It was on September 8, 2002 that infamous torturer, Dick Cheney made the claim that having abandoned the hunt for the 9/11 Mastermind and sent our troops into a completely uninvolved country was not for oil at all, but really because the destruction of the planet was at hand.
"And what we've seen recently that has raised our level of concern to the current state of unrest ... is that he now is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium -- specifically, aluminum tubes..."
We had to wait years to hear the truth. But not this time.
It wouldn't be for four more years that Joseph Wilson unveiled the rickety intelligence behind another falsehood, the existance of Yellow Uraniam Cake, that some people in high places finally raised a brow and thought they might have been had. Some were still not convinced though, even after Dick Cheney commited treason against his country by conspiring to leak to the American press that the wife of the agent who spilled the beans was an undercover employee of the CIA which was and is a federal crime. Dick's cheif of staff was convicted, not of the crime you'll recall, but rather of obstructing the investigation. But by then Scooter Libby had so muddied the waters the evidence was in effect lost forever, or as the prosecutor would later describe it, "had sand kicked in our eyes."
Remember the serious tone of Dick Cheney when he lied to us then? Remember how stark, and emotionless he was when he laid out his list of yarns? So presidential! So authoritative.
So full of shit.
This time it didn't take 4 years to start seeing the truth. This time it was immediate. Like ... the next day.
• Cheney said that President Barack Obama’s decision to release the four top-secret Bush administration memos on the interrogation techniques was "flatly contrary" to U.S. national security, and would help Al Qaeda train terrorists in how to resist U.S. interrogations.
(...)
However, Blair, who oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, said in his statement that he recommended the release of the memos, "strongly supported" Obama’s decision to prohibit using the controversial methods and that "we do not need these techniques to keep America safe."
One by one, McClatchy reporters Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel untwist Cheney's tale with the skill and journalistic care that seemed to elude the nation's reporters all those years ago.
• Cheney said the Bush administration "moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks."
The former vice president didn’t point out that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri, remain at large nearly eight years after 9/11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and money to planning an invasion of Iraq before it finished the war in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
• Cheney denied there was any connection between the Bush administration’s interrogation policies and the abuse of detainees at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, which he blamed on "a few sadistic guards ... in violation of American law, military regulations and simple decency."
However, a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report in December traced the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the approval of the techniques by senior Bush administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ’a few bad apples’ acting on their own," said the report issued by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees."
The report goes on and on for 5 whole pages, which for the layout of Freep.Com is significant. That same serious tone, that same authoritative face that the majority of the country looked into and just bought every lie to the point of giving Haliburton full and unfettered access to every revenue generating contract it wished in the cash cow that Iraq became. Haliburton is the company that will finance his disappearance into Dubai to live out his life in riches beyond his wildest dreams. And we will never be able to stop him.
But at least the truth is asked for a little sooner this time. For many, it's still not enough to see it in black and white. Look at some of the Who-Do-You-Believe polls at some of the news outlets who were so complicit with the Bush Administration back then, like MSNBC. In the comments section you will still see piles of human beings who still want to live their lives in the ignorance that is the legacy of being a Dick Cheney supporter.
But for those who actually want to know the fact, the truth ... 1 day is a whole lot better than 4 years finding it!
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