'Dark Side' sheds light on Cheney

[Reincarnated]

'Dark Side' sheds light on Cheney

By Sam Allis, Globe Staff

June 20, 2006

"Frontline" delivers a devastating look tonight at the efforts of Vice President Dick Cheney to gain control of the war on terror after 9/11. In doing so, the show purports, he compromised the integrity of America's intelligence system.

"The Dark Side" is riveting television, heavily reported, that exemplifies what "Frontline" does best: go inside a major story and give us context. The title is a ripe double-entendre that applies both to Cheney and the turf on which the war against terrorists is fought. "We have to work the dark side, if you will," we hear Cheney say. "Spend time in the shadows of the intelligence world."

To many, Cheney is the dark side of the Bush administration, and this program will only cement that judgment. "Frontline" chronicles the brutal campaign by two consummate political in-fighters - Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - to decimate the CIA, politically emasculate Secretary of State Colin Powell, and construct a near-limitless concept of executive power during war. While many of these strands are familiar, they have not been assembled as effectively before on television to present a coherent picture of what happened after 9/11.

Cheney didn't trust the CIA after it missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iranian revolution, and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, so he created through Rumsfeld's Pentagon his own intelligence network to suit his agenda. Powell and former CIA director George Tenet were no match for this pair, who have known each other for three decades. By the time that Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted last fall, Powell and Tenet were long gone and the CIA was in shambles.

Tenet leaves as a thoroughly compromised man who first opposes some of Cheney's intelligence conclusions and then caves. He receives from Bush the Medal of Freedom - the highest honor the president can bestow - as he is pushed out. "You've seen this episode of 'I, Claudius,' you know?" says Steve Coll of the New Yorker. "You put the knife in one side and the medal on the other side and that's politics."

"The Dark Side" is, in a sense, CIA payback for its treatment. The program is dominated by legions of former CIA officers, some of whom left over the agency's treatment by the White House, and they detail what they view as Cheney's efforts to find the intelligence to fit the war he wanted against Saddam. Virtually no one, in contrast, appears from the Cheney-Rumsfeld camp to defend the two men's actions.

The talking heads are excellent. Most of the ex-spooks are strong, as is David Kay, leader of the failed attempt to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So are intelligence experts Ron Suskind and James Bamford and the inevitable Bob Woodward.

"Frontline" walks us through the bad intelligence that Cheney spouted in public, even after the CIA had challenged it, like an Al Qaeda -Saddam connection and Saddam's supposed purchase of enriched uranium from Niger. We hear that the president's first reaction to the WMD evidence was, "Is that all we got?"

We hear that Powell was not told the truth about the provenance of facts on which he based his disastrous speech at the United Nations, and that Cheney and Libby made 10 trips to the CIA - unheard of by the White House - to push analysts on data.

Paul Pillar, a respected former CIA officer, was a principal author of a signal report on WMDs in Iraq that proved so wrong. "The purpose was to strengthen the case for going to war with the American public," he says. "Is it proper for the intelligence community to publish papers for that purpose? I don't think so, and I regret having had a role in it."

Source

[Watzel]

So you can walk on water then?

[Reincarnated]

So you can walk on water then?

Nope

[IronGhost]

They lied to us, and lied to us, and lied to us. They whipped up a gullible public, and shocked by 911, into supporting a war that should never have been fought. Our men are dying in Iraq. We're spending $300,000,000 per week on the war. They're doing this while cutting taxes, and not paying the bill. Tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children are dying in Iraq as "collateral damage." The price of oil has been destabalized and goes nowhere but up. They've condoned torture and set up secret gullags in eastern Europe. I could go on, but ...

All of this and Bush-Cheney did not even win the popular vote in the first election, and almost certainly stole the second through outright fraud, vote-rigging and corupption.

Cheney should just change his name to Satan and get it over with.

Edited June 21, 2006 by IronGhost

[IhartU]

I worked at the Pentagon in the early 90's and met Dick Cheney quite a few times. Back then he was Secretary of Defense and was treated as God. He is very scary and you can feel the power ooze from every pore on his body. He had this way of looking at you that would make you shiver and we all feared one of his angry tantrums- they were definately a wonder to behold. You know, maybe he is Satan

[Fluffybunny]

The guy creeps me out; something is not right with him. I wouldn't trust him if I had to and it seems to me that he is the one in charge; not bush.

Evil would be a good way to describe him.

[Watzel]

He is a lot less to be feared than the other batch of loonies in power on this planet.

At least you could tell Cheney to take a bath and not have to go to jail for it.

[Fluffybunny]

He is a lot less to be feared than the other batch of loonies in power on this planet.

At least you could tell Cheney to take a bath and not have to go to jail for it.

I don't know...I think that if I told him to go take a bath on a bad day I might end up having an "accident" in my own bathtub...

[Reincarnated]

Sheer ignorance is jumping to conclusions about Cheney and his agenda.

I haven't jumped to any conclusions. This is a good book about Cheney that you should read, it was very informative:

Dick: The Man Who is President

This man is worse than what the media portrays. He is really the one in control. Unlike you, I don't base my political opinions on the pathetic US media. I read books and study up on politicians in office and actually use my brain. I guess thinking is considered ignorant now-a-days . Crawl back into your hole now, Watzel...