Cheney's Trouble with Truth By Robert Scheer
Published on Thursday, November 24, 2005 by Robert Scheer http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1124-25.htm You've got to hand it to Dick Cheney; no other modern politician has come so close to perfecting the theater of the absurd. Even as he protests his innocence of lying about matters of state, he lies about matters of state. In speeches Friday and Monday, the vice president, who has long insisted Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were allies, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, we would be greeted as liberators in Baghdad, and that the Iraqi insurgency is in its ''last throes," again evidenced his trademark inability to speak the truth. Continuing the administration's recent shrill defensive barrage over whose fault the Iraq mess is and with the truth chasing the lies in full view, Cheney had the gall to smear the war's critics as ''corrupt and shameless." Then, within a few sentences, he showed again why 52 percent of those polled by Newsweek believe Cheney deliberately "misused or manipulated" prewar intelligence. First, he shamelessly repeated the absurd notion that a bum- rushed Congress, most of which does not have high security clearance, was privy to the same intelligence as he and his war-salesmen allies. In fact, not only was Cheney and his staff poring over the classified testimonials of an array of known liars, forgers, drunks, opportunists and desperate exiles we now know supplied White House speechwriters with their best lines, he also had access to the intelligence community's combined disclaimers, rebuttals and outright denunciations of these sources and their conveniently tawdry tales. "Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war," wrote former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., in a devastating statement in the Washington Post on Sunday. ''Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud." Graham, then the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says the declassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate was a sham. "It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed (WMD), avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version," wrote Graham. Parsed out, Cheney's recent statements amount to a defensive claim the Bush administration didn't lie so much as it was just calamitously incompetent, too eager for invasion to bother to do its due diligence. The reality, however, is that while the Yalie president may not be the brightest star on the horizon, the owlish Cheney is nobody's dummy. What he is, and has always been, is the most bald-faced of the administration's war hustlers, shamelessly peddling, for example, the cloak-and-dagger tale of a Hussein operative meeting with Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in Prague long after U.S. intelligence had dismissed it. Similarly, it was Cheney who was instrumental in getting Colin Powell to make the astonishing claims of the intelligence source code-named "Curveball" the centerpiece of the secretary of state's prewar presentation to the United Nations. Now, thanks to a definitive investigation by the Los Angeles Times published Sunday, we find out that top German intelligence sources in charge of interrogating Curveball had already declared him an unreliable source. "'We were shocked" a high-level German intelligence officer told the Times. "Mein Gott! We had always told (the United States) it was not proven -- it was not hard intelligence." But perhaps the most outrageous lie Cheney and the White House kept -- and keep -- making is that invading Iraq was a sensible part of the response to Sept. 11. ''In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away," noted Graham on Sunday. ''Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda." In making his continued one-man jihad against the facts, Cheney is apparently throwing Hail Mary passes to that part of the Republican base that will believe anything it is told -- having already lost the trust of the majority of Americans. But as Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said in response to the slander by a Republican congresswoman that he, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran, is a coward for arguing for the quick and complete withdrawal from Iraq, "You can't spin this. You've got to have a real solution. This is not a war of words, this is a war." Yes, Cheney's war. Copyright 2005 Robert Scheer To subscribe: http://lists.portside.org/mailman/listinfo/portside *** Human Rights Watch has been known over the years to soften its punches when it came to criticizing Israel. Hence, this Open Letter to the would-be Democratic Party presidential candidate for 2008, Hillary Clinton represents an important breakthrough for HRW and should receive wide circulation. Women's organizations that are certain to support her candidacy should be put on notice now. HRW should also receive letters (as well as contributions) of support for taking a political stand that required courage and is quite likely going to hurt their fundraising. I have cc'd the four HRW offices in the US and you can address your emails to one or all of those offices. Thanks to Ed Herman and Academics for Justice for passing this on. Jeff B Open Letter to Hillary Clinton - Human Rights Watch Letter to Senator Clinton on Comments about the Construction of the Wall Sarah Leah Whitson Human Rights Watch November 23, 2005 http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/23/isrlpa12086_txt.htm Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton United States Senate 476 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator Clinton, We write in response to comments attributed to you in Ha'aretz (11/15, 2005) during your recent trip to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) regarding the construction there of a metal and concrete barrier (hereinafter referred to as a "wall", in accordance with the terminology used by the International Court of Justice). The media has quoted you as expressing support for the wall because it "is against terrorists" and "not against the Palestinian people." In light of your general standing as a supporter of international law and human rights, we find these comments disturbing and disappointing. Israel certainly claims that its construction of the wall is designed to counter terrorist attacks by building a barrier between Israelis and Palestinians, but that could have been accomplished by building it along the Green Line. Instead, Israel has built the bulk of the wall (benignly referred to as a "security fence" by the Israeli government) well inside the OPT for the purpose of capturing Israeli settlements, and the Palestinian land and resources they control, on the "Israel side" of the wall. Under the current route, only twenty percent of the wall's route is inside Israel or along the Green Line, while 80 percent deviates from it, encompassing fifty-five Israeli settlements and other land in the OPT. These settlements contain the vast majority of more than 400,000 settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The wall succeeds in providing contiguity among the illegal settlements, their access roads, and Israel, while severing Palestinian cities, towns and villages from each other and from their land. This deep intrusion suggests that the function of the wall is less for security than for facilitating the eventual annexation of territory. B'Tselem, a leading human rights organization in Israel, unequivocally concluded in its September 2005 report, "Under the Guise of Security", that contrary to the state`s claim that the Barrier`s route is based solely on security reasons, the main consideration in setting the route in some locations was to include on the "Israeli" side of the Barrier areas which are slated for settlements expansion. In some cases, the expansion amounts to the establishment of new settlements. The location of the wall outside Israel is also illegal under international law. In 2004, the International Court of Justice concluded that Israel's construction of the wall within the boundaries of the OPT contravenes international humanitarian law and is tantamount to an illegal annexation of the settlements on the "Israel side" of the wall. The court wrote that Israel should cease construction of the wall on Palestinian territory, dismantle those portions already constructed there, and pay reparations for damage caused. Unfortunately, Israel has failed to follow the court's decision and continues its construction of the wall. The court also reiterated its finding, shared by international legal commentators and every major human rights organization in the world, that the settlements themselves violate international humanitarian law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits Israel, as the occupying power in the OPT, from transferring members of its own population into the OPT; Article 55 of the Hague Regulations, a component of customary international law, also prohibits Israel from making permanent changes to the territory, such as establishing Jewish-only settlements, that do not benefit the local inhabitants. These laws were designed in recognition of the tremendous damage that colonization of occupied territories causes to the lives of the indigenous population. Sadly, all evidence indicates that the wall is, in fact, very much "against" the Palestinian people. The humanitarian, economic, and social impact of the wall on Palestinian communities has been nothing short of disastrous, as extensively documented by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, relief organizations, and human rights groups, among others. In the case of many Palestinian villages, the wall separates students from their schools, families from their relatives and friends, workers from their jobs, and farmers from their agricultural land, greenhouses, olive and citrus trees, and even water. The wall has severely circumscribed the already limited access of a number of Palestinian cities and villages to their local hospitals, schools and social service facilities. Worst off are the Palestinians trapped on the "Israel side" of the wall, who must now obtain special permits from the Israeli government to reside in their own homes. By making movement and in some cases residence so difficult, the wall seems intended to encourage Palestinians to leave for other areas of the West Bank, or even other countries. Even the Supreme Court of Israel has recognized that the Israeli government cannot ignore altogether these humanitarian impacts. In two recent cases, although the court continued to avoid ruling on the illegality of settlements, it ordered Israel to consider rerouting the wall or its route in certain areas where Palestinians in a number of villages demonstrated the destructive effect of the wall on their ability to earn a livelihood or have any semblance of normalcy in their lives. While these decisions may alleviate some of the damage caused to those particular villages that were able to file claims and receive a hearing, they fail to address the ongoing, overall harm caused by the wall to Palestinians in the OPT or the fundamental illegality of the wall's construction on Palestinian territory. In light of these considerations, we hope that you will reconsider your position in support of the wall, which ignores, and thereby undermines, the pronouncement of the world's highest judicial authority on matters pertaining to international law. We hope you will reconsider the evidence indicating that the placement of the wall inside the OPT is designed to annex settlements to Israel, under the guise of security. And we hope that you will instead join us and other human rights organizations, both around the world and inside Israel and the OPT, in demanding that Israel respect international law and protect the human rights of the Palestinians subject to Israeli military occupation. Sincerely, Sarah Leah Whitson Executive Director, Middle East and North Africa Division Visit http://academicsforjustice.org Contact your representatives and elected officials: use http://cflweb.org/congress_merge_.htm For other ways to help, see http://BoycottIsraeliGoods.org ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Help save the life of a child. 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