This latest revelation by Murray Waas will certainly heat things up, especially in the context of the impending indictments tomorrow:
Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.
Cheney had been the foremost administration advocate for war with Iraq, and Libby played a central staff role in coordinating the sale of the war to both the public and Congress.
Among the White House materials withheld from the committee were Libby-authored passages in drafts of a speech that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered to the United Nations in February 2003 to argue the Bush administration’s case for war with Iraq, according to congressional and administration sources. The withheld documents also included intelligence data that Cheney’s office — and Libby in particular — pushed to be included in Powell’s speech, the sources said.
Just another in a long series of acts designed to help restore honor and dignity to the White House.
Thomas
On a scale of one to ten, this rates zero as a surprise. On the other hand, if I’m reading Waas correctly, he got this info from administration and congressional sources. That’s news. What the hell are they bracing for?
kemk
This is what happens when the watertight compartments fail and the ship lists and there aren’t nearly enough lifeboats to accomodate everyone.
Thank goodness the grownups are in charge.
jcricket
But Joe Wilson is a liar and the Democrats are only interested in the politics or personal destruction, so it’s all OK, right?
stickler
Somebody in the GOP Congressional community must be having the revelation that the Titanic’s designer, Thomas Andrews, was having after reviewing the gash in his ship’s side:
Andrews, of course, in both the movie and real life, had the class to go down with his ship. What do you suppose the architects of the RMS Bushco will do? There’s a gash on the side of the ship of state and the bulkheads are all leaking …
Geek, Esq.
Man, makes me wonder if Libby’s injury was really an accident.
Okay, it doesn’t.
Zifnab
Cheney has been more than forthcoming with documents that the Senate Intelligence Committee doesn’t want to see, so I don’t understand what the problem is. Clearly, the only reason that the committee would want this information is to further the Democratic agenda of criminalization of politics.
Otto Man
To steal a line from the Daily Show, they’re just trying to keep pace with the Republican agenda of politicization of crime.
There used to be a time when money laundering was all about the drugs, man, but now it’s been cheapened. And the people who used to out CIA agents used to do it for cash bribes from the Soviet Union, and now it’s just to help Bush in the polls.
What will we tell the children?
neil
Don’t you realize that this was the only way that they could keep America safe from Saddam’s WMDs?
jaime
uh. uh. uh. Don’t you mean “to further the DEMOCRAT agenda of criminalization of politics.
docG
How does Colin Powell hold his head up high enough to grab on to those large speaking honorariums?
ppGaz
Scooter Libby is doing a heckuva job. Nobody could have anticipated that there would be confusion over the documents and WMDs. Documents can be misplaced by mistake, it’s only a technicality.
Wilson was the real liar who caused the war.
cd6
We’ve turned the corner on withheld documents
db
They clearly withheld those documents from the Senate because they were forgeries from Italian Intelligence services. They were simply doing their patriotic duty by protecting us from those lying Italians.
russell
I can understand how people can, in good faith, support the general platform and political goals of the Republican party. I don’t, personally, but I have no problem with folks that do.
What I do not understand, at all, and can’t imagine understanding, is how people can, in good faith, support the actual behavior of the members of this particular administration.
This kind of BS is not about policy. In a perverse way, it’s actually kind of non-partisan. This is about a specific bunch of people who consider themselves to be unaccountable to any other authority.
It’s time for responsible Republicans and/or conservatives to withdraw their support for this President. Not because he and his crew are good or bad conservatives and/or Republicans, but because they’re irresponsible, reckless leaders, who abuse their office to do irresponsible, destructive things.
It’s not about policy, it’s about the behavior of the folks in the office. This crap is wrong.
Ancient Purple
No, no, no, no.
Joe Wilson is a liar because he specifically held back information that would have prevented 9/11 from happening, because he knew that Saddam had sent his people to Niger to get information on flying jumbo jets.
Could you please follow the playbill?
jobiuspublius
Wow, VPOTUS’ advisor buddy Michael Ledeen is a fascist. Shocking!
Bob Davis
Cheney entrusted me with the documents, and I chose all by myself to keep them from congress. I swear, though, that I did not look at them, and had no idea that they were important at all. In fact, I thought Dick gave them to me for recycling, and I used them for puppy-training purposes. Dick is innocent of all charges, I tells ya’.
Tim F
Say what?
Louise
I remember thinking, back in 2000, when Cheney picked himself to be the VP candidate…”Well, if the public is gullible enough to elect W. President (and many of us living in TX at the time knew just how gullible they’d have to be), then at least there will be a grownup in charge. Not a grownup I like too well, but a grownup, nonetheless.”
Ok, so I didn’t pay all that much attention to politics before that. Did 9/11 really change everything or was Cheney always doing this Charles Foster Kane impression? Scowcroft, in the New Yorker article, seems to imply that he has changed significantly.
stickler
Russell asks:
Well, speaking as a conservative and (still!) registered Republican, I can tell you I’ve fulfilled your request. Hell, I even put a “Republicans for Kerry” sticker on my F150 last fall. Fat lot of good it did, but there you have it.
I suspect, however, that Russell really wants “responsible” Republicans, like the national figures who might have influenced the election of 2004, to step forward.
Guys like Scowcroft and Hagel and McCain, I’d bet. Well, don’t hold your breath. Lot of bulkheads have to break before they publicly abandon the RMS Bushtanic.
Slide
I couldn’t agree more. Its time for all good Republicans to start speaking out. Some are already: former Senator Danforth, General Skowcroft, Wilerson. This is not about ideology, this is about democracy and how we want our government officals to operate.
Tractarian
If the morons in the Kerry campaign had figured this out – that is, focused on Bush’s incompetence, secrecy, and dishonesty instead of his tax cuts and health care policy – things would be a lot different now.
We’d have a completely different set of misbehaving lunatics in the White House.
Doug
Good policy may be partisan, but good government isn’t. There are legitimate arguments about what is good policy and what is bad policy. But, corruption and secret documents and whatnot is wrong no matter who is doing it. Says me, Captain Obvious.
Lee
wait a gosh darn minute: I thought when john cole mentioned “Withholding Documents?” he was refering to Sandy Berger. jeez, this IS a far left post. got it. ok, let the hypocracy continue….
Lee
hey slide, nice logic “this is about democracy and how we want our government officals to operate.” is that why you have the courts do your dirty work? whats up wit dat?
Steve S
The only way to restore honor and dignity to this Whitehouse is for my Uncle to bring over his front end loader and clean the place out like he does his barn.
Jcricket
So, when Sandy Berger takes copies of documents during the course of Senate investigation and is ultimately punished (something which I’m fine with), that’s the same as Vice President Cheney withholding source material that would muddy the waters enough to potentially undermine the Bush administration case for war? Oh, and since one Democrat did something wrong, we’re never allowed to point out a Republican doing something worse?
It’s no wonder such gods of logic like Hindrocket and Hannity are your heroes.
Bruce Moomaw
This is starting to tie into the Big Puzzle about the Plame affair: if — as the Senate Intelligence Committee said — Wilson’s original report to the CIA was actually noncommittal on whether Saddam was trying to buy uranium from Niger and Wilson dishonestly changed his story about this in his NYT editorial, then why the hell didn’t the White House simply point this fact out to discredit Wilson’s NYT piece, instead of going wildly overboard by outing his wife? Obvious conclusion: they had some other motive for doing the latter. I still can’t make out the details clearly through all the fog and radar chaff, but pretty obviously they were motivated by fear that they’d be exposed as having DELIBERATELY deceived Congress and the public regarding Saddam’s nuclear program, as opposed to just making an honest mistake about it. And they were desperately trying to thoroughly discredit either Wilson himself (as Kevin Drum suggests) or all those Horrid Doves at the CIA with the Plame story. (“Why, those silly CIA doves picked Wilson for the job just because his wife told them to!”, etc.)
Sojourner
There’s still a chance we may find out what the Plame affair was all about.
It looks like Fitz is working to flip Rove. Since Rove lacks a soul, it’s quite likely that Fitz will succeed. Then the real fun begins.
Gratefulcub
Yeah, Cheney changed. He, and Rice, were from the realist school of Nixon and Kissinger. The NeoCons (and I am not using that word in a derogatory manner), made up of Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, Wurmser, etc wanted to take down Saddam. Cheney came on board after 9/11, I am not sure why. It is completely out of character. Nation building was never in his DNA. Rumsfeld either, and that is possibly why the post war planning was never done sufficiently.
What is amazing to me about this left right fight is that no one is on their historical side. The war was sold on WMD and fear. That brought the right on board, and the left rejected the argument (partially out of mistrust and dislike for Bush). But, that wasn’t the reason for the war. And no, it wasn’t oil. (OK, it is of course about oil in some way, but only because we would not be in the region if it was just a desert. But, we didn’t go to Iraq for their oil)
It was totally a geopolitical decision. The real NeoCons saw the end of the cold war as an opportunity. The saw the cold war as proof that we should use our power for good, and to protect american interests. Wolfowitz, a man that I truly admire, was the one that believed in democracy.
Wolfowitz was not comfortable with abandoning the Kurds and Shia in 91 after we told them to rise up. Cheney was. Cheney was a realist; only america’s interests mattered. He had no qualms with supporting dictators to maintain peace at the world’s oil pump.
While Wolfowitz, Perle, and others were writing about regime change in the Weekly Standard through the late 90’s, Cheney was arguing for the lifting of sanctions against Iraq. I realize he was working at an oil company at the time, but I don’t believe the man is pure evil, capable of promoting an end to sanctions while believing that forced regime change was an important goal.
I realize that is all hastily written, incoherent, and half baked. I have a hard time compiling 7 or 8 sources from memory and writing the 15 pages minimum to discuss cheney’s transformation, all while on coffee break.
And to not lose my liberal credentials, I admire Wolfowitz, but I disagree with him. Remember, “Neocons are really liberals with guns.”
Sojourner
Whether the neocons started this war for good or ill is irrelevant. They misled the American people and took away our right to decide whether we wanted to shed American blood to test their theories.
Sorry but there’s nothing admirable about people who use others for their own purposes without telling them and giving them the right to choose.