

The trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby owes its very existence to a news leak, the public disclosure four summers ago of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity.
A private brainstorm of Plame's in 2002 brought a rain of public attacks on Cheney the following year. Cheney was accused of suppressing intelligence and allowing President Bush to present false information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Plame's husband, ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson, started the attack. Her unit at the CIA had sent him to Niger in 2002 to check a report Iraq was buying uranium for nuclear weapons. Cheney and the departments of State and Defense wanted to verify that.

Wilson thought he had debunked the report, but Bush mentioned it anyway in his State of the Union address in 2003. The story helped justify war with Iraq.
Wilson claimed Cheney's questions prompted his trip and Cheney should have received his report long before Bush spoke.

Wilson's charges first surfaced, attributed to an unnamed ex-ambassador, in Nicholas Kristof's New York Times column. But Martin testified she felt no urgency to set him straight because Kristof "attacked us, our administration fairly regularly."

But by July 6, 2003, Wilson wrote his own account in the Times and appeared on "Meet the Press" on NBC.

After that much exposure, Cheney, Libby and Martin spent the next week trying get out word that Cheney did not know Wilson, did not ask for the mission to Niger, never got Wilson's report and only learned about the trip from news stories in 2003.

Cheney personally dictated these points to Martin. She e-mailed them to the White House press secretary for relay to reporters.

When the story did not die, Martin found herself in a bind because Cheney's office was known for disclosing so little.

"Often the press stopped calling our office," Martin testified. "At this point, they weren't calling me asking me for comment."

So she had to call National Security Council and CIA press officers to learn which reporters were still working on stories.

Once Martin got names, Cheney ordered his right-hand man, Libby, rather than lowly press officers, to call — a signal of the topic's importance.

Top levels of the Bush administration decided that CIA Director George Tenet would issue a statement taking the blame for allowing Bush to mention the Niger story. Cheney and Libby worried Tenet would not go far enough to distance the vice president from the affair.

Libby asked Martin to map a media strategy in case Tenet fell short.

A Harvard law school graduate, Martin had succeeded legendary Republican operative Mary Matalin as Cheney's political and public affairs assistant. Matalin had brought Martin to Cheney's office as her deputy and trained her.
Martin offered these options in order:

_Put Cheney on "Meet the Press."

_Leak an exclusive version to a selected reporter or the weekly news magazines.

_Have national security adviser Condoleezza Rice or Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld hold a news conference.

_Persuade a third party or columnist to write an opinion piece that would appear in newspapers on the page opposite the editorials.

Not only did Tenet leave unanswered questions about Cheney, his remarks came out late on a Friday, the government's favorite moment to deliver bad news.

Why?

"Fewer people pay attention to it later on Friday," Martin testified. "And in our view, fewer people are paying attention on Saturday, when it's reported."

As Martin rated their options, putting Cheney on "Meet the Press," NBC's Sunday morning talk show, "is our best format." Cheney was their best person for the show and "we control the message a little bit more," according to Martin.

The downside was that Cheney could "get pulled into the weeds and specifics. We like to keep him at a pretty high level," she said. Also, it "looks defensive to rush him out on `Meet the Press.'"

Next they could give an exclusive or leak to one reporter and she considered David Sanger of The New York Times, Walter Pincus of The Washington Post, or Time or Newsweek.

Because reporters are competitive, "if you give it to one reporter, they're more likely to write the story," Martin testified.

Plus an official can demand anonymity in return for the favor. "You can give it to them as a senior administration official," she said. "You don't have to say this is coming directly from the White House."

The news weeklies offered a focus on the big picture and opinion-editorial writers and columnists could voice opinions.

Ultimately, Cheney crafted an on-the-record statement to be attributed to Libby by name along with some anonymous background information. Libby personally called Matt Cooper of Time, who had e-mailed questions to Martin earlier.

But when Libby suggested calling Newsweek in fairness, Cheney's aides were at a loss.

"We were scrambling for a number for a reporter that we know there named Evan Thomas," Martin testified. "We were looking around for a number. I didn't have it with me." Eventually, they found a number and left a message.

But Cooper did not use the full quote and Martin called to complain. "I put Scooter on the phone with him, which we didn't do very often on the record with a quote," she testified, "and he took just a piece of it." The result "wasn't helpful" and the story did not fade away.

So the following week, two senior Bush aides — communications director Dan Bartlett and Rice's deputy, Steve Hadley — briefed White House reporters.

Cheney invited a group of conservative columnists to lunch at his residence.

[vasyasvc]

"Under Oath" must be the two scariest words to Dick and company ...

[NETvoyne]

Fitting ...



http://velvetpaintings.com/Velvet/JALBUM%20ALL.html

[DiBellaBam]

And what about all those lovely black pets -- doggies, kitties and bunnies -- that are named "Velvet"?

[9uWzBx4l]

February 4, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Why Dick Cheney Cracked Up

By FRANK RICH

IN the days since Dick Cheney lost it on CNN, our nation’s armchair shrinks have had a blast. The vice president who boasted of “enormous successes” in Iraq and barked “hogwash” at the congenitally mild Wolf Blitzer has been roundly judged delusional, pathologically dishonest or just plain nuts. But what else is new? We identified those diagnoses long ago. The more intriguing question is what ignited this particularly violent public flare-up.

The answer can be found in the timing of the CNN interview, which was conducted the day after the start of the perjury trial of Mr. Cheney’s former top aide, Scooter Libby. The vice president’s on-camera crackup reflected his understandable fear that a White House cover-up was crumbling. He knew that sworn testimony in a Washington courtroom would reveal still more sordid details about how the administration lied to take the country into war in Iraq. He knew that those revelations could cripple the White House’s current campaign to escalate that war and foment apocalyptic scenarios about Iran. Scariest of all, he knew that he might yet have to testify under oath himself.

Mr. Cheney, in other words, understands the danger this trial poses to the White House even as some of Washington remains oblivious. From the start, the capital has belittled the Joseph and Valerie Wilson affair as “a tempest in a teapot,” as David Broder of The Washington Post reiterated just five months ago. When “all of the facts come out in this case, it’s going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great,” Bob Woodward said in 2005. Or, as Robert Novak suggested in 2003 before he revealed Ms. Wilson’s identity as a C.I.A. officer in his column, “weapons of mass destruction or uranium from Niger” are “little elitist issues that don’t bother most of the people.” Those issues may not trouble Mr. Novak, but they do loom large to other people, especially those who sent their kids off to war over nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and nonexistent uranium.

In terms of the big issues, the question of who first leaked Ms. Wilson’s identity (whether Mr. Libby, Richard Armitage, Ari Fleischer or Karl Rove) to which journalist (whether Mr. Woodward, Mr. Novak, Judith Miller or Matt Cooper) has always been a red herring. It’s entirely possible that the White House has always been telling the truth when it says that no one intended to unmask a secret agent. (No one has been charged with that crime.) The White House is also telling the truth when it repeatedly says that Mr. Cheney did not send Mr. Wilson on his C.I.A.-sponsored African trip to check out a supposed Iraq-Niger uranium transaction. (Another red herring, since Mr. Wilson didn’t make that accusation in the first place.)

But if the administration is telling the truth on these narrow questions and had little to hide about the Wilson trip per se, its wild overreaction to the episode was an incriminating sign it was hiding something else. According to testimony in the Libby case, the White House went berserk when Mr. Wilson published his Op-Ed article in The Times in July 2003 about what he didn’t find in Africa. Top officials gossiped incessantly about both Wilsons to anyone who would listen, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby conferred about them several times a day, and finally Mr. Libby, known as an exceptionally discreet White House courtier, became so sloppy that his alleged lying landed him with five felony counts.

The explanation for the hysteria has long been obvious. The White House was terrified about being found guilty of a far greater crime than outing a C.I.A. officer: lying to the nation to hype its case for war. When Mr. Wilson, an obscure retired diplomat, touched that raw nerve, all the president’s men panicked because they knew Mr. Wilson’s modest finding in Africa was the tip of a far larger iceberg. They knew that there was still far more damning evidence of the administration’s W.M.D. lies lurking in the bowels of the bureaucracy.

Thanks to the commotion caused by the leak case, that damning evidence has slowly dribbled out. By my count we now know of at least a half-dozen instances before the start of the Iraq war when various intelligence agencies and others signaled that evidence of Iraq’s purchase of uranium in Africa might be dubious or fabricated. (These are detailed in the timelines at frankrich.com/timeline.htm.) The culmination of these warnings arrived in January 2003, the same month as the president’s State of the Union address, when the White House received a memo from the National Intelligence Council, the coordinating body for all American spy agencies, stating unequivocally that the claim was baseless. Nonetheless President Bush brandished that fearful “uranium from Africa” in his speech to Congress as he hustled the country into war in Iraq.

If the war had been a cakewalk, few would have cared to investigate the administration’s deceit at its inception. But by the time Mr. Wilson’s Op-Ed article appeared — some five months after the State of the Union and two months after “Mission Accomplished” — there was something terribly wrong with the White House’s triumphal picture. More than 60 American troops had been killed since Mr. Bush celebrated the end of “major combat operations” by prancing about an aircraft carrier. No W.M.D. had been found, and we weren’t even able to turn on the lights in Baghdad. For the first time, more than half of Americans told a Washington Post-ABC News poll that the level of casualties was “unacceptable.”

It was urgent, therefore, that the awkward questions raised by Mr. Wilson’s revelation of his Africa trip be squelched as quickly as possible. He had to be smeared as an inconsequential has-been whose mission was merely a trivial boondoggle arranged by his wife. The C.I.A., which had actually resisted the uranium fictions, had to be strong-armed into taking the blame for the 16 errant words in the State of the Union speech.

What we are learning from Mr. Libby’s trial is just what a herculean effort it took to execute this two-pronged cover-up after Mr. Wilson’s article appeared. Mr. Cheney was the hands-on manager of the 24/7 campaign of press manipulation and high-stakes character assassination, with Mr. Libby as his chief hatchet man. Though Mr. Libby’s lawyers are now arguing that their client was a sacrificial lamb thrown to the feds to shield Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby actually was — and still is — a stooge for the vice president.

Whether he will go to jail for his misplaced loyalty is the human drama of his trial. But for the country there are bigger issues at stake, and they are not, as the White House would have us believe, ancient history. The administration propaganda flimflams that sold us the war are now being retrofitted to expand and extend it.

In a replay of the run-up to the original invasion, a new National Intelligence Estimate, requested by Congress in August to summarize all intelligence assessments on Iraq, was mysteriously delayed until last week, well after the president had set his surge. Even the declassified passages released on Friday — the grim takes on the weak Iraqi security forces and the spiraling sectarian violence — foretell that the latest plan for victory is doomed. (As a White House communications aide testified at the Libby trial, this administration habitually releases bad news on Fridays because “fewer people pay attention when it’s reported on Saturday.”)

A Pentagon inspector general’s report, uncovered by Business Week last week, was also kept on the q.t.: it shows that even as more American troops are being thrown into the grinder in Iraq, existing troops lack the guns and ammunition to “effectively complete their missions.” Army and Marine Corps commanders told The Washington Post that both armor and trucks were in such short supply that their best hope is that “five brigades of up-armored Humvees fall out of the sky.”

Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of Colin Powell’s notorious W.M.D. pantomime before the United Nations Security Council, a fair amount of it a Cheney-Libby production. To mark this milestone, the White House is reviving the same script to rev up the war’s escalation, this time hyping Iran-Iraq connections instead of Al Qaeda-Iraq connections. In his Jan. 10 prime-time speech on Iraq, Mr. Bush said that Iran was supplying “advanced weaponry and training to our enemies,” even though the evidence suggests that Iran is actually in bed with our “friends” in Iraq, the Maliki government. The administration promised a dossier to back up its claims, but that too has been delayed twice amid reports of what The Times calls “a continuing debate about how well the information proved the Bush administration’s case.”

Call it a coincidence — though there are no coincidences — but it’s only fitting that the Libby trial began as news arrived of the death of E. Howard Hunt, the former C.I.A. agent whose bungling of the Watergate break-in sent him to jail and led to the unraveling of the Nixon presidency two years later. Still, we can’t push the parallels too far. No one died in Watergate. This time around our country can’t wait two more years for the White House to be stopped from playing its games with American blood.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[Elisabetxxx]

Dick Cheney Was Briefed by CIA on Niger

tpmcafe.com
By Larry Johnson
Feb 4, 2007

One of the peripheral benefits from the Scooter LIbby trial (apart from the pleasure of watching the Bush Administration lies exposed) is the release of documents that provide concrete evidence of the events that produced Nigergate (or, if you prefer, Plamegate). Scooter may be claiming a foggy memory but if you read and compare the new documents with previous material, such as the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Iraq released in the summer of 2004, the fog will lift and you'll glean some new insights.

We have known all along that Dick Cheney asked the CIA to follow up on a DIA report about Iraq's effort to get uranium from Niger. Thanks to the latest document dump we now know that Dick Cheney received a preliminary brief from the CIA and the the Senate Intelligence Committee, in its 2004 report, covered up this fact.

On a chilly Tuesday morning almost five years ago, February 12, 2002, Dick Cheney’s CIA briefer arrived with a piece of finished intelligence that set in motion a series of events that exposed the identity of a CIA undercover officer, destroyed a CIA front company and compromised its various assets, and sent Scooter Libby to trial for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Dick Cheney read an article written by an analyst at the Defence Intelligence Agency titled, "Niamey signed on agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium to Baghdad". This report was based on intelligence obtained by CIA field operatives and published as an intelligence report (i.e. TD) on 5 February 2002. The source, our buddies the Italians. Thanks to the CIA memo introduced during the first week of the Libby trial, the CIA reported that Iraq and Niger allegedly signed an agreement in July of 2000 to purchase uranium.

This TD was a follow up to information the CIA obtained in October 2001, also from the Italian intelligence service, which claimed the negotiations had started in 1999 and came to fruition in 2000.

We know from the July 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI) report that the CIA analysts viewed the October report as uncorroborated and noted that even if this was true Iraq had no capability to process the yellowcake (see p. 36 of the SSCI July 2004 report).

DIA was less skeptical than the CIA and left the impression that it was a done deal. As the Senate Intelligence Committee reported in 2004, Dick Cheney asked his briefer to find out what the CIA knew about this. When a Vice President or President asks a question or makes a substantive comment in response to the briefing material, the Briefer always goes back to CIA Headquarters and sits in on a morning meeting of Senior CIA officials. When the CIA briefer got back to Headquarters, he briefed the Director of Operations (or his Deputy) and the the Director of Intelligence (or his Deputy).

This led to two courses of action. First, the Director of Intelligence sent the rock rolling down the hill until it hit an analyst in WINPAC -- the analytical shop in CIA tasked with monitoring Iraq's WMD program. According to the CIA memo released in the Libby trial, we now know that In response to this tasking the analyst produced a Senior Power Executive Intelligence Brief on 14 February 2002 that concluded:
information on the alleged uranium contract between Iraq and Niger comes exclusively from a foreign government service report that lacks crucial details, and we are working to clarify the information and to determine whether it can be corroborated.
Now here is the bullshit. The Republican led Senate Select Intelligence Committee claimed in July 2004 that:The CIA sent a separate version of the assessment to the Vice President which differed only in that it named the foreign government service.BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT!!! No. Unlike the DIA analyst, who accepted the report at face value, the CIA expressed skepticism and clearly conveyed that the information was suspect. Moreover, the CIA morning briefer gave this information to Vice President Cheney on Thursday morning, 14 February 2002.

Second, on Tuesday morning, 19 February 2002, the CIA's Counter Proliferation Division chaired an interagency meeting to discuss whether to send Ambassador Joe Wilson to Niger. As noted in a previous post (see Joe Wilson Vindicated), Joe even tried to talk them out of sending him but, as a good American, accepted the so-called boondoggle to Niger. And, when he returned, an intelligence report was generated.

Be sure of this, Dick Cheney was briefed on the results of Joe's trip. He may not have remembered the substance because the report -- based on the debriefing of Joe Wilson -- told a story that Dick Cheney did not want to hear.

There is no way that a CIA Briefer, who knew of the Vice President's keen interest in the issue of Iraq, Niger, and uranium, would not present a piece of raw intelligence to the Vice President that addressed Cheney's question. In fact, the Vice President received the report on March 8, 2002 or March 9, 2002. Look for yourself. On page DX64.4 of the CIA memo, paragraph 6, we are informed that the CIA's Directorate of Operations widely disseminated the report and that the sensitive source, Joe Wilson, is highly reliable.

Cheney was given an intelligence report in response to his original query on 12 February, 2002. The report made clear that Niger was playing ball with the U.S. and was not about to even meet with Iraqis, much less sell them uranium. But Cheney and Bush had other plans. They were going to go to war with Iraq regardless of what the intelligence said. But we now have a clear picture that the intelligence community was trying to tell them uncomfortable truths that Bush and Cheney did not want to hear. Just remember that as the U.S. death toll in Iraq continues to soar.

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