Cheney's Lies

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/6/04 at 9:09am

Love this one: When Cheney told Edwards they had never met before, he was either telling a big fat lying liars lie or having a senior moment.

Here's what Cheney said at the prayer breakfast (!) pictured above:

"Congressman Wamp, Senator Edwards, friends from across America, and distinguished visitors to our country from all over the world: Lynne and I are honored to be with you all this morning."

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/6/04 at 9:13am

That was February 1, 2001.

From the ABC News article:

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On April 8, 2001, Cheney and Edwards shook hands when they met off-camera during a taping of NBC's "Meet the Press," moderator Tim Russert said Wednesday on "Today."

On Jan. 8, 2003, the two met when the first-term North Carolina senator accompanied Elizabeth Dole to her swearing-in by Cheney as a North Carolina senator, Edwards aides also said.
(AP Photo) Meeting Was Not First for Cheney, Edwards

[beans]

Posted: 10/6/04 at 9:30am

the point was that edwards hasn't been to the senate to vote for three years.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/6/04 at 9:36am

Which is also a lie.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 10/6/04 at 9:47am

Yes, I especially liked watching the visibly irritate Chris Matthews on TODAY this a.m. as he deconstructed the Cheney lie litany. I personally don't give a rat's culo whether he lies about meeting Edwards or not. But his non-stop use of the Saddam/9/11 link must be stopped. He pulled a new one last night, as Matthews points out, denying his own words on MEET THE PRESS, the telling clip from which was shown. The whole approach of this administration is say it, they will come. I only wish the Democrats would more clearly label the flip-flopping of these two. I loved how Chris Matthews said that Dick Cheney -- an arch conservative -- continues to hide behind the facad of a moderate.

[CurtainUp2]

Posted: 10/6/04 at 10:13am

Cheney's Lies

A number of writers have put together detailed lists and compendiums of 'misstatements' from Mr. Bush, such as here and here. Mr. Cheney, that no less ideological but seldom heard member of the administration, has recently spoken out and saved us all from having to look up and compile a list of his own (and the administration's) misrepresentations, distortions, and bald-faced lies. The Washington Post parses some of his statements:


Cheney vigorously defended the level of U.S. troops in Iraq at a time when lawmakers have said more than the current 130,000 American and 20,000 foreign troops are needed. Asked about his earlier dismissal of Gen. Eric K. Shinseki's prewar view that an occupation force would have to be "on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers," Cheney replied: "I still remain convinced that the judgment that we will need, quote, 'several hundred thousand for several years,' is not valid.


In fact, Shinseki did not mention "several years" in his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 25.


Similarly, Cheney argued that the administration did not understate the cost of the war in Iraq, saying it did not put a precise figure on it.


When confronted by previous estimates by then-White House Budget Director Mitchell Daniels suggesting the war would cost $50 billion to $60 billion, Cheney mumbled "Well, that might have been."


On the subject of Iraq's link to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney connected al Qaeda to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by saying one of the participants was Iraqi and returned there. Newly searched Iraqi intelligence files in Baghdad, Cheney said, showed "this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven."

He then revived the possibility that Mohamed Atta, who led the Sept. 11 attacks, allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Baghdad five months before the attack. It is a story Cheney had repeated during a March 16 appearance on "Meet the Press" and one that his aides tried to have added to Powell's presentation in February at the United Nations.


Cheney keeps harping on this lie, hoping to brass it out. Yet now, the scales are falling from the eyes of the press, at least. The Washington Post points out:


An FBI investigation concluded that Atta was apparently in Florida at the time of the alleged meeting, and the CIA has always doubted it took place. Czech authorities, who first mentioned the alleged meeting in October 2001 to U.S. officials, have since said they no longer are certain the individual in the video of the supposed meeting was Atta. Meanwhile, in July, the U.S. military captured the Iraqi intelligence officer who was supposed to have met Atta and has not obtained confirmation from him.


This intelligence officer has been held incommunicado for months, likely because of what he will say. This will further blow the Bush case for war out of the water. Cheney responded "We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it." Stuck, Cheney tried of obcure the facts with spin and to conflate stories to direct attention elsewhere. "The Iraqi government or the Iraqi intelligence service had a relationship with al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s." Previously, CIA documents have said there had been eight meetingsof Iraqi intelligence officers in the early 1990s when bin Laden was in Sudan. These continued assertions are baseless, as pointed out here, but that doesn't stop the propaganda.

Yet when asked about the real Al Queda supporters and links between the Saudi royal faimly, Saudi government, and Bin Laden, Cheney responded, "I don't want to speculate." He adding "[Sept. 11 is] over with now, it's done, it's history and we can put it behind us." Outrageous. They don't want to talk about 9/11 unless it's on their terms. Of course, holding the GOP convention in 2004 in New York City as close as they can get to the WTC site, along with a few scripted appearances there, and wrapping Bush in the flag (or flight suit) for the campaign will show how far they want to 'put it behind us.' This is truly the 'third rail' of administration policy. No one in office dare even mention the obvious because of the treason it would expose.

Other administration officials have seen the writing on the wall and are now trying to soft-pedal the Iraq-Al Queda link. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld acknowledged that there is no evidence linking Saddam Hussein and Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. The Wednesday, President Bush reiterated his earlier unguarded statement and also admitted that the links alleged by Cheney are without basis. As the editorialist at the Star tribune points out, "If lies about private, consensual, albeit adulterous, sex can bring the impeachment of a president, it's not remotely wrong to raise questions about misstatements on issues that go to the very survival of this nation."

Cheney also stuck by the lies on the subject of Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. "Cheney said he still believes chemical weapons are 'buried inside [Hussein's] civilian infrastructure. We've got a very good man now in charge of the operation, David Kay, who used to run UNSCOM." But Kay did not run UNSCOM. He was chief inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency for one year.

Cheney asserted that "Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program" and, repeating and assertion he made before the war, "Hussein's [possessed] 500 tons of uranium." David Kay himself pointed out in 1998 that this was low-grade unrefined uranium-contining the waste products of a nuclear reactor. This is unusable for weapons production without refining, for which Iraq has no capability. In response to this fact, the administration has alleged that Iraq was developing uranium enrichment facilities. Cheney allude to "a gentleman who had come forward with full designs for a process centrifuge system to enrich uranium." That man, Iraqi scientist Mahdi Obeidi, when released by US forces and interviewed, denied that the nuclear program had been reconstituted after 1991 and no physical evidence has been found by military search teams after five months. Cheney also resurrected the old refuted Niger yellowcake claims. Where has he been? Don't they get CNN in that bunker?

His other quotes on the subject are a laundry list of administration lies:


"We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons."

"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

"We know he's reconstituted these programs since the Gulf War."

"We know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization."

"We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."


For Cheney, the point man on the Halliburton funding, I mean Iraq war, this has always been the primary rationale. Tim Russert interviewed Cheney in March and asked, "What do you think is the most important rationale for going to war with Iraq?" Cheney's response? "Well, I think I've just given it, Tim, in terms of the combination of his development and use of chemical weapons, his development of biological weapons, his pursuit of nuclear weapons."

During the campaign, Cheney was the distinguished expert, the experienced one who would be 'one heartbeat from the presidency.' Now, it's clear that whether Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld, it's all the same pack of thieves. Next in line is Dennis Hastert.

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 10/6/04 at 11:41am

But Edwards is a meany lawyer! How can you compare all that with a meany lawyer!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/6/04 at 12:06pm

And, of course, the Big Lie (from today's Associated Press):

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Report: Saddam Not in Pursuit of Weapons

Report Finds Saddam Didn't Pursue Weapons Program, Undercuts Bush Rationale for Invading Iraq

The Associated Press


WASHINGTON Oct. 6, 2004 — Undercutting the Bush's administration's rationale for invading Iraq, the final report of the chief U.S. arms inspector concludes that Saddam Hussein did not vigorously pursue a program to develop weapons of mass destruction when international inspectors left Baghdad in 1998, an administration official said Wednesday.

In drafts, weapons hunter Charles Duelfer concluded that Saddam's Iraq had no stockpiles of the banned weapons but said he found signs of idle programs that Saddam could have revived once international attention waned.

"It appears that he did not vigorously pursue those programs after the inspectors left," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in advance of the report's release.

Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, was providing his findings Wednesday to the Senate Armed Services Committee. His team has compiled a 1,500-page report. Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay, who quit last December, also found no evidence of weapons stockpiles.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan continued to maintain that Duelfer's report will support the White House's view on Iraq's prewar threat. He said the report will conclude "that Saddam Hussein had the intent and the capability, that he was pursuing an aggressive strategy to bring down the sanctions, the international sanctions, imposed by the United Nations through illegal financing procurement schemes."

Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining industrial capability that could be converted to produce weapons, officials have said. Duelfer also describes Saddam's Iraq as having had limited research efforts into chemical and biological weapons.

Duelfer's report will come on a week that the White House has been put on the defensive in a number of Iraq issues.

Remarks this week by L. Paul Bremer, former U.S. administrator in occupied Iraq, suggested he argued for more troops in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, when looting was rampant. A spokesman for Bush's re-election campaign said Bremer indeed differed with military commanders.

President Bush's election rival, Democrat John Kerry, pounced on Bremer's statements that the United States "paid a big price" for having insufficient troop levels. On weapons, however, the Massachusetts senator has said he still would have voted to authorize the invasion even if he had known none would be found.

McClellan said: "The report will continue to show that he was a gathering threat that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction."

Compare that to the words of Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech on Aug. 26, 2002, 6 1/2 months before the invasion:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Cheney said then. "There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us."

On Wednesday, the White House also continued to assert that there were clear ties between Saddam before the invasion and the al-Qaida linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But a CIA report recently given to the White House found no conclusive evidence that Saddam had given al-Zarqawi support and shelter before the war, according to ABC News and Knight-Ridder.

The CIA report did not make final conclusions about a Saddam-Zarqawi tie, but does raise questions about the Bush administration's assertions that Zarqawi found a safe harbor in Baghdad before the invasion and raises questions about whether Saddam even knew Zarqawi was there.

During Tuesday night's debate, Vice President Dick Cheney said "there is still debate over this question." But he added: "At one point, some of Zarqawi's people were arrested. Saddam personally intervened to have them released."

In a speech on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush laid out what he described then as Iraq's threat:

"It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas."

"Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. "

What U.S. forces found:

A single artillery shell filled with two chemicals that, when mixed while the shell was in flight, would have created sarin. U.S. forces learned of it only when insurgents, apparently believing it was filled with conventional explosives, tried to detonate it as a roadside bomb in May in Baghdad. Two U.S. soldiers suffered from symptoms of low-level exposure to the nerve agent. The shell was from Saddam's pre-1991 stockpile.

Another old artillery shell, also rigged as a bomb and found in May, showed signs it once contained mustard agent.

Two small rocket warheads, turned over to Polish troops by an informer, that showed signs they once were filled with sarin.

Centrifuge parts buried in a former nuclear scientist's garden in Baghdad. These were part of Saddam's pre-1991 nuclear program, which was dismantled after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The scientist also had centrifuge design documents.

A vial of live botulinum toxin, which can be used as a biological weapon, in another scientist's refrigerator. The scientist said it had been there since 1993.

Evidence of advanced design work on a liquid-propellant missile with ranges of up to 620 miles. Since the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq had been prohibited from having missiles with ranges longer than 93 miles.
Report: Saddam Not in Pursuit of Weapons