Beside personal pressure from the vice president, Cheney's staff is also engaged in resisting a policy change. Tactics included "trying to have meetings canceled ... to at least slow things down or gum up the works" or trying to conduct meetings on the subject without other key Cabinet members, one administration official said. The official said some internal memos and e-mail from the National Security Council staff to the national security adviser were automatically forwarded to the vice president's office -- in some cases without the knowledge of the authors.So, exactly how "vital" is our current policy? Well, aside from providing America with dozens of hot sexy pictures of Private Peppermint Patty and her leash-wearing boyfriend at Abu Ghraib, it also helped us obtain this nugget:
The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons.OK, so some dude lied while he was being tortured. Big deal, you say. That probably happens all the time, right? Right. But, that didn't stop the Bush administration from seizing upon the same torture-induced- bad-information when it came time to scare you into supporting their personal War for O.I.L. Laura Rozen notes:
Torture produced bad information that was used by the administration to make the case for war. The lawyers pushing the torture have been promoted to the very top positions of the US government (David Addington), or given cushey offices at the American Enterprise Institute (John Yoo). The Congressional oversight committees have been way too compliant, with the chairman of the Senate Intel committe voting to support Cheney's demands that the torture continue. A perfect storm of absolute horrors, and the American people are the victims too.update: TheLeftCoaster chips in:
Some of you may say that “big deal; so Bush lied about this.” But keep in mind that we now know that the Bush Administration also knew as far back as January 2003 that the Niger uranium claim was based on forgeries. We know that the Bush Administration was also told that the aluminum tubes story was bogus before the invasion as well. We now know that the claim that Saddam was assisting Al Qaeda was also a lie, and that the Administration knew this from Rummy himself as far back as February 2002. And we know that the IAEA was still on the ground in Iraq and had not confirmed any of Bush’s claims that Saddam had definitively stockpiled WMDs in violation of the two UN resolutions that Bush based his war upon.
And why exactly is this so important? Because take a look at the certification that Bush sent to Congress to start the war, which was required in the October 2002 war resolution, and then see that as we suspected over two and a half years ago, Bush has a big problem now:
March 18, 2003Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.Sincerely,GEORGE W. BUSH
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