According to former Vice President Dick Cheney, President Barack Obama is trying to “cover up” the nature of a terrorist attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012.
He made this accusation while appearing on the right-wing Sean Hannity radio program on May 13.
Yet, perhaps unwittingly, Cheney’s accusations say at least as much about the failures of the Bush Administration to prevent 9/11–and its deliberate efforts to lie the United States into a needless war with Iraq.
CHENEY ON BENGHAZI: There was never any doubt about what was happening here. And the whole notion, they have gone through this process trying to get to the truth, they did exactly the opposite.
You say this, too, you start out with the truth as reported by the intelligence community, and then you turn it into a total distortion once the political types in the White House and some senior folks at the State Department get their hands on it.
THE RECORD ON 9/11/IRAQ: Among the lies told by high-ranking Bush Administration officials to persuade Americans that Iraq posed an immediate threat to national security:
- Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, in west Africa;
- Thousands of aluminum tubes imported by Iraq could be used in centrifuges to create enriched uranium;
- Iraq had up to 20 long-range Scud missiles, prohibited under UN sanctions;
- Iraq had massive stockpiles of chemical and biological
- Iraq had massive stockpiles of chemical and biological agents, including nerve gas, anthrax and botulinum toxin;
- Saddam Hussein had issued chemical weapons to front-line troops who would use them when US forces crossed into Iraq.
Specifically:
August 26, 2002: Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.”
Dick Cheney
September 8, 2002: National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice said on CNN: ”There is certainly evidence that al Qaeda people have been in Iraq. There is certainly evidence that Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists.”
September 18, 2002: Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee, “We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons. His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons—including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas.”
October 7, 2002: Bush declared in a nationally televised speech in Cincinnati that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.”
January 7, 2003: Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news briefing, “There’s no doubt in my mind but that they currently have chemical and biological weapons.” This certainty was based on contemporary intelligence, he said, not the fact that Iraq had used chemical weapons in the 1980s.
Donald Rumsfeld
February 8, 2003: Bush said in his weekly radio address: “We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons—the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”
March 16, 2003: Cheney declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “We believe [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
March 30, 2003: On ABC’s “This Week” program, 10 days into the war, Rumsfeld said: “We know where they [weapons of mass destruction] are.”
CHENEY ON BENGHAZI: Remember when they were doing the bin Laden raid, you got pictures all over the place of the President sitting in the Situation Room and monitoring the take-down of Osama Bin Laden. This was exactly the opposite of that.
THE RECORD ON 9/11/IRAQ: Remember when–on May 1, 2003–President Bush landed a Lockheed S-3 Viking aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln? How, to sailors’ cheers, he announced the end of major combat operations in the Iraq War? How, above him, a huge banner read: “Mission Accomplished”?
George W. Bush claiming the Iraq war is over
And remember how guerrilla warfare increased in Iraq–and the majority of military and civilian casualties occurred after the speech? Remember how administration officials grew increasingly testy and evasive in their interviews and press conferences?
Remember how they suddenly quit talking about all those “weapons of mass destruction” that hadn’t been found in Iraq?
CHENEY ON BENGHAZI: There were a lot of questions that need to be asked about the military chain of command….We have especially-trained units that practice this thing all the time. They are very good at it and they are champing at the bit to go….Why weren’t they deployed ready to go to take action….?
THE RECORD ON 9/11: When the first plane struck the World Trade Center, President Bush was reading My Pet Goat to a group of elementary schoolchildren in Sarasota County, Florida. Even after being told that a second plane had hit the Center, Bush continued reading to the children for another seven minutes.
No armed Air Force planes were stationed between New York and Washington. The CIA and the National Security Agency–the nation’s code-cracking center–stood totally vulnerable to aerial attack. So did the Congress.
At the White House, Secret Service agents threw open the doors and told “ordinary” staffers to evacuate and fend for themselves. Those officials considered worth protecting–such as Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice–were hustled into a secure, bomb-proof chamber.
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DOES TORTURE WORK?: PART THREE (END)
In Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 1, 2013 at 12:02 amThroughout the Cold War, Republicans held themselves out as the ultimate practitioners of “real-politick,” at home and abroad. They convinced millions of Americans to believe that only their party could be trusted to not sell out America.
As a result, they held the White House–and often the Senate and/or House of Representatives–for most of the 20th Century.
According to Republicans and their Rightist supporters: A President–especially a Democratic one–could never be too aggressive or warlike.
After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Republicans lost their Great Red Bogeyman. Now they could only accuse Democrats of being “soft” on crime, not Communism.
Then, on September 11, 2001, the Republicans found their next great enemy to rally against–-and to accuse Democrats of actively supporting: Islamic terrorism.
This ensured the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush–-who had hid out from the Vietnam war in the Texas Air National Guard–over John Kerry, a genuine war hero who had seen heavy action in the same conflict.
In the last column, we saw that the FBI’s “kill them with kindness” approach to interrogation has yielded far better results than the “Jack Bauer/24” methods favored by the CIA and military.
But this has not prevented Republicans from attacking even those FBI agents who have risked their lives at home and abroad to defend America from terrArabism.
According to the high priests of the Republican party, those agents are “naive” do-gooders who don’t have the guts to go “all the way” against America’s enemies.
But Niccolo Machiavelli, whose name is a byward for political ruthlessness, would disagree with those Republicans.
In his small and notorious book, The Prince, he writes about the methods a ruler must use to gain power. But in his larger and lesser-known work, The Discourses, he outlines the ways that liberty can be maintained in a republic.
Niccolo Machiavelli
For Machiavelli, only a well-protected state can hope for peace and prosperity. Toward that end, he wrote at length about the best ways to succeed militarily. And in war, humanity can prevail at least as often as severity.
Consider the following example from The Discourses:
Camillus [a Roman general] was besieging the city of the Faliscians, and had surrounded it….A teacher charged with the education of the children of some of the noblest families of that city [to ingratiate himself] with Camillus and the Romans, led these children…into the Roman camp.
And presenting them to Camillus [the teacher] said to him, “By means of these children as hostages, you will be able to compel the city to surrender.”
Camillus not only declined the offer but had the teacher stripped and his hands tied behind his back….[Then Camillus] had a rod put into the hands of each of the children…[and] directed them to whip [the teacher] all the way back to the city.
Upon learning this fact, the citizens of Faliscia were so much touched by the humanity and integrity of Camillus, that they surrendered the place to him without any further defense.
This example shows that an act of humanity and benevolence will at all times have more influence over the minds of men than violence and ferocity.
It also proves that provinces and cities which no armies…could conquer, have yielded to an act of humanity, benevolence, chastity or generosity.
This truth should be kept firmly in mind whenever Right-wingers start bragging about their own patriotism and willingness to get “down and dirty” with America’s enemies.
Many–like Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump, Rudolph Giuliani, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney–did their heroic best to avoid military service. These “chickenhawks” talk tough and are always ready to send others into battle–but keep themselves well out of harm’s way.
Such men are not merely contemptible; they are dangerous.
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