Cheney Sticks to His Delusions
By Dan Froomkin
Special to Friday,>http://washingtonpost.com
Friday, April 6, 2007; 1:20 PM
Faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, even President Bush has backed off his earlier inflammatory assertions about links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
But Vice President Cheney yesterday, in an interview with right-wing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, continued to stick to his delusional guns.
Cheney told Limbaugh that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading al-Qaeda operations in Iraq before the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
"[A]fter we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney said. "And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq." (Think Progress has the audio clip.)
But Cheney's narrative is wrong from beginning to end. For instance, Zarqawi was not an al-Qaeda member until after the war. Rather, intelligence sources now agree, he was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents. And although he worked hard to inflame sectarian violence after the invasion, he certainly didn't start it.
As it happens, just in case anyone needed more evidence of the spuriousness of Cheney's views, yesterday also marked the release of yet another report confirming that that al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government were not working together before the invasion.
The report also further documents how Cheney willfully ignored reliable intelligence in favor of broadcasting invented assertions emerging from a rogue Defense Department office -- a habit he apparently has yet to break.The Latest Report
R. Jeffrey Smith writes in The Washington Post: "Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides 'all confirmed' that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.
"The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information."
According to the report, "a key Pentagon office -- run by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith -- had inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the U.S. intelligence consensus disputed.
"The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was 'mature' and 'symbiotic,' marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics."
Those conclusions, running so contrary to traditional intelligence findings, were "leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine before the war" and then "were publicly praised by Cheney as the best source of information on the topic."
Tony Capaccio writes for Bloomberg that the report draws "a direct connection between the Sept. 16 White House briefing and Cheney's public comments thereafter.
"Four days later, Cheney referred at fundraiser to a 'well-established pattern of cooperation between Iraq and terrorists.'
"And on Dec. 2, Cheney warned in a speech that Hussein's regime 'has had high-level contact with al-Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to al-Qaeda terrorists.' His language mirrored that on briefing chart entitled 'Summary of Known Iraq-al-Qaeda Contacts -- 1990-2002.'"
Here is the full text of the report; as well as the slides used by Feith's office in its presentation to senior White House officials.
On one slide entitled "Fundamental Problems with How Intelligence Community is Assessing Information," Feith's office suggests that the CIA and others were underestimating how hard Iraq and Al Qaeda would be trying to hide their relationship -- so that, in their words, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
That, of course, is highly reminiscent of the administration's key pre-war assertion that the lack of evidence of Iraqi WMDs proved how diligently Saddam was hiding them. In both cases, the administration stood traditional intelligence-gathering methodology on its head by insisting that lack of evidence was more indicative than evidence -- in other words that conviction trumped facts.The Limbaugh Connection
It's not a coincidence that Cheney was talking to Limbaugh yesterday. The show has been one of Cheney's favorite venues.
As I wrote in my January 29 column, The Unraveling of Dick Cheney, Cheney is increasingly out of touch with reality. He seems to think that by asserting things that are simply untrue, he can make others believe they are so.
In Limbaughland, he's right.
In Limbaughland, not only were Saddam and Al Qaeda linked but -- more significantly -- liberals hate America. In Limbaughland, Cheney can say a lot simply by failing to disagree with his host's assertions.
Consider a few of yesterday's exchanges.
Limbaugh was complaining to Cheney about how the Democrats seem to be primarily motivated by a desire "to make sure we come home defeated."
Limbaugh: "Can you share with us whether or not you understand their devotion, or their seeming allegiance to the concept of U.S. defeat?"
Cheney: "I can't."
I wrote yesterday about Bush's recess appointment of three controversial officials including Sam Fox, whose nomination to be ambassador to Belgium was opposed by Democrats on account of his 2004 donation to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Limbaugh called Fox "a great American" and praised the White House for making an end-run around Democratic opposition.
Limbaugh: "This is the kind of move that garners a lot of support from the people in the country. This shows the administration willing to engage these people and not allow them to get away with this kind of -- well, my term -- you don't have to accept it -- Stalinist behavior from these people on that committee."
Cheney: "Well, you're dead on, Rush."
The two also chuckled about the White House move.
Limbaugh: "You go on vacation, this is what happens to you."
Cheney: "If you're a Democrat." They both laughed.