Cheney’s first assignment, as newly-appointed Vice President in 2000, was to ascertain the capabilities of potential terrorist actions against the United States, and what we could do to combat them. March–May 2000.

He may have scheduled meetings about these things, but he never attended them–perhaps he was too busy working on the “secret energy policy”. Cheney also had a “heart episode.”

How the most glaring failure of preparedness in all American history could be so buried and ignored is beyond belief.

Some media should remind us that we really have not been led very effectively….

Tenet was right. Given that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had possessed weapons of mass destruction, indeed was developing nuclear weapons before the 1991 Gulf War, and given that Saddam’s regime had not accounted for WMDs he had possessed, any prudent intelligence agency would have to have concluded that he still had them. Moreover, there was no evidence that could have been obtained which would have convinced a prudent intelligence agency that Saddam did not possess them. This argument wasn’t made in the run-up to the war because Colin Powell and Tony Blair convinced George W. Bush to agree to a round of United Nations inspections. But the U.N. inspectors couldn’t prove that Saddam didn’t have WMDs. Given his past behavior, we had no basis for concluding he didn’t.

And we had no way of being sure that he would not arm Al Qaeda with them. That is the conclusion of Stephen Hayes’s “The Connection: How Al Qaeda’s Collaboration With Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America.” It is conventional wisdom around Washington, retailed by Richard Clarke, Sen. Carl Levin and Newsweek. But, as Hayes demonstrates, this conventional wisdom is wrong.

As George Tenet testified in October 2002, there were contacts going back to the early 1990s between agents of Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Clarke, when he served in the Clinton administration, said the same thing, as did many others in the Clinton administration. Czech officials believe that Sept. 11 hijacker Muhammad Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in August 2001. Hayes also reveals that in January 2000 Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, acting under orders from Iraqi intelligence, accompanied two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to a meeting in Malaysia that the CIA has concluded was a planning session for the assault on the U.S.S. Cole and the Sept. 11 attacks.

As Hayes is careful to note, some of the evidence of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties is questionable. Intelligence evidence often is. But it is interesting that many who criticize Bush for not “connecting the dots” before Sept. 11 are also criticizing those who connect the dots on Iraq-Al Qaeda ties. These critics seem to believe that Saddam Hussein’s regime should have been considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But foreign policy is not bound by the rules of a criminal court, and Saddam’s previous behavior entitled us to regard him as guilty until proven innocent beyond a reasonable doubt.

So put yourself in the position of George W. Bush in late 2002 and early 2003. You must assume that Hussein has or can produce weapons of mass destruction. And you know that Iraqi agents have met with Al Qaeda operatives. You know that both Iraq and Al Qaeda want to inflict maximum damage on the United States. You have had great success in eliminating Al Qaeda operatives, but you know that you haven’t got them all. So the only way to protect the United States is to eliminate the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was, as Hayes said at an American Enterprise Institute panel last week, a “no brainer.”

It is interesting to ponder what those who continue to insist that “BUSH LIED” and that there was no danger from collusion between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein would have said if Bill Clinton had done what George W. Bush did in Iraq — which is consistent with much of Clinton’s rhetoric. Almost certainly they would have agreed, as some of them did in the Clinton years, that there was a danger from Iraqi WMDs and Iraqi collaboration with Al Qaeda. That they take the opposite view now is evidence not that they are right but that they are filled with partisan venom.

I try to re-read my writing, but sometimes these mistakes slip through the cracks.

Everybody makes mistakes, so you really can’t blame George Bush for making a few too. Evidence? What evidence? We don’t need no stinking evidence.

That little ditty about all of the children of the members of Congress joining the military and George’s daughters enlisting, I was mistaken. Must have been dreaming. It was based upon bad information or fixed facts or something like that. I’m going back to sleep, my nightmares are heaven compared to this living.

Paul and Dick should go to Baghdad and admire their newly acquired prize. See what they have wrought and judge for themselves if it was worth it or not. They could take along Madeline Albright, too.

I’m sure the schmucks their would welcome them with cake and flowers.

If I were you, I’d go take a nap and dream a little dream, this living is too much like a nightmare. No wonder Howard Dean was screaming before the election. He can’t help it. It’s all too much. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, what’s that?

Get your sons and daughters to join the military, just like all of the members of Congress are doing. The twins joined yesterday. Do your part.

Keep Dean at the DNC. He scares the right. He should choose his words a bit more carefully. Fundies instead of Christians, but he is energizing the base. Keep him where he is for now.

On 12/9/01, Cheney claims “confirmed”
On 3/18/02, Wolfy had “doubts”

If the dates were reversed, then a slam-dunk. But maybe the doubts truly did arise *after* they thought they had confirmed the intel.

I can easily see this being the logic that gets used. Like with DSM: sure they were talking about war in July ‘02. But thinking changed before the UN was approached. And by the time Congress was consulted, the viewpoint reported in the DSM was long abandoned.

At least from watching the Bush/Blair press conference from last week, and Colon Powell’s statements to Jon Stewart, I get the impression they will try to deflect the British Memos with this sort of logic.

There is going to be more killing again tomorrow in Iraq. War is good business and business is good.

Go back to sleep and don’t worry about a thing. It’s all under control.

This administration has used the PNAC manifesto as a roadmap from the day they got into office. Why hasn’t that been used as evidence against them?

What’s a little lying?

Elections are not punishment mechanisms. Not when electronic voting machines give tainted fixed results (see “Rob Georgia”).

How then do these bastards get punished? Until this gets figured out and implemented, the screaming idiots that run around inside the MonkeyPalace will continue to proclaim that “We are now empire” and are beyond reach of the normal course of history.