Salon.com | The long march of Dick Cheney

Salon.com | The long march of Dick Cheney

"Former Sen. Bob Graham has revealed, in a Nov. 20 article in the Washington Post, that the condensed version of the National Intelligence Estimate titled 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs' that was submitted to the Senate days before it voted on the Iraq war resolution 'represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed [WMD], avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version.' The condensed version also contained the falsehood that Saddam Hussein was seeking 'weapons-grade fissile material from abroad.'

The administration relied for key information in the NIE on an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball. According to a Nov. 20 report in the Los Angeles Times, it had learned from German intelligence beforehand that Curveball was completely untrustworthy and his claims fabricated. Yet Bush, Cheney and, most notably, Powell in his prewar performance before the United Nations, which he now calls the biggest 'blot' on his record and about which he insists he was 'deceived,' touted Curveball's disinformation.

In two speeches over the past week Cheney has called congressional critics 'dishonest,' 'shameless' and 'reprehensible.' He ridiculed their claim that they did not have the same intelligence as the administration. 'These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence materials. They are known to have a high opinion of their own analytical capabilities." Lambasting them for historical "revisionism," he repeatedly invoked Sept. 11. "We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001 -- and the terrorists hit us anyway," he said."