Reining in Cheney

by Ray McGovern

Quick! Anyone! Who can put the brakes on Vice President Dick Cheney before we have another war on our hands?
Current and former intelligence analysts are reacting with wonderment and apprehension to his remarks last week on
the nuclear program of Iran and his resuscitated spinning on why attacking Iraq was the prudent thing to do.

There he goes again, they say—trifling with the truth on Iraq and now taking off after Iran. Does he really have the
temerity to reach into the same bag of tricks used to convince most Americans that Iraq was an immediate nuclear
threat? Will his distinctive mix of truculence and contempt for the truth succeed in rationalizing attacks on Iran on
grounds that US intelligence may have underestimated the progress in Iraq’s nuclear weapons program 15 years
ago?

At this point the focus is no longer on the bogus weapons of mass destruction (WMD) rationale used to promote the
attack on Iraq, intelligence analysts say. It’s the claims the vice president is now making regarding Iran’s nuclear
capability...and, given the deliberate distortions on Iraq, whether anyone should believe him.

Appearing Thursday on MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning, Cheney warned that Iran has “a fairly robust new nuclear
program.” And besides, it sponsors terrorism. Sound familiar?

There is no such thing as a perfect crime

dp

Damn, who in the hell would waste their precious time in order to watch that dried up old fart IMUS and his equally lame posse?

Excuse the blatant superficial nature of the following comment: He ain't even easy on the eyes.

Cheney must be scraping the bottom of the barrel to appear on that nasty show.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012705F.shtml

Last section below. Article worth reading in its entirety.

    Restraining Cheney?

    And so we are back to the key question: Can anyone put the brakes on the vice president? It would normally be the job of CIA analysts to point out to the president and his senior advisors the manifold problems that would accrue from an Israeli attack (or, worse still) a US, or joint US-Israeli, attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. But Seymour Hersh's recent report that the White House is weeding out the apostates from the true believers among CIA analysts, together with the current dearth of courage in senior Agency ranks, suggest that those remaining analysts who still subscribe to the old Agency ethos of speaking truth to power will continue to choose to resign and look for honest work.

    This will leave the field to the kind of "slam-dunk" sycophants who conjured up "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq and then passed their reporting off as intelligence analysis. What can we expect of them this time on Iran?

   ( Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush, chairing National Intelligence Estimates and briefing the President's Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.)

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