Put the blame on Cheney for U.S. mess in Iraq
This isn't how Papa Bush and the handlers thought it would work out. Not when they put solid Dick Cheney in charge of the kid's government.
With all of his experience in government, from White House chief of staff to congressional leader to secretary of defense, Cheney was the one who would avoid the big mistakes, who would make up for Junior's lack of experience.
And yet President Bush is going into his re-election year with one huge mess on his hands in Iraq. It isn't only that much of the world is bewildered if not downright scared at the administration's arrogant unilateralism; it's that a good segment of the American people have begun to question the president's judgment and credibility because of how Iraq was handled.
Cheney was supposed to prevent something like this from happening. He was supposed to protect the not so well prepared W. from the big mistakes. And yet, as more accounts of the maneuvering inside the administration are revealed, it is increasingly clear that it was Cheney who was the moving force behind the decision to fight a war of choice against Iraq.
What is particularly disturbing is how the administration misused intelligence information to make its case for war and failed to plan competently for the postwar period. Two recent articles, one by George Packer in The New Yorker and another by David Rieff in The New York Times Magazine, provide detailed, on-the-record accounts of how the Pentagon deliberately ignored almost all the expert advice coming from the State Department, the CIA and from almost anywhere else about what had to be done after the war.
There was plenty of information available about how difficult the postwar project would be, but the Pentagon planners, with utter disdain for anything coming from the State Department, ignored it. They believed that once Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants were eliminated, the people of Iraq would greet the Americans with open arms. The State Department experts told them otherwise. Their information was trashed.
You could blame that on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his band of neoconservative warriors led by Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. But bitter conflict between State and Defense is common in every administration. It's the White House that is supposed to sort it out and make sure the president acts upon accurate information.
But Cheney turned out to be the leading neoconservative. According to one account, he told Bush in February of 2002 that he believed it was a mistake to have not eliminated Saddam during Bush I and that now was the time to do it. And he then drove the policy through to war. Cheney was put there to prevent Bush from being duped by those with axes to grind, yet the vice president turned out to be the chief ax grinder.
The same story is true on the run-up to the war. In the Dec. 4 edition of The New York Review of Books, Thomas Powers examines the administration's contention that Iraq posed an imminent threat. He particularly cites 29 claims made by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his very influential Feb. 5 speech to the United Nations and finds that so far not one has been shown to be the case. And Powell was more cautious than others.
The problem, Powers says, is that the White House exerted enormous pressure on the CIA to produce intelligence that coincided with its policy predilections. This is very dangerous, of course. And, given Bush's lack of background, it's easy to understand why he might not have understood how intelligence can be misused. It was Cheney, the seasoned, solid expert in national security matters, who was supposed to make certain the intelligence was straight, who was going to protect the president's credibility. But it turns out he was the one pushing for information to confirm his preconceived notions.
Yes, the buck stops with the president, but the more I learn about what happened behind the scenes the more I say put the blame on Cheney.
• Klurfeld is editor of Newsday's editorial pages. Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service