Salon is upset that by a clear and convincing evidence standard, Cheney exceeded his constitutional authority on 911:
Salon.com Politics: For months the Bush administration fiercely resisted having the president and vice president testify before the 9/11 Commission. It was only under intense public pressure that the two leaders eventually agreed to do so... Vanity Fair... the magazine reports that... "Some members of the 9/11 commission and its staff are convinced that Cheney acted on his own -- before receiving the president's approval -- which would mean he broke the chain of command and, by exceeding his constitutional powers, acted unlawfully," the story says. "The final report of the 9/11 commission stops just short of saying that the conversation with the president before Cheney gave the order never happened ... the report goes as far as to say 'there is no documentary evidence for this call ...' Only after Cheney twice issued a shootdown order is there clear evidence that he called Bush and received authorization to order fighter jets to shoot down hijacked aircraft."... "People can come to their own conclusion. We didn't want to be in the position of saying the president and the vice president were lying to us."... Bob Kerrey... said: "We don't see that it happened the way he [Cheney] recalled it."
And one commissioner told the magazine (also anonymously) that the panel's members simply did not buy Cheney's account. "We tried to work out language that allows the reader to get that," he said....
"Philip Zelikow, the commission's executive director... said 'our fundamental judgment' had not changed. 'Which is the President and Vice President have offered an account. Their account could be true but we can't find corroborating documentary evidence to prove conclusively that it is true.'" Such corroborating evidence of an earlier call to the president, the article adds, could not be found in two different sets of personal notes kept by Lynne Cheney and Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- both of whom accompanied the vice president in the secure bunker under the White House that morning -- nor in seven different phone logs kept by various White House operations, from the Secret Service to the White House Military Office.
I'm not upset that Cheney exceeded his constitutional authority: inter arma silent leges, after all, and we can always impeach people who exceed their constitutional authority.
I'm upset that they are lying about it today.
I'm also upset at the lie that Cheney told on 911 to try to keep Bush away from Washington as long as he could: that there was intelligence of a direct threat to Air Force One.
Posted by DeLong at October 5, 2004 04:35 PM | TrackBackhttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/05/opinion/05tue1.html
The Nuclear Bomb That Wasn't
The only physical evidence the administration offered for an Iraqi nuclear program were the 60,000 aluminum tubes that Baghdad set out to buy in early 2001; some of them were seized in Jordan. Even though Iraq had a history of using the same tubes to make small rockets, the president and his closest advisers told the American people that the overwhelming consensus of government experts was that these new tubes were to be used to make nuclear bomb fuel. Now we know there was no such consensus. Mr. Bush's closest advisers say they didn't know that until after they had made the case for war. But in fact, they had plenty of evidence that the claim was baseless; it was a long-discounted theory that had to be resurrected from the intelligence community's wastebasket when the administration needed justification for invading Iraq.
The tubes-for-bombs theory was the creation of a low-level C.I.A. analyst who got his facts, even the size of the tubes, wrong. It was refuted within 24 hours by the Energy Department, which issued three papers debunking the idea over a four-month period in 2001, and by the International Atomic Energy Agency. A week before Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, in which he warned of an Iraqi nuclear menace, international experts in Vienna had dismissed the C.I.A.'s theory about the tubes. The day before, the International Atomic Energy Agency said there was no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program and rejected the tubes' tale entirely.
It's shocking that with all this information readily available, Secretary of State Colin Powell still went before the United Nations to repeat the bogus claims, an appearance that gravely damaged his reputation. It's even more disturbing that Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, had not only failed to keep the president from misleading the American people, but had also become the chief proponents of the "mushroom cloud" rhetoric.
Ms. Rice had access to all the reports debunking the tubes theory when she first talked about it publicly in September 2002. Yet last Sunday, Ms. Rice said that while she had been aware of a "dispute" about the tubes, she had not specifically known what it was about until after she had told the world that Saddam was building the bomb.
Ms. Rice's spokesman, Sean McCormack, said it was not her job to question intelligence reports or "to referee disputes in the intelligence community." But even with that curious job disclaimer, it's no comfort to think that the national security adviser wouldn't have bothered to inform herself about such a major issue before speaking publicly. The national security adviser has no more important responsibility than making sure that the president gets the best advice on life-and-death issues like the war.
If Ms. Rice did her job and told Mr. Bush how ludicrous the case was for an Iraqi nuclear program, then Mr. Bush terribly misled the public. If not, she should have resigned for allowing her boss to start a war on the basis of bad information and an incompetent analysis.
Someone ought interview Alexander Haig.
Posted by: Zizka at October 5, 2004 05:14 PMI've mentioned the fact that the 911 commission clearly concluced that Cheney decided to authorise Norad to shoot down airliners from time to time
http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2004/08/on-message-on-911-it-is-sometimes.html
and
http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2004/07/system1031-vice-president-has-cleared.html
and
http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2004/08/mashall-metaphor-watch-this-is-serious.html
Why do you people think that all you read anymore on just about any web or Blog that its all about BUSH bashing when in the end BUSH will be overwellmingly relected???!!!
Posted by: Bob at October 5, 2004 08:17 PMI'm relieved to know that SOMEBODY was trying to be in charge.
Bush was busy running for cover and hiding out away from any action - at least Cheney tried to do something.
Posted by: Mark S. at October 5, 2004 08:49 PMI agree with Mark S, at least provisionally. Yes Cheney's lying about it, but in my mind keeping Bush away from the decision-making process at the key moments of his administration is, in general, a good thing. My guess is that Cheney well knows what a lightweight Bush is, and thought it was best to involve him as little as possible at the crucial moments.
The key of course is to make sure Bush isn't re-selected, so that he doesn't have any say in future crucial moments.
Posted by: Kent at October 5, 2004 08:56 PMBob -
There are at least two reasons why Bush, if he's re-elected at all, won't be "overwhelmingly" re-elected:
a) Virtually every poll available now indicates that it's a dead heat.
b) Bush's supporters can't spell "overwhelmingly."
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