More of this, please:
“Are you in favor of releasing the documents that Dick Cheney has been requesting be released?,” asked Rep. Rohrbacher.“Well, it won’t surprise you, I don’t consider him a particularly reliable source of information,” responded Secretary Clinton.”
Cheney now claims that there are documents showing the efficacy of torture. Maybe there are. But consider:
1. Cheney claimed that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted nuclear weapons.
2. Cheney claimed that there were operational links between Saddam and Al-Qaeda.
3. Cheney claimed that the insurgency was in its last throes.
And he did this all on the basis of what he claimed were classified documents showing his position.
As Jane Mayer demonstrates in The Dark Side, Cheney out-and-out lied to Dick Armey — hardly the thin end of the Marxist wedge — in making the case for war in Iraq. And as Josh Marshall has pointed out, Cheney’s “leadership” of the administration’s anti-terrorism task force in 2001 and his attempt to enlist Middle Eastern leaders in favor of the Iraq War in 2002 were grotesquely incompetent.
Indeed, the question everyone should be asking now is: is there anything that Dick Cheney said about national security policy during his 8 years as Vice-President that has been shown to be true? Did any of his national security initiatives produce anything but failure and disaster?
And if not, then why should anyone pay attention to anything the man says?
