At some point that is hard to predict the American public is going to get disgusted with the non-stop lies they are told by the Bush administration. Yesterday we finally had complete confirmation that Valerie Plame was indeed considered a non-offical cover CIA operative. We also learned that Scooter Libby was authorized to out Valerie Plame’s identity (and to reveal other classified information) by the Vice-President. Today, we have three more enormous lies exposed.
And while [former FEMA Director, Michael] Brown lauded the performance of both Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin and Chief of Staff Andrew Card, he also said he’d told them and the president the day before the hurricane hit that the government was facing a “catastrophe within a catastrophe.” Then on Monday, August 29, the day after Katrina made landfall, Brown said he told staffers at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security that the levies had broken and “our worst fears are coming true.”
“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” –President Bush, on “Good Morning America,” Sept. 1, 2005.
“It was on Tuesday (August 30th) that the levee–may have been overnight Monday to Tuesday–that the levee started to break. And it was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap and that essentially the lake was going to start to drain into the city.” -Head of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff [Meet the Press, 9/4/05]
January 26, 2006 Press Conference
Q: Can you say, sir, whether you were lobbied by Jack Abramoff or other lobbyists, and what your policy is about lobbyists meeting with senior staff?
THE PRESIDENT: You know, I, frankly, don’t even remember having my picture taken with the guy. I don’t know him.
“The guy saw me in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything, who knows,” Abramoff wrote in an e-mail to Kim Eisler, national editor of the Washingtonian magazine.
The Bush administration, [Paul R.] Pillar, [the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005] wrote, “repeatedly called on the intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the case for war,” including information on the “supposed connection” between Hussein and al Qaeda, which analysts had discounted. “Feeding the administration’s voracious appetite for material on the Saddam-al Qaeda link consumed an enormous amount of time and attention.”
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I want to be very careful about how I say this. I’m not here today to make a specific allegation that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11. I can’t say that. On the other hand, since we did that interview, new information has come to light. And we spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al-Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years. We’ve seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center. The debates about, you know, was he there or wasn’t he there, again, it’s the intelligence business.
Mr. RUSSERT: What does the CIA say about that? Is it credible?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: It’s credible. But, you know, I think a way to put it would be it’s unconfirmed at this point. We’ve got…
Mr. RUSSERT: Anything else?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: There is–again, I want to separate out 9/11, from the other relationships between Iraq and the al-Qaeda organization. But there is a pattern of relationships going back many years. And in terms of exchanges and in terms of people, we’ve had recently since the operations in Afghanistan–we’ve seen al-Qaeda members operating physically in Iraq and off the territory of Iraq. We know that Saddam Hussein has, over the years, been one of the top state sponsors of terrorism for nearly 20 years. We’ve had this recent weird incident where the head of the Abu Nidal Organization, one of the world’s most noted terrorists, was killed in Baghdad. The announcement was made by the head of Iraqi intelligence. The initial announcement said he’d shot himself. When they dug into that, though, he’d shot himself four times in the head. And speculation has been, that, in fact, somehow, the Iraqi government or Saddam Hussein had him eliminated to avoid potential embarrassment by virtue of the fact that he was in Baghdad and operated in Baghdad. So it’s a very complex picture to try to sort out. And…
Mr. RUSSERT: But no direct link?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I can’t–I’ll leave it right where it’s at. I don’t want to go beyond that. I’ve tried to be cautious and restrained in my comments, and I hope that everybody will recognize that.
If the public ever learns the degree to which they are being spied on, will they finally clamor for the impeachment of the President and the Vice-President?
