Cheney - the evil behind the Bush in Washington

[FormerRepublican]

I've been doing some research on the AIPAC indictment because the whole thing stinks. My eyes have been opened about Israel AND about our own government. But most of all, this story illustrates how incompentent our government can be when political ideologies get too extreme.

It all started with Chalabi after Gulf War I. To quote The New Yorker:

"In 1996, Chalabi and Brooke set up shop in Georgetown, and mapped out a strategy. They studied how the African National Congress had won mainstream support, by portraying apartheid as tantamount to slavery. They also examined how various American Jewish groups organized themselves to support Israel. “We knew we had to create a domestic constituency with some electoral clout, so we decided to use the aipac model,” Brooke said, referring to the American Israel Political Action Committee.

In June, 1997, Chalabi gave a speech at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, in Washington. He told the audience that it would be easy to topple Saddam and replace him with a government that was friendly to Israel, if the U.S. would provide minimal support to an armed insurgency organized by the I.N.C. Although Chalabi later denied that oil had played a role in his campaign, he gave an interview to the Jerusalem Post in 1998 in which he spoke of restoring the oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa, which had been inoperative since the creation of Israel, in 1948.

Chalabi’s pitch stirred enthusiasm and curiosity among a group of American neoconservatives who had played crucial roles in the first Bush Administration but were now scattered among Washington think tanks. After the fall of Communism, the neoconservatives were eager for a new cause, and Chalabi—an educated, secular Shiite who was accepting of Israel and talked about spreading democracy throughout the Middle East—capitalized on their enthusiasm. Judith Kipper, the Council on Foreign Relations director, said that, around this time, Chalabi made “a deliberate decision to turn to the right,” having realized that conservatives were more likely than liberals to back the use of force against Saddam.

As Brooke put it, “We thought very carefully about this, and realized there were only a couple of hundred people” in Washington who were influential in shaping policy toward Iraq. He and Chalabi set out to win these people over. Before long, Chalabi was on a first-name basis with thirty members of Congress, such as Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich, and was attending social functions with Richard Perle, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, who was now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Dick Cheney, who was the C.E.O. of Halliburton. According to Brooke, “From the beginning, Cheney was in philosophical agreement with this plan. Cheney has said, ‘Very seldom in life do you get a chance to fix something that went wrong.’ ”

Wolfowitz was particularly taken with Chalabi, an American friend of Chalabi’s said. “Chalabi really charmed him. He told me they are both intellectuals. Paul is a bit of a dreamer.” To Wolfowitz, Chalabi must have seemed an ideal opposition figure. “He just thought, This is cool—he says all the right stuff about democracy and human rights. I wonder if we can’t roll Saddam, just the way we did the Soviets,” the friend said.

Chalabi was running out of money, however, and he needed new patrons. Brooke said that he and Chalabi hit upon a notion that, he admitted, was “naked politics”: the I.N.C.’s disastrous history of foiled C.I.A. operations under the Clinton Administration could be turned into a partisan weapon for the Republicans. “Clinton gave us a huge opportunity,” Brooke said. “We took a Republican Congress and pitted it against a Democratic White House. We really hurt and embarrassed the President.” The Republican leadership in Congress, he conceded, “didn’t care that much about the ammunition. They just wanted to beat up the President.” Nonetheless, he said, senior Republican senators, including Trent Lott and Jesse Helms, “were very receptive, right away.”

Congressional hearings on the C.I.A.’s failures in Iraq were held in 1998, and Chalabi’s think-tank allies, such as Richard Perle, gave testimony that excoriated the Clinton Administration. Meanwhile, Chalabi continued to gather intelligence from Iraq that would further his cause. He found an opportunity in the U.N.’s weapons-inspection program, which had been set up in 1991 to prevent Saddam from developing weapons of mass destruction. On January 27, 1998, Chalabi met in London with Scott Ritter, who was then working as a liaison for the U.N. program. At the time, the U.N. had been unable to account for a number of weapons—including nearly nine thousand litres of anthrax—that Saddam’s regime said it had dismantled. U.N. inspectors had exhausted other sources of intelligence. Chalabi claimed to have operatives who had penetrated Saddam’s circle, and offered to help."

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content?040607fa_fact1_c

So here we have Chalabi, who wants to manipulate whomever he can to invade and take over Iraq on one side. And on the other, we have the willing ears and political ideology of Cheney and his crew who want all the same things. And we have Republicans who are so blinded by their political ideology that they would use any stick handed to them to beat up the President, including the stick handed to them by people whose agenda is not in the best interests of the United States.

But still, the damage was pretty limited until George W. Bush was elected with Cheney as Vice President. Then, things started to get really ugly. Cheney put the extremist neocons into power in the Defense Department (something tells me he was planning something!).

"How did he do it? Cheney's first victory came when he got Rumsfeld appointed Secretary of Defense over Powell's candidate. Rumsfeld and Cheney have worked together since Nixon. Placing Rumsfeld at DOD was critical because it put a prominent neocon also pushing for war in Iraq in control of America's military might. Cheney next insured the neocon takeover by placing Wolfowitz in the number two position at the Pentagon. With Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Wolfowitz's group (Feith, Cambone and so on) in place, the neocon capture of the policy apparatus of DOD was complete.

Cheney's own staff is filled by the neocon inner circle. And Cheney holds enormous influence over Bush II. As one prominent Senator describes it, "Like with a horse, Powell is always able to lead Bush to the water. But just as he is about to put his head down, Cheney up in the saddle says, 'Un-uh,' and yanks up the reins before Bush can drink the water." "

http://zfacts.com/p/771.html

The problem with these guys is they can't be described as being in any way moderate. They're so far off to the right that they make Israel's Sharon look like a moderate. And Cheney put them in charge of US defense. (Every VP who wants to do a dirty deed but still stay in politics needs a fall guy if things go wrong, and people so rabid that they'll stand by you regardless of how dirty it gets.)

The words of Justin Raimonda ring true:

""Our troops will be fighting a proxy war in Iraq, and beyond, not to protect U.S. citizens from terrorist attacks, but to make the world safe for Israel. When the dead are buried, let the following be inscribed on their tombstones: They died for Ariel Sharon.""

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=65426

And yet these words are much too simplistic to describe the web of espionage and treason that has engulfed Washington. One must not forget Cheney's involvement with Halliburton and other defense contractors who have benefitted heavily from US action in Iraq. One must not forget that it's Cheney and Bush who crafted the Iraq policy and gave the orders, not Israel, no matter how much Israeli spying was going on.

And it's clear that this agenda was formulated long before the current AIPAC scandal:

"Why did he do it? Late in the Bush I Administration, some early neocons began to argue for a "Pax Americana" in which the U.S. would use its overwhelming economic and military might to dominate the world. Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, along with Wolfowitz and Libby developed in their Defense Planning Guidance a plan to transform American foreign policy along these lines, including a war with Iraq. Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opposed this plan which, when leaked to the press, was widely ridiculed and went nowhere.

Cheney's suspicions of Iraq continued to grow during the Clinton years. He joined the American Enterprise Institute, a hotbed of neocon activity. "It was an article of faith in the AEI crowd that the United States had missed a chance to knock off Saddam in 1991; that Saddam was rebuilding his stockpile of WMD, and that sooner or later the Iraqi strongman would have to go." Cheney's Long Path to War."

http://zfacts.com/p/771.html

Perhaps most telling about Cheney's role is in this old press piece:

"It will come as no surprise that among issues Cheney will be involved in is national security, a natural for the former Pentagon chief who, along with Bush's father, former President George Bush, and Powell, waged the Persian Gulf War in 1991."

http://www.freep.com/news/nw/chen11_20010111.htm

Too bad we didn't know then that the national security Cheney would be working on would not be ours.

[bostonbabs]

1. thank you...excellent! n/t

[DELUSIONAL]

2. Cheney is one of the main reasons I want bushie to stay well.

As bad as bushie is -- Cheney is far far worse.

From time to time bushie will come out of his stooper and notice Cheney and will probably scream -- "I'm the President" to Cheney. This probably happens enough to keep the evil Cheney from taking over completely.

But for all practical purposes -- da Prez is probably Cheney.