Now It’s Time to Say Good Bye to V.P. Dick Cheney

There was a stunning moment in the closing arguments of the Scooter Libby trial yesterday (Tuesday) when Mr. Libby’s lawyer, Theodore Wells, begged the jury, “’Give him back to me.’ With that, Mr. Wells teared up, sobbed audibly and sat down,’” said the New York Times.

Sounds like this guy should be nominated for a Tony. What theater. But if he’s crying it’s probably because he knows his guy is taking the fall here. The real culprit behind the Valerie Plame scandal is, of course, the sly-faced martinet, Vice President Dick Cheney.

There was an astonishing article in the Times on Monday about Vice President Cheney’s role in this whole Valerie Plame affair—in which, again, the name of former CIA agent Plame was illegally leaked to reporters by Libby in an attempt to get back at her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, for writing a New York Times Op-Ed piece which questioned the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain nuclear material in Africa (the now infamous ‘16 words’ in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address).

As the Times said, “Mr. Libby faces charges that he lied to authorities who were looking into whether, in defending against Mr. Wilson’s accusations, the administration intentionally exposed the identity of Mrs. Wilson to undercut her husband and clear Mr. Cheney."

I don’t know anyone who supports this administration anymore—there are fewer and fewer people out there even in the reddest parts of the red states who do; but even the most diehard Bush and Co. fans would have to rethink their support in light of the conduct of this vice president. The man should resign. He’s disgraced the White House, and much worse.

“The evidence in the trial shows Vice President Dick Cheney and Mr. Libby, his former chief of staff, countermanding and even occasionally misleading colleagues at the highest levels of Mr. Bush’s inner circle as the two pursued their own goal of clearing the vice president’s name with flawed intelligence used in the case for war,” said the Times.

Can a vice president be impeached? What is the procedure? And why isn’t anyone in the newly elected Democratic Congress speaking out against Mr. Cheney’s misuse of power? There should be hearings; Congress should respond. This whole thing makes Watergate look like a cakewalk; no one died in that sleazy little fiasco, while more than 3,000 Americans have perished in Iraq thanks to “flawed intelligence."

“Unbeknownst to their colleagues,” the Times story went on, “according to testimony, the two [Cheney and Libby] carried out a covert public relations campaign to defend not only the case for war but also Mr. Cheney’s connection to the flawed intelligence.”

And let’s not forget that the Iraq war has meant billions in profits for Halliburton/KBR, the company Mr. Cheney formerly CEO’d, thanks to the no-bid, sweetheart contracts brokered by his office. It all stinks of alligator breath.

“Mr. Libby’s notes from a White House meeting of senior presidential advisers on the morning of July 8—the sort of meeting that staff members rarely discuss publicly—read, ‘Uranium story becoming a question of the president’s trustworthiness.’ The notes quote Karl Rove”—a.k.a. “Bush’s Brain”—“the presidential adviser tasked with Mr. Bush’s re-election, as lamenting, ‘Now they have accepted Joe Wilson as a credible expert.’”

Can you believe these guys? They’re not one bit interested in knowing the truth—did Saddam Hussein get uranium from Africa, or didn’t he? Is war really necessary or isn’t it? They’ve already decided American servicemen and women are getting on those planes bound for Baghdad, and their only concern now is spin control.

“The notes reflected a general concern that the White House was not moving swiftly enough to contain the damage. What others present at the White House meeting did not know was that Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney were already conducting their own quiet campaign. Its purpose was to show not only that the White House had ample reason to believe the flawed intelligence even after Mr. Wilson’s mission but also to defend against Mr. Cheney’s alleged connection to the uranium claim.”

Here is our vice president: peddling nuclear lies while at the same time making sure keep them very far away from himself; might contaminate him, after all.

He didn’t even have the decency to testify at his devoted chief of staff's, Libby’s, trial, despite the promises of Libby's lawyer that he would—I guess because he would either have had to perjure himself or admit that he had misused his office and engaged in a campaign to send American men and women into war on the basis of some James Bond-sounding hogwash.

“Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that an angry Mr. Cheney had by then already directed him to approach a reporter he regarded as suitable, Judith Miller of the New York Times, to make his case. Mr. Libby was under instruction to describe the vice president’s ignorance of Mr. Wilson’s mission [a fact-finding trip to Africa in which Wilson had found no basis for the uranium claim] and to discuss parts of the National Intelligence Estimate from October 2002 as well as another intelligence document showing the CIA continued promoting the theory about Iraq’s efforts to acquire uranium months after Mr. Wilson’s trip."

Basically what happened then was that Cheney got the president to de-classify more “flawed intelligence” so that his right hand-man Libby could go and try and push it on more reporters. I think back on all the conversations I’ve had over the years with people who doubt that our government uses the media—or attempts to use the media—to push its agendas. Well, I guess there’s no doubt about it anymore.

“At a meeting on July 10, Mr. [Stephen J.] Hadley”—then the deputy secretary of national security under Condoleeza Rice—“had suggested to Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney that the intelligence estimate could be leaked to a friendly reporter, Mr. Libby testified that his notes said. But neither he nor Mr. Cheney told Mr. Hadley that they had started trying to do so days earlier.”

Now here’s the vice president of the United States, running around slipping reporters secretly de-classified documents without the knowledge of the guys in national security (documents which they would have leaked themselves if they’d thought of it first! Welcome to the Bush administration).

In the age of 9/11, this is not only an outrage, it's dangerous. But Dick Cheney has shown himself to be concerned only about Dick Cheney. In this whole affair Mr. Cheney has been exposed as a liar, a careerist loose cannon and a threat to what they like to call national security. He should resign, or be asked to leave. The latest CBS News Poll showed his approval rating at 16%, so I don’t think he will be missed.