Cheney on Rush Limbaugh Lies & Smears Richard Clarke

[Chicago Democrat]

Talking Points by Joshua Micah Marshall
March 22

Cheney was on Rush Limbaugh today fighting back against Richard Clarke.

(Snip)

RUSH: All right, let's get straight to what the news is all about now before we branch out to things. Why did the administration keep Richard Clarke on the counterterrorism team when you all assumed office in January of 2001?
CHENEY: Well, I wasn't directly involved in that decision. He was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the cybersecurity side of things. That is, he was given the new assignment at some point there. I don't recall the exact time frame.



Cheney frequently gets a pass for what his aides later portray as unintentional misstatements of fact. But there are two or three levels of dishonesty involved in this response. The key one is timing. It's convenient that Cheney doesn't "recall the exact time frame" since the time frame puts the lie to his entire point.

Clarke was put in charge of cyberterrorism (a pet interest of his); but that was after 9/11.

He's saying that Clarke wasn't really so central to the terrorism big picture prior to 9/11 because he was tasked with dealing with cyberterrorism (which Cheney describes as something like a glorified version of Norton AntiVirus). But, as noted, this happened after 9/11. That's after the period in which Clarke claims the White House wasn't paying attention to the terrorism issue.

---------

A quite important article rest at....

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

[Randomthought]

1. It's Surreal

A VP is on the radio show of a wingnut drug addict. A reputable media source wouldn't let Cheney talk?

[Chicago Democrat]

4. Cheney must support drug addicts and wingnuts!

It is theatre of the absurd. An insane nut addicted to Oxycontin and a pyschopathic liar.

[MikeG]

2. On Jan. 21, 2005, after Kerry wins, I wouldn't let Cheney leave until

he returns all government property including his defibrillator.

[JPZenger]

3. Here's a Great Editorial on Clarke, including his background

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune
full text: http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/4679296.html

"A few facts about Clarke: He's a Republican. He served 30 years in government; for 10 years, under three Republican presidents and one Democrat, he served in the White House as one of the nation's most senior national security advisers. Clarke is not a dove. He believes in an assertive foreign policy and a vigorous projection of U.S. military power, which should make him a natural ally of Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. Indeed, while serving as an assistant secretary of state in the early 1990s, he worked with Cheney and Wolfowitz to assemble the coalition that pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. He argued, with Wolfowitz, that the war ought to be prolonged until the Iraqi Republican Guard was destroyed. Finally, what Clarke has to say about the current Bush administration's obsession from the start with Iraq is corroborated by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in his memoir, "The Price of Loyalty."

...Rice's credibility already has been substantially damaged by her misstatements and deceptions concerning the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq...

In a memo from 2000, Attorney General Janet Reno identified counterterrorism as her department's top priority. Both before and immediately after Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft and the White House downplayed the significance of terrorism. Prior to Sept. 11, the issue disappeared entirely from the list of Department of Justice priorities. Moreover, on Sept. 10, 2001, Ashcroft proposed cutting $65 million for counterterrorism grants to state and local governments because applications for the funds were lagging.

Immediately after Sept. 11, the FBI requested an emergency appropriation of $1.5 billion for counterterrorism. The White House allowed only $531 million, a third of what the FBI said it needed."