Cheney Caught In Another Major Lie

Everyone knew that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction (update here).

Dick Cheney admits that he lied about 9/11.

MSNBC recently noted that these two facts are intertwined:

Mark Rossini, was then an FBI counter-terrorism agent detailed to the CIA. He was assigned the task of evaluating a Czech intelligence report that Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, had met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague before the attack on the World Trade Towers.

Cheney repeatedly invoked the report as evidence of Iraqi involvement in 9/11. “It’s been pretty well confirmed that he [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with  a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia  last April,” Cheney said on Meet the Press on Dec. 9, 2001.

But the evidence used to support the claim–a supposed photograph of Atta in Prague the day of the alleged meeting—had already been debunked by Rossini. He analyzed the photo and immediately saw it was bogus: the picture of the Czech “Atta” looked nothing like the real terrorist. It was a conclusion he relayed up the chain, assuming he had put the matter to rest.

What Else Did He Lie About?

The New York Times’ Maureen Daud writes today:

In a documentary soon to appear on Showtime, “The World According to Dick Cheney,” [Cheney said]  “I got on the telephone with the president, who was in Florida, and told him not to be at one location where we could both be taken out.” Mr. Cheney kept W. flying aimlessly in the air on 9/11 while he and Lynn left on a helicopter for a secure undisclosed location, leaving Washington in a bleak, scared silence, with no one reassuring the nation in those first terrifying hours.

“I gave the instructions that we’d authorize our pilots to take it out,” he says, referring to the jet headed to Washington that crashed in a Pennsylvania field. He adds: “After I’d given the order, it was pretty quiet. Everybody had heard it, and it was obviously a significant moment.”

***

When they testified together before the 9/11 Commission, W. and Mr. Cheney kept up a pretense that in a previous call, the president had authorized the vice president to give a shoot-down order if needed. But the commission found “no documentary evidence for this call.”

In other words, Cheney pretended that Bush had authorized a shoot-down order, but Cheney now admits that he never did … and Cheney acted as if he was the president on 9/11.

Cheney lied about numerous other facts related to 9/11 as well.  For example, Cheney:

Kangaroo Court Show Trials

Huffington Post reports:

A judge expressed frustration on Monday that an unknown U.S. government entity censored his courtroom audiovisual feed, cutting public access to pretrial hearings for five accused Sept. 11 plotters.

“If some external body is turning the commission on or off based on their own views of what things ought to be, with no reasonable explanation … then we’re going to have a little meeting about who turns that light on and off,” said the judge, Col. James Pohl.

Pohl’s comments came after an unknown censor cut off a live media feed to the court proceedings as David Nevin, a lawyer defending Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, began discussing his request for information on his client’s case.

***

A court security officer positioned next to the judge has the ability to dump the feed if anything secret arises. That officer didn’t activate the censorship button on Monday.

***

“I would like to know who has the permission to turn that light on and off, who is listening to this, who is controlling these proceedings, or controlling that aspect of these proceedings,” Nevin said.

This is just one of a series of outrages regarding investigation and trial of alleged 9/11 terrorists.

In 2008, the former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo’s military commissions disclosed that the trials have been rigged to prevent the possibility of acquittal. Specifically, the head of the Guantanamo tribunal — who is actually in charge of both prosecuting and defending the suspects — told the former chief prosecutor:

Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.

In addition, three other Guantanamo prosecutors — Maj. Robert Preston, Capt. John Carr and Capt. Carrie Wolf — “asked to be relieved of duties after saying they were concerned that the process was rigged. One said he had been assured he didn’t need to worry about building a proper case; convictions were assured.”

Another former Guantanamo prosecutor resigned, saying in a sworn declaration that the government pulled all sorts of shenanigans in one case.

Violence and Threats Being Used to Intimidate and Coerce the American Public for Political Purposes

We’ve documented that – by any measure – America is the largest sponsor of terrorism in the world.

But remember, terrorism is defined as:

The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.

The American government has also been using violence and threats to intimidate and coerce the American public for political purposes.

For example, the U.S. government is doing the following things to terrorize the American public into docility and compliance:

• Labeling peaceful protest as terrorism

• Using homeland security laws to crush dissent

• Spying on all Americans

• Threatening to indefinitely detain American citizens without cause and without any due process

• Even threatening to kill any U.S. citizen on a whim

U.S. constitutional law has taught for hundreds of years that chilling the exercise of our liberties is as dangerous to freedom than directly suppressing them.

By Any Measure, the U.S. Is the Largest Sponsor of Terror

Preface: As a patriotic American – I was born here, lived here all of my life, and love this country – I want the best for the U.S.  

Lawless actions are tearing my country apart.  I want my country to regain its vision, strength and moral compass.  Thomas Jefferson said that “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”.  I criticize my country because I know we are better than this … and that if enough people know how far we have fallen, we can start to pull ourselves back and reclaim our greatness.

Many Countries Sponsor Terror … But America Is the Worst

The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan – Lt. General William Odom said:

By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation.

(audio here).

The Washington Post reported in 2010:

The United States has long been an exporter of terrorism, according to a secret CIA analysis released Wednesday by the Web site WikiLeaks.

The head and special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office said that most terror attacks are committed by our CIA and FBI.

Posted on September 18, 2012 by WashingtonsBlog

Justices Souter and O’Connor, Intelligence Agency Heads and Congressmen All Warn of Tyranny in America

Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter told University of New Hampshire School of Law that the “pervasive civic ignorance” in the U.S. could bring dictatorship:

I don’t worry about our losing a republican government in the United States because I’m afraid of a foreign invasion. I don’t worry about it because of a coup by the military, as has happened in some other places. What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed people will not know who is responsible, and when the problems get bad enough — as they might do for example with another serious terrorist attack, as they might do with another financial meltdown — some one person will come forward and say:  ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’

That is how the Roman republic fel.  Augustus became emperor not because he arrested the Roman senate. He became emperor because he promised that he would solve problems that were not being solved.

Former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor has also warned of dictatorship.

Of course, they’re not the only ones warning of fascism.

Posted on September 11, 2012 by WashingtonsBlog

Neoconservatives Ignored CIA Because They Had Other Priorities

It has been thoroughly documented that 9/11 was entirely foreseeable … including Al Qaeda’s plans to fly planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

It has been extensively documented that the White House decided to invade Iraq before 9/11:

• The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted “crap” in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill – who sat on the National Security Council – also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. Top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change even before Bush took office. And in 2000, Cheney said a Bush administration might “have to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam from power.” And see this.

• Cheney made Iraqi’s oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. And the Sunday Herald reported: “Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq … to secure control of its oil.” (remember that Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, a high-level National Security Council officer and others all say that the Iraq war was really about oil.)

(Indeed, neoconservatives planned regime change throughout the Middle East and North Africa 20 years ago; sorry, Obama fans, the neoliberals are not very different).

Right after 9/11, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld accused Iraq of having a hand in the attacks. People may not remember now, but – at the time – the supposed Saddam-9/11 link was at least as important a justification for the Iraq war as the alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Bush and Cheney then launched a systematic program of torture in an attempt to create false evidence – through false confessions – of a link between Iraq and 9/11.  The torture techniques used were Communist techniques specifically designed to produce false confessions.