Thursday, September 18, 2008

Former GOP House leader says Cheney misled him on Iraq



Cheney is as paranoid as anyone I have ever seen in mental health practice, both research and clinical. If he is going to be in Washington, D.C. he should be at St. Elizabeth's, with the guy who attempted to kill Reagan.


The vice president told Dick Armey, who in 2002 spoke against going to war, that Saddam Hussein had direct ties to Al Qaeda and would soon have a suitcase nuclear weapon, a new book says.

From the Washington Post
September 16, 2008


WASHINGTON -- A GOP congressional leader who was wavering on giving President Bush the authority to wage war in late 2002 said Vice President Dick Cheney misled him by saying that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had direct personal ties to Al Qaeda terrorists and was making rapid progress toward a suitcase nuclear weapon, according to a new book by Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman.


Cheney's accusations, described by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, came in a classified one-on-one briefing in the vice president's office in the Capitol.


The threat Cheney described went far beyond public statements that have been criticized for relying on "cherry-picked" intelligence of unknown reliability. There was no intelligence to support the vice president's private assertions, Gellman reports.


Armey had spoken out against the coming war, and his opposition gave cover to Democrats who feared the political costs of appearing weak. Armey reversed his position after Cheney told him, he said, that the threat from Iraq was "more imminent than we want to portray to the public at large."


Cheney said, according to Armey, that Iraq's "ability to miniaturize weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear," had been "substantially refined since the first Gulf War."


Cheney linked that threat to Hussein's alleged ties to Al Qaeda, Armey said, explaining "we now know they have the ability to develop these weapons in a very portable fashion, and they have a delivery system in their relationship with organizations such as Al Qaeda."


"Did Dick Cheney . . . purposely tell me things he knew to be untrue?" Armey said. "I seriously feel that may be the case. . . . Had I known or believed then what I believe now, I would have publicly opposed [the war] resolution right to the bitter end."


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.


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