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Bush and Cheney's campaign lies
by Carla Binion

The latest lie being pushed by the White House is that the CIA gave the Bush administration bad intelligence and misled them into believing Iraq was a threat to the U.S. John Nichols writes in DICK: THE MAN WHO IS PRESIDENT (The New Press, 2004) that after September 11, Dick Cheney frequently visited the CIA and pressured CIA briefers to come up with evidence to support a case for war with Iraq.

Nichols writes, "Silvestre Reyes, a Texas Democrat and member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in July 2003 that he knew of at least three intelligence analysts who felt pressured to warp their findings. So troubling were the reports of Cheney's repeated visits to the CIA headquarters, and of his badgering of analysts, that three members of the House Intelligence Committee finally dispatched a letter to the vice president that read: 'These visits are unprecedented. Normally, vice presidents, yourself included, receive regular briefings from [the] CIA in your office and have a CIA officer on permanent detail. There is no reason for the vice president to make personal visits to the CIA.'"

Cheney pushed another lie when he implied in the recent vice presidential candidates' debate that he didn't embrace the concept of preemptive war until after 9/11. He said September 11 "makes us think in new ways. We can't wait until we're attacked to use force."

According to Nichols and a number of other sources, Dick Cheney had a fever to go into Iraq and preemptively strike and oust Saddam Hussein well before September 11, 200l. Nichols writes that Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were circulating memos with such titles as "Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq," and "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" in early 2001.

A few months later, nineteen hijackers, none of whom were connected with Saddam Hussein, attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Almost immediately after the attacks, Cheney and others in the Bush administration started working to link Iraq with 9/11. Nichols says that when the CIA wouldn't report Iraq was involved in 9/11, Cheney fell back on information from an independent intelligence unit set up by Rumsfeld.

Nichols adds that Cheney "became known for peddling outlandish claims," including the idea that Iraq was, in Cheney's words, "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11." Rather than listen to respected, objective intelligence analysts, Cheney went trolling for information from the likes of Ahmad Chalabi, whom Nichols describes as a "con man."

Today when the White House says it was "misled" by bad intelligence on Iraq, it fails to mention this happened because Cheney and others in the administration would only listen to information that supported their preconceived plans. Not only did the administration refuse to heed reliable CIA sources, but they also ignored facts provided by Richard Clarke, Bush's National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism. Clarke resigned in part because of Cheney's misrepresentations about Iraq and the resulting shift of focus from Osama bin Laden and what Clarke considered the actual terrorist threats.

Nichols writes that Clarke told Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball" that "the vice president was in meetings that vice presidents have never been in before, helping shape the policy before it got to the president." Matthews asked, "Had Cheney been against the war with Iraq, would we have gone?" Clarke responded, "I doubt it. He was critical."

In his book, AGAINST ALL ENEMIES (Free Press, 2004), Clarke says that after 9/11, he thought eliminating al-Qaeda should be the priority. He also thought it important to offer an alternative to the terrorists' ideology; to help stabilize nations threatened by those terrorists and to make the U.S. less vulnerable. Clarke was stunned by the Bush administration's diversionary focus on Iraq.

He writes that despite Cheney's claim Iraq was a key geographic base for the terrorists who threaten us, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were far more important priorities. The White House likely knew Iraq was no "imminent threat" to the U.S., according to Clarke. However, he points out that when Bush had his "Top Gun" moment on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, he misleadingly told troops that the invasion of Iraq was only one battle "in the War on Terrorism that began on September 11."

Clarke says of the Bush speech, "What a horrible thing it was to give such a false impression to our people and our troops." He adds that the truth might "have come as a disappointing shock to American troops being targeted by snipers and blown up by landmines in Iraq."

As John Edwards said in the recent vice presidential candidates' debate, both Bush and Cheney have repeatedly insinuated invading Iraq was a reasonable response to the events of September 11. Their public rationale for the Iraq war has shifted many times, but initially they repeatedly implied the troops were dying in Iraq for the noble cause of both retaliating against and protecting this country from the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

Bush and Cheney are now going around the country brazenly campaigning on a mountain of obvious, easy-to-debunk lies. Cheney keeps repeating the preposterous, delusional notion that Iraq was an urgent threat to the U.S., despite the fact that every respected intelligence source and all reliable evidence contradicts him. Bush keeps on with his traveling carnival show, peddling the snake oil of an idea that the only thing he did wrong on Iraq was let the intelligence agencies deceive him.

These aren't just any political issues where Democrats and Republicans differ for merely partisan reasons with equally valid viewpoints. Bush and Cheney's false statements and insinuations, such as the implied link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, are demonstrably untrue.

The Bush and Cheney deceptions about Iraq aren't just any political lies. These lies are getting young Americans and others killed and maimed every day, causing their families unspeakable grief.

For the most part, mainstream TV networks, where most people get their news, won't take a stand and make crystal clear to the public that Bush and Cheney are without question lying to them on Iraq, and have been lying all along. If the TV newscasters were doing their job, this information would be common knowledge among the public. However, according to Editor & Publisher, October 5, 2004, "a new USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll found that 42% of those surveyed thought the former Iraqi leader was involved in the attacks on New York City and Washington."

As Richard Clarke said, what a horrible thing it is for the administration to cavalierly give our people and our troops false impressions on a life-or-death matter such as the war in Iraq. What a horrible thing it is for the American people to have to live with the repercussions of Bush and Cheney's ongoing campaign lies.

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