June 20, 2006
Out of the Shadows
'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.
....
``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."
Check your local listings. The national broadcast is tonight at 9EDT on PBS, tho' only one of the three local public stations is carrying it here.
Posted by Melanie at June 20, 2006 03:22 PM | TrackBackI watched it. If I was depressed before, I'm energized now. It is time to move to Canada, I'm convinced that Harper is a temporary phenomenon and that Canadians will return to their right minds. I'm not convinced that Americans ever will. The manifest evil of the current administration here has been obvious to many of us for a long time, but half the population are too frightened or stupid to get it. Time to move someplace smarter and better informed.
Here's has the video. The American public bought it. Time to move someplace where the voters aren't quite so stupid.
I hope you're right that Harper is a temporary phenomenon - but the fact is that right now he is in power. In the phrase of John Ralston Saul, Canada is in many ways a "Siamese twin" of the U.S. and the brain poison of American culture has easy access to the Canadian mind (speaking metaphorically).
I've just read the prologue and intro to George Soros's new book The Age of Fallibility*. Soros thinks that here (Estados Unidos) is where the central action is. Although I sometimes fantasize about going someplace else, it could be that continuing the struggle from here might be the way to go.
*Soros says:
>>It is no longer a question of removing President Bush from the White House; a more profound rethinking of America’s role in the world is needed. It is not enough to revert to the policies of the previous administration; America must undergo a change of heart. The process must begin with recognizing the war on terror as a false metaphor. It is now accepted that the invasion of Iraq was a grievous error but the war on terror remains the generally accepted policy.
The change of heart cannot be accomplished merely by helping the Democratic Party in the 2006 and 2008 elections because Democrats show no sign of engaging in a profound rethinking. On the contrary, Democrats have been so spooked by the Republican charge that they are soft on defense, that they are determined to outdo the Republicans in the war on terror. Nevertheless, I think it is important that the Democratic Party gain control of the House of Representatives in 2006. A Democratic-controlled House could reveal the misdeeds of the Bush administration which are currently kept under wraps.
