Did Dick Cheney Commit a Truth?

A lot has been made of the seeming discrepancy between Dick Cheney's characterizations of Richard Clarke's involvement in counter terrorism: "Well, he wasn't -- he wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff," and Condi's: "I would not use the word 'out of the loop'....He was in every meeting that was held on terrorism. All the deputies' meetings, the principals' meeting that was held and so forth, the early meetings after Sept. 11." The discrepancy was taken by a lot of commentators as evidence of White House disorganization in their response to Clarke's book.

I agree that such seeming a contradiction don't look good (and this from the Administration of message discipline!!). But I've just finished Clarke's book, and I'm not sure there is a contradiction. Rather than a contradiction, the seeming discrepancy demonstrates (to me, anyway) just how distinct terrorism is from Cheney's grand strategy. Here's what I mean:

Condi is quite specific. Clarke was involved in every meeting that related to terrorism, which included (according to Clarke's own description) a series of meetings with the Deputies (people like Stephen Hadley and Paul Wolfowitz) and finally a meeting with the Principals (people like Rummy and Cheney) on September 4.

Cheney offers no such detail. As many have pointed out, this contradiction may really boil down to what Cheney considers "the loop."

But couple that with a few details from Clarke's book:

Page 29, Clarke describes Condi sending him home at around midnight on 9/11 to get some sleep.

Condi Rice joined us again in the Situation Room. The Preident now wanted to be sure we were all going home to get some sleep. "I need you bright and fresh in the morning. Go home." Rice made sure we understood it was an order.

Clarke goes home, but doesn't sleep; he just showers, puts on fresh clothes, and returns. When he gets back to the White House, he finds the focus of discussions has changed (keep in mind, this is less than 24 hours after the attacks):

I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were, what we could do about them in the short term. Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq.

Now consider this, from page 265, where Clarke discusses why Bush went to war in Iraq:

The reasons given by the Bush Administration for its war with Iraq have shifted from terrorism to weapons of mass destruction to the suffering of the Iraqi people. In addition to those publicly articulated rationales, there were others reportedly discussed in Washington's bureaucracy. Five rationales are attributed to three senior advisors. [emphasis added]

He goes on to rehearse five reasons that sound familiar: finish things with Saddam, improve Israel's strategic position, create a model Arab democracy,  "permit a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia...where they were stationed to counter the Iraqi military and were a source of anti-Americanism threatening to the regime," and create another friendly source of oil, replacing Saudi Arabia.

These are just two tiny details from a pretty broad book. But I was shocked when I read both of them. The first incident--where Clarke is sent away and discussions of plans to invade Iraq break out the night after 9/11 sounded fishy to me. Perhaps an attempt to get him out of the way so discussions could really start. An easy way to keep him out of the loop.

But the second was even more surprising to me. First of all, when he gives reasons for the Iraq invasion, it is all secondhand information (about the only secondhand information in the book). "Reportedly." "Are attributed." He was seemingly never a direct party to discussions about the real reasons we went to war.

I was also a little surprised at the reasons Clarke gives for the war. They coincide somewhat--but not exactly--with what Karen Kwiatkowski tells us the reasons were:

[M]ore bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision also played a role.

Clarke has the preparation for the fall of Saudi Arabia right, something related to new bases (although with no mention of the imperial aspect to it), and no mention of the euro at all. I'd add that, all of the reasons Kwiatkowski gives were discussed (albeit not prominently) in the press even before the war.

Clarke's book leaves little doubt that he is a very sharp man. So I was surprised his description of the reasons for the Iraq war wasn't more nuanced--or perhaps more cynical. There might be explanations for this--perhaps the Administration chose to censor a more detailed description of the reasons when they vetted the book. But I was left with the impression that the man knows everything about terrorism, but nothing about the Administration's plans in the Middle East.

Which brings us back to Dick Cheney's loop. After finishing the book, I have no doubt that Cheney's notion of "the loop" has to do with the grand strategy to shore up the financial (euro v. dollar) and resource (oil) position of the United States by dominating the Middle East. Many things in the book suggest that Cheney, Rummy, and Wolfy see nothing outside of this grand strategy. To be fair to them, if they really believe that they are addressing some of the fundamental weaknesses of the US with this strategy (I do think they believe this), then they probably shouldn't get distracted. They have a plan that will counteract America's underlying fragility, and they will execute it, because the ongoing strength of the country depends on it.

All the while, of course, they've neglected a more immediate and tangible weak spot.

Part of the reason I posted this is simply because I think it reveals how blind both sides of the issues are because of their dominant paradigms. The neo-cons can see nothing beyond their grand strategy, even after some other real weaknesses have been exposed. Clarke (perhaps) sees nothing of the grand strategy underlying our Middle East policy.

The irony of it all? By botching Iraq reconstruction so thoroughly, the Grand Strategy has collided with the terrorist threat.  But that doesn't make either of our weaknesses easier to address.

Cross posted from http://www.bopnews.com/