Why Cheney Lost It When Joe Wilson Spoke Out
By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
Testimony at the Libby trial showed a vice president obsessed with retaliating against former ambassador Joseph Wilson for writing, in the New York Times op-ed section on July 6, 2003, that intelligence had been "twisted" to justify attacking Iraq. How to explain why the normally stoic, phlegmatic Cheney went off the deep end?
Vice President Dick Cheney can be forgiven for feeling provoked. The Times, having been led by Cheney and others down a garden path littered with weapons of mass destruction that were not really there, did some retaliation of its own with the snide title it gave Wilson's op-ed: "What I Did Not Find in Africa." Adding insult to injury, Wilson chose to tell Washington Post reporters, also on July 6, in language that rarely escapes an ambassador's lips, the bogus report regarding Iraq obtaining uranium from Niger "begs the question regarding what else they are lying about." That threw down the gauntlet, and Cheney had to worry that others who knew about the lies might feel it safe to go to the press and spill the beans. Retaliation had to be swift and as unambiguous as possible.
Having successfully browbeat then-CIA director George Tenet and other malleable managers of intelligence into doing his bidding, Cheney immediately tried to get the CIA to support the cockamamie story about Iraq getting uranium from Niger. He was no doubt surprised to be stiff-armed by Tenet, who had been warning senior officials about that bogus report for almost ten months. On July 7, the administration publicly conceded that the Iraq-Niger fable should not have been included in the State of the Union address.
(Continued here.)
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
Testimony at the Libby trial showed a vice president obsessed with retaliating against former ambassador Joseph Wilson for writing, in the New York Times op-ed section on July 6, 2003, that intelligence had been "twisted" to justify attacking Iraq. How to explain why the normally stoic, phlegmatic Cheney went off the deep end?
Vice President Dick Cheney can be forgiven for feeling provoked. The Times, having been led by Cheney and others down a garden path littered with weapons of mass destruction that were not really there, did some retaliation of its own with the snide title it gave Wilson's op-ed: "What I Did Not Find in Africa." Adding insult to injury, Wilson chose to tell Washington Post reporters, also on July 6, in language that rarely escapes an ambassador's lips, the bogus report regarding Iraq obtaining uranium from Niger "begs the question regarding what else they are lying about." That threw down the gauntlet, and Cheney had to worry that others who knew about the lies might feel it safe to go to the press and spill the beans. Retaliation had to be swift and as unambiguous as possible.
Having successfully browbeat then-CIA director George Tenet and other malleable managers of intelligence into doing his bidding, Cheney immediately tried to get the CIA to support the cockamamie story about Iraq getting uranium from Niger. He was no doubt surprised to be stiff-armed by Tenet, who had been warning senior officials about that bogus report for almost ten months. On July 7, the administration publicly conceded that the Iraq-Niger fable should not have been included in the State of the Union address.
(Continued here.)
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