The vice president is a firm believer in the idea that the best defense is a strong offense. With this in mind, Dick Cheney went to a friendly audience, a gathering at a conservative think tank called the American Enterprise Institute where his wife is a “scholar in residence,” to give the nation an update on the war on terror.
What struck me as odd about the speech is its complete denial about all of the revelations about the Iraqi threat since Bush said the “major fighting” in Iraq stopped in May. Cheney’s exact speech could have just as easily have been read in March, so long as he changed the tenses — from Iraq was a threat to Iraq is a threat, Hussein was a brutal dictator to Hussein is a brutal dictator, and so on.
Think about what we’ve learned in the last couple of months. The huge stockpiles of WMD? Can’t find them. The reconstituted nuclear weapons? Didn’t exist. The uranium from Niger? Never happened. The 45-minute WMD strike capability? Couldn’t happen. Iraqi ties to Al Queda? Didn’t happen.
Yet there was Cheney, proudly and confidently explaining that the war in Iraq was an “essential step in the war on terror” and that the invasion was necessary because we couldn’t “ignore the Iraqi threat.”
By my count, Cheney referred to the “threat” posed by Iraq and Saddam Hussein seven times in the speech, not including more the general concerns, such as calling Iraq “a menace to our future peace and security.”
What in the world is Dick Cheney talking about?
If Cheney and other administration officials want to shift the discussion to say that the war was worthwhile for humanitarian purposes, fine. If they want to cling to the belief that one of these days, we going to find a hidden bunker with thousands of metric tons of anthrax, that’s up to them. But how can Cheney continue to argue — indeed, insist — that Iraq was an immediate threat to the American people in light of what we’ve learned?
In the hopes of bolstering his case, Cheney turned to the National Intelligence Estimate, some of which has been declassified by the administration to mount a defense against Niger-gate.
Cheney said, “The NIE declared — quote: ‘We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of UN Resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions. If left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.’ End quote.”
What a convenient place for the “end quote.” As the Washington Post noticed today, Cheney accidentally forgot to mention that the very next sentence in the NIE referred to a dissent on the WMD analysis from the U.S. State Department, which labeled the available evidence about the Iraqi weapons program “inadequate.” I guess Cheney forgot about this point.
Also, Cheney emphasized that the NIE was based on the “consensus judgments of the intelligence community.” That’s great, Dick, but isn’t the administration now arguing that there were intelligence failures on Iraq? Yes, the “consensus” was that Iraq had WMD. Now we control the country and can’t find any. The “consensus” was apparently wrong.
My favorite line in the speech was an allusion to Hussein’s ties to terrorists. Cheney said “If we had not acted…the terror network would still enjoy the support and protection of the [Hussein] regime.”
What “terror network”? It’s an unusually vague reference. I sure hope he didn’t mean Al Queda because the administration had been hinting at an Iraq-Al Queda “nexus” for months but all available evidence says there was no connection.
I think I’m beginning to understand the new White House strategy. When blaming the British and the CIA for intelligence failures doesn’t work, just deny there were any failures and argue that every move the White House made was perfect and justified. Simply pretend bad news — or news that undermines the administration’s agenda — doesn’t exist and hope no one’s paying attention. Why don’t Democrats think of clever strategies like this?