Iran Next: Is Cheney Insane?

A massive breaking story from former CIA Officer Philip Giraldi at American Conservative:

The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. .. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing - that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack - but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.

If true, this story must raise serious questions about Dick Cheney's mental health. I mean, here is a guy who is the USA's de-facto President, yet he still insists Saddam and 9/11 are linked, that Iraq probably still has WMDs somewhere, etc, etc. He is consistently behind the 8-ball in the PR department, seemingly lost in his labyrinthine schemes of neo-conservative fantasy. His comments, when he pokes his head out in public, are increasingly disconnected from reality.

Cheney once told USA Today:

"Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? It's a nice way to operate, actually."

There seems to be a lot of evil, but precious little genius, coming out of Cheney's ever-deeper hole.

Jim Lobe credits Cheney with starting the whole Saddam-WMD campaign back in March 24, 2002, when, on return from the Middle East, he appeared on three major Sunday public-affairs television programs bearing similar messages on each. For example, he told CBS's Face The Nation:

The notion of a Saddam Hussein with his great oil wealth, with his inventory that he already has of biological and chemical weapons, that he might actually acquire a nuclear weapon is, I think, a frightening proposition for anybody who thinks about it...

At the time, Lobe argues, there would have been only two pieces of "evidence" available to him that might conceivably have supported such charges. One was from a Chalabi stooge, the other was the Joe Wilson "Niger Nukes" deception.

Lobe also casts a light on a potential new player in the Plame Blame Game, Clifford May, ex-New York Timesman, recent head of communications for the Republican National Committee (1997-2001), and president of the ultra-neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).

In an article at National Review Online (NRO) on September 29, 2003 (as pressure was building on John Ashcroft to appoint a special prosecutor in the case), he boasted that he had been informed by an unnamed former government official of Wilson's wife's identity long before her outing as a CIA operative by Robert Novak, on July 14, 2003, and so had assumed that her identity (and relationship to Wilson) had been an "open secret" among the Washington cognoscenti.

Lobe suggests that May's source was Cheney, or came via Cheney, on the basis of the following passage:

"Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to verify a U.S. intelligence report about the sale of yellowcake -- because Vice President Dick Cheney requested it, because Cheney had doubts about the validity of the intelligence report."

This suggests that May had some insight into Cheney's subjective motivation, presumably via conversations between the two. Of course, there is no lack of other players involved:

Among May's board of advisers at FDD were several former government officials, a number of whom were known to be very close to Cheney and Libby as well as to Pentagon hawks like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. They included Richard Perle, head of the Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.

The same circle of players sharing information, disseminating talking points to the press. It's like a Boys Only Club, isn't it? Except, of course, there is at least one prominent woman involved:

it is worth noting the first moment that the specter of an advanced Iraqi nuclear-weapons program was propelled into post-9/11 public consciousness. On December 20, 2001, the New York Times published Judith Miller's version of the sensational charges made by Chalabi-aided defector al-Haideri. Her report was immediately seized on by former CIA Director and DPB member Woolsey, (who had just spent many weeks trying desperately but unsuccessfully to confirm the alleged Mohammed Atta meeting in Prague that would have linked Saddam to the 9/11 attackers). Appearing that same evening on CNBC's "Hard Ball," he breathlessly told Chris Matthews, "I think this is a very important story. I give Judy Miller a lot of credit for getting it. This defector sounds quite credible." Within a week, he was telling the Washington Post that the case that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons was a "slam dunk." (Now, there's a familiar expression!) He continued confidently, "There is so much evidence with respect to his development of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles… that I consider this point beyond dispute."

One week later, Perle weighed in with an op-ed in the New York Times in which he also referred to Miller's work, albeit without naming her. "With each passing day, [Saddam] comes closer to his dream of a nuclear arsenal," he wrote.

Now these lies are being exposed. But while liberals focus on Bush, Rove and others, Cheney skates away in the darkness. Unseen, unaccountable... unstoppable?

UPDATE:Via Kos, the WaPo is reporting that Iran is a full 10 years from acquiring a nuclear weapon:

A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.

The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal.

Kos also has a great (link-rich) post today on how Bush and Cheney have dismantled the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.