Dating Cheney's Nuclear Drumbeat- by Jim Lobe and Tom Engelhardt

[laststeamtrain]

August 2, 2005
Dating Cheney's Nuclear Drumbeat
by Jim Lobe and Tom Engelhardt


In a recent piece, "The Media's Roving Eye," trying to establish a timeline that would offer context for the Plame case, I wrote the following:
"Vice President Cheney started the administration's atomic drumbeat to war in Iraq with a series of speeches on Saddam's supposed nuclear capabilities and desires beginning in August of 2002. (The crucial role of Cheney, whose eye was first caught by a Defense Intelligence Agency report on the Niger uranium documents back in February 2002, in the events that would become the Plame case, has been poorly covered…)"

As I soon found out, I did not stand apart from most others in poor coverage of Cheney's role. Jim Lobe, whose pieces for Inter Press Service I've quoted from, linked to, and recommended endlessly over the last years, sent a few lines my way to tell me that I, too, was off in my Cheney timeline, that the vice president had started in on the subject of Saddam Hussein's supposed nuclear program significantly earlier than I realized, and that this mattered greatly in understanding the nature of the events to follow...http://tinyurl.com/bge9g

[i miss america]

1. Actually I believe it started even earlier...

with the anthrax attacks in October 2001.

At least that's the way I remember it.