Cheney Admits Administration Full Of Incompetent Nincompoops

This morning the Vice-President gave a speech in which he said:

What is not legitimate and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence.

How are we to interpret this? If we were more cynical, we might assume that the Vice-President doesn't care about the truth of his words, so much as he cares about providing rhetorical cover that Bush supporters can hide behind. Certainly, there are followers who will try to parrot this line over and over, until it becomes clear even to the dead-ender 30% that "that dog won't hunt."

But what if, in fact, Cheney is telling the truth? How could that be possible? What would it mean? You'll notice he said "purposely misled." I believe the other day he said "deliberately" misled. This is important.

The obvious implication is that all the misleading was by accident. The administration is full of well-meaning people who were trying to do their best, they were just tragically mistaken when they said all those things over and over again.

Now, it might seem, on first glance, preposterous that so many highly-educated graduates of top universities with such distinguished resumes could make such egregious blunders. No doubt, it is this difficulty - believing that reasonably intelligent adults could make such mistakes - that has led many to assume they must have been deliberate. But what if Cheney is right? Other possibilities emerge.

Some environmental factor at the White House may be to blame. Perhaps, at all the cabinet meetings, they have been serving beverages from poorly made pewter vessels, and they've all got lead poisoning. This might account for a general inability to reason, and the sudden diminishment of mental faculties.

This theory gains credence following the recent interview of Donald Rumsfeld by Wolf Blitzer.

BLITZER: Let's talk about a big issue that's raging in Washington right now: intelligence, prewar intelligence, how good it was, how bad it was. Everybody now recognizes it was pretty horrible.

Listen to what you said, Mr. Secretary, on January 20, 2003, two months before the war started.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUMSFELD: Large, unaccounted for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, including V.X., sarin, mustard gas, anthrax, botulism and possibly smallpox. And he has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All that was wrong, right?

RUMSFELD: No.

It was correct that there were large -- let me answer your question, Wolf.

BLITZER: But did he have a large, active program to acquire nuclear weapons?

RUMSFELD: Let me answer your question.

There were large, unaccounted for deposits. And that was the conclusion of the U.N.

It was the conclusion that was -- they went through 17 resolutions. It was the conclusion of U.S. intelligence. And it was accurate to say that they were unaccounted for. That is a fact. BLITZER: And what about he has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons?

RUMSFELD: We have not been able to validate that on the ground.

BLITZER: That was a mistake?

RUMSFELD: And prewar intelligence was clearly imperfect.

BLITZER: All right. Let's go to the next sound byte.

Listen to what you said on September 26, 2002, several months before the war. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUMSFELD: We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaida members, including some that have been in Baghdad. We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior-level contacts going back a decade and of possible chemical and biological agent training. When I say contacts, I mean between Iraq and Al Qaida.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: That was a mistake?

RUMSFELD: No. Zarqawi was in there.

It was clearly -- there clearly were Al Qaida in and around Iraq.

BLITZER: You believe that to this day?

RUMSFELD: Zarqawi was physically in Baghdad.

BLITZER: But...

RUMSFELD: They were operating...

BLITZER: Was he then -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- associated directly with Al Qaida?

RUMSFELD: No, probably not.

BLITZER: So why would you say that there was a connection between Iraq and Al Qaida?

RUMSFELD: Because the intelligence reported that there were Al Qaida that moved in and out of Iraq and had some connection with the Saddam Hussein regime.

BLITZER: That was on September 26, 2002.

RUMSFELD: Saddam Hussein...

(CROSSTALK) BLITZER: The intelligence -- your intelligence in February 2002 said exactly the opposite. There was a DIA intelligence estimate that's now been declassified -- Senator Levin released it -- that said this. "It is possible he does not know" -- referring to this intelligence source -- "does not know any further details. It is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers. Even Shaykh al-Libi has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest."

In effect, the DIA concluded this source, which alleged this Iraq-Al Qaida connection, was a fabricator.

RUMSFELD: There is no question that there are fabricators that operate in the intelligence world. And there's also no question you can find intelligence reports on every side of every issue.

When you look at the reams of intelligence information that the United States develops from different agencies, they gather from other friendly foreign liaison services, you can find in any given week intelligence that conflicts with each other. The implication that there's something amazing about that is just ridiculous.

BLITZER: But the basis of the intelligence...

RUMSFELD: We know intelligence is imperfect.

BLITZER: That's why the U.S. went to war: the WMD and the Iraq- Al Qaida connection that you alleged.

RUMSFELD: The reason the United States went to war, the president has announced and said it repeatedly. There were 17 resolutions in the U.N. that were ignored by Saddam Hussein. Our planes were being shot at on a regular basis in the Operation Southern Watch and Operation Northern Watch. Saddam Hussein was giving $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers. Iraq was on the terrorist list. Iraq had used chemical weapons against its own people and its neighbors.

BLITZER: But, Mr. Secretary, wasn't Iraq under Saddam Hussein in those days effectively contained by the United Nations, by the U.S., the no-fly zones, the economic sanctions, the diplomatic sanctions? Weren't they effectively contained? And certainly, with hindsight, Saddam Hussein did not pose much of a threat to the United States.

RUMSFELD: The -- you say was it effectively contained?

It was certainly engaged in doing things that were harmful -- shooting at our airplanes, the only place in the world that was taking place.

How could a man as intelligent as Donald Rumsfeld be arguing at the same time that they are blameless for relying on the intelligence they had, while explaining that intelligence is essentially worthless, because it is so contradictory? How could he both believe that Zarqawi's presence was proof of an al Qaeda connection and that he wasn't part of al Qaeda at the time? And really now, how many other places in the world were we doing no-fly patrols where our planes might have been shot at?

I'm afraid the most charitable answer, if we are to rule out deliberate misleading, is certainly brain damage. Alternately, they are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops.

For an example of what a healthy, intelligent person might have done, we have the report of Senator Bob Graham, co-chair of a Congressional joint intelligence committee:

At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.

Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.

There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.

Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.

The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq.

From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth.

On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.

Poor Vice-President Cheney. He is so angry, and perhaps because he, too, was drinking for the hypothetical pewter vessels, he has trouble finding the words to clearly express himself. No doubt what he means to say is that, it wasn't that they were deliberately, purposefully, misleading us. It's just that they're all brain-damaged, or otherwise incapable of simple logical analysis and reasoned judgment. There's no other explanation.

I'm still not clear on why they haven't all resigned yet, though. Mr. Cheney?