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09/14/2006

Prelude to 9/11...Vice President Cheney

[Next Hott Spotts Sept. 28 see below]

Below are two topics related to the war on terror.

Timeline of events leading to 9/11, based on research by the 9/11
Commision June 16, 2004.

Mid-1996: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed meets with Osama bin
Laden and another al Qaeda leader, Mohamed Atef, to pitch
several plans for attacking the U.S., including one that was a
larger version of what would become the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr.
bin Laden wouldn’t commit to take part.

Early 1999: Mr. bin Laden summons Mr. Mohammed to
Kandahar, Afghanistan, to tell him that he is ready to back Mr.
Mohammed’s plan to use airliners as weapons for an attack on
the U.S.

Spring 1999: Messrs. Bin Laden, Mohammed and Atef meet in
Kandahar and develop an initial list of targets: the White House,
the Pentagon, the Capitol and the World Trade Center. A smaller
version of the plot also is planned for Southeast Asia.

Fall 1999: Four recruits for the suicide mission begin training at
the Mes Aynak camp in Afghanistan. Mr. Mohammed teaches
three of them basic English phrases as well as how to read the
phone book, use the Internet and make travel reservations. Later,
one of the three manages to smuggle a boxcutter on to a flight to
Hong Kong. The four travel to Kuala Lumpur.

November-December 1999: A separate group of four recruits –
from Hamburg, Germany – travel to Afghanistan to begin
training. They pledge allegiance to Mr. bin Laden and one of
them, Mohamed Atta, is chosen as the leader of the group, which
will become the core set of pilots in the plot.

Jan. 15, 2000: Two of the four original recruits from the fall of
1999 – Nawaf al Hazmi, Khalid al Mihdhar – become the first of
the 9/11 operatives to reach the U.S., when they travel to Los
Angeles.

March 2000: The Hamburg recruits return to Germany and
research flight schools there. They find that training in the U.S.
would be cheaper and faster. Mr. Atta, Marwan al Shehhi and
Ziad Jarrah get U.S. visas but Ramzi Binalshibh is rejected. He
will stay behind and help coordinate between Mr. Mohammed
and the other conspirators.

Spring 2000: Mr. bin Laden cancels the Southeast Asia part of
the plot, which would have involved the two other original
recruits from the fall of 1999. Mr. bin Laden was concerned
about the difficulty of coordinating the two operations. One of
the two recruits, Walid Muhammad Salih bin Attash, also known
as Khallad, is later involved in the bombing of the USS Cole.

May-June 2000: Messrs. Atta and Shehhi arrive in the U.S.
through Newark Airport in New Jersey. They travel to Venice,
Fla., where they meet up with Mr. Jarrah and attend flight
classes.

Mid-August 2000: Messrs. Atta and al Shehhi pass the Private
Pilot Airman test. Flight instructors describe them as aggressive
and rude.

Sept. 25, 2000: Hani Hanjour, another recruit who had studied in
the U.S. intermittently for years, gets a U.S. student visa. He had
been in Afghanistan, where he was identified by al Qaeda as a
pilot and recruited into the plot. He arrives in San Diego on Dec.
8, 2000.

December 2000: Mr. Hanjour reaches the U.S., arriving in San
Diego and later moving to Mesa, Ariz., where he meets up with
Mr. Hazmi. Mr. Hazmi had been alone. Mr. Mihdhar, the other
of the two original recruits to reach the U.S., had departed from
the U.S. and would remain overseas for a period of time.

By year-end 2000: The three Hamburg pilots – Messrs. Atta,
Shehhi and Jarrah – have begun to train on jet aircraft simulators.

January 2001: Mr. Atta makes a trip to Germany to meet with
Mr. Binalshibh. He reports that the pilots have completed their
training and are awaiting instructions.

March-May 2001: Messrs. Hanjour and Hazmi drive cross
country to the East Coast. They are stopped for speeding in
Oklahoma on April 1. After spending time in Virginia, they
settle in New Jersey.

April 2001: Additional “muscle hijackers,” charged with
storming the cockpits and controlling passengers, while the pilot
hijackers flew the planes, begin to arrive in the U.S. In all, 13
muscle hijackers arrive, joining Messrs. Hazmi and Mihdhar,
who also would plan that role.

May-June 2001: The pilot hijackers take surveillance flights and
get more aviation training. Mr. Shehhi took the first cross-
country flight, from New York to San Francisco, on May 24.
Mr. Jarrah flew from Baltimore to Los Angeles on June 7 and
Mr. Atta from Boston to San Francisco on June 28.

Early June 2001: In training test flights, Messrs. Jarrah and
Hanjour seek to fly the “Hudson Corridor,” a low-altitude route
along the Hudson River that passes landmarks including the
World Trade Center.

Mid-July 2001: Mr. Atta travels to Spain to meet with Mr.
Binalshibh and tells him he would need five to six more weeks
before setting a date for the attack. Mr. Atta said they
determined that the best time to seize airlines was 10-15 minutes
after takeoff, when the cockpit doors typically were opened for
the first time. He said the hijackers planned to crash the aircraft
if it appeared they would be unable to reach their targets. He
planned to crash his plane on the streets of New York, in such a
case.

July 20, 2001: Mr. Hanjour rented a plane for a practice flight
from Fairfield, N.J., to Gaithersburg, Md., a route that would
allow him to fly near Washington. He and Mr. Hamzi had been
asked by Mr. Atta to assess the feasibility of targeting the White
House. Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Mohammed had disagreed over
whether to strike the Capitol or White House. Mr. Atta was
concerned that the White House would be too difficult a target.

Summer 2001: Disagreements between Messrs. Atta and Jarrah
flared partly over the latter’s involvement in plotting the attack.
Mr. Jarrah had spent much of his time in the U.S. alone and had
made frequent trips out of the country to visit his girlfriend.
Messrs. Mohammed and Binalshibh discussed replacing Mr.
Jarrah as a pilot with Zacarias Moussaoui, who had arrived in the
U.S. in February 2001 and had been training as a pilot in
Oklahoma and Minnesota.

Aug. 16, 2001: Mr. Moussaoui is arrested.

Aug. 26-Sept. 5, 2001: The conspirators purchase their airline
tickets over the Internet, by telephone and in person.

Sept. 9-10, 2001: The conspirators move into position near the
airports from which they will launch their attacks. On Sept. 9,
Mr. Jarrah received a speeding ticket in Maryland while traveling
to the United Airlines Flight 93 staging point in New Jersey. The
American Airlines Flight 77 group stayed in hotels in Laurel,
Md., and then Herndon, Va., where they spend time working out
at a nearby gym. The Flight 175 and Flight 11 groups met in
Boston. On Sept. 10, Mr. Atta drove from Boston to Portland,
Maine, with one of the muscle hijackers. Early on Sept. 11, they
took a commuter flight back to Boston to connect with Flight 11.

---

Interview with Vice President Dick Cheney on “Meet the Press,”
Sept. 10, 2006 .a spirited defense of administration policy.

[Excerpts edited slightly by myself]

Tim Russert: Are there more terrorists now than there were five
years ago?

Cheney: It’s hard to say, Tim, and hard to put a precise number
on it. It’s changing and evolving to some extent. We’ve done
enormous damage to al-Qaeda, to the leadership of al-Qaeda.
We’ve captured and killed hundreds of their senior people. By
the same token, you’ve got one of the organizations, al-Qaeda
organizations, out there now that have only a remote connection
to the center. The groups, for example, that the Brits have
uncovered recently. These are second-generation immigrants to
the UK. These are not people living in the Middle East or who
have grown up in terror training camps in Afghanistan the way
the original group did. So it is changing and evolving. On the
other hand, I think we both have made – would say I think we’ve
made significant progress.

Russert: Here’s what the American people said in a recent poll.
Is the U.S. involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan creating more
terrorists or eliminating terrorists? And look at that.
Overwhelmingly, 54 percent believe we are creating more
terrorists.

Cheney: I can’t buy that. I mean, I think you’ve got to look at
what’s happening in Afghanistan and Iraq in terms of where we
were five years ago and where we are today. Take Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was governed by the Taliban, one of the worst
regimes in modern times, terribly dictatorial, terribly
discriminatory towards women. There were training camps in
Afghanistan training thousands of al-Qaeda terrorists. All of
those training camps today are shut down. The Taliban are no
longer in power. There’s a democratically elected president, a
democratically elected parliament and a new constitution and
American-trained Afghan security forces and NATO now
actively in the fight against the remnants of the Taliban. We are
much better off today because Afghanistan is not the safe haven
for terror that it was on 9/11.

Russert: Pakistan now has a peace pact with the terrorists in the
area where we think bin Laden is, creating what Richard Clarke,
the former White House adviser on terrorism, calls a “sanctuary.”
And reports from the RAND Corporation that the Pakistan CIA,
the ISI, are in cahoots with the Taliban. So if the Pakistanis
aren’t willing to seek bin Laden and have a peace pact with the
terrorists, where are we?

Cheney: I don’t buy the question, Tim. I think it’s wrong and I
think the sources you’ve quoted are wrong. The fact is we’ve
captured and killed more al-Qaeda in Pakistan than any place
else in the world in the last five years. President Musharraf has
been a great ally .the fact is Musharraf has put his neck on the
line in order to be effective in going after the extremist elements
including al-Qaeda and including the Taliban in Pakistan. There
have been three attempts on his life, two of those by al-Qaeda
over the course of the past three years. This is a man who has
demonstrated great courage under very difficult political
circumstances and has been a great ally for the United States.

---

Russert: [Quoting Bush from Aug. 31, 2006 “Iraq is the
central front in the war on terror.”] And yet if you ask the
American people, is the war in Iraq a part of the war on terror,
this is what they now say: 46 yes, 53 percent, a majority, say it is
not part of the war on terror.

Cheney: Well, I beg to differ. Let’s walk through it. Look at
where we are in Iraq today. I do think we’ve made major
progress. Fie years ago, Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq.
Iraq was a major state sponsor of terror. Saddam Hussein was
providing payments, bonuses to the families of suicide bombers.
He had a history of starting two wars, he had produced and used
weapons of mass destruction. It was one of the worst regimes in
modern times. We moved aggressively against Saddam Hussein.

Today, you’ve got Saddam in jail, where he’s being prosecuted
for having butchered thousands of people; you’ve got a
democratically elected government; there have been three
nationwide elections; there has been a new constitution written;
we’ve got almost 300,000 Iraqis now trained and equipped in the
security forces. And that’s significant progress by anybody’s
standards. It’s still difficult, there’s still, obviously, major work
to do ahead of us. But the fact is the world is much better off
today with Saddam Hussein out of power.

Think where we’d be if he was still there. He’d be sitting on top
of a big pile of cash, because he’d have $65 and $70 oil; he
would by now have taken down the sanctions because he had
already, with the corrupted Oil for Food program, nearly
destroyed them when he was still in power; he would be a major
state sponsor of terror. We also would have a situation where he
would have resumed his WMD programs. That was one of the
conclusions of the Duelfer Report. So to suggest that somehow
the world’s not better off by having Saddam in jail is just dead
wrong.

Russert: But Mr. Vice President, the primary rationale given for
the war in Iraq was Saddam had weapons of mass destruction .
(We learned later) they did not exist along the lines that you
described, the president described, and others described. Based
on what you know now, that Saddam did not have the weapons
of mass destruction that were described, would you still have
gone into Iraq?

Cheney: Yes, Tim, because what the reports also showed, while
he did not have stockpiles – clearly the intelligence that said he
did was wrong. That was the intelligence all of us saw, that was
the intelligence all of us believed .when George Tenet sat in the
oval Office and the president of the United States asked him
directly, he said, “George, how good is the case against Saddam
on weapons of mass destruction?” the director of the CIA said,
“It’s a slam dunk, Mr. President, it’s a slam dunk.” That was the
intelligence that was provided to us at the time, and based upon
which we made a choice.

Russert: All the while, North Korea, which had one or two
potential bombs in 2000 when you came into office, now has
double or triple that amount. So again, you took your eye off of
North Korea to focus on Iraq.

Cheney: Let’s go back to the beginning here. Five years ago,
Tim, you and I did this show, the Sunday after 9/11. And we
learned a lot from 9/11. We saw, in spite of the hundreds of
billions of dollars we’d spent on national security in the years up
to 9/11, on that morning, 19 men with box cutters and airline
tickets came into the country and killed 3,000 people. We had to
take that and also the fact of their interest of weapons of mass
destruction and recognize, at that time, it was the threat then and
it’s the threat today that drives much of our thinking, that the real
threat is the possibility of a cell of al-Qaeda in the midst of one
of our own cities with a nuclear weapon, or a biological agent.
In that case, you’d be dealing – for example, if on 9/11 they’d
had a nuke instead of an airplane, you’d have been looking at a
casualty toll that would rival all the deaths in all the wars fought
by Americans in 230 years. That’s the threat we have to deal
with, and that drove our thinking in the aftermath of 9/11 and
does today.

Now what Saddam represented was somebody who had for 12
years defied the international community, violated 16 UN
Security Council resolutions, started two wars, produced and
used weapons of mass destruction and was deemed by the
intelligence community to have resumed his WMD program
when he kicked out the inspectors. Everybody believed it. Bill
Clinton believed it, the CIA clearly believed it. And without
question it was a major proposition. But I also emphasize while
they found no stockpiles, there was no question in the minds of
Mr. Duelfer and others in that survey group that Saddam did in
fact have the capability and that as soon as the sanctions were
ended – and they were badly eroded – he would be back in
business again.

---

Russert: Wasn’t it a flat-out mistake to say we were in the last
throes of the insurgency? [Referring to a statement Cheney
made on 5/30/05]

Cheney: I think there’s no question that the insurgency’s gone on
longer and been more difficult than I had anticipated. I’ll be the
first to admit that. But I also think when we look back on this
period of time 10 years from now that 2005 will have been the
turning point. Because that’s the point at which the Iraqis
stepped up and established their own political process, wrote a
constitution, held three national elections, and basically took on
the responsibility for their own fate and their future.

Russert: Leading up to the war, three days before the war, you
were on this program and (said from 3/16/03 videotape) “Now
I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq from the standpoint
of the Iraqi people, my belief is, we will, in fact, be greeted as
liberators.”

[Also from videotape]

Russert: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as
liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist,
particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are
prepared for a long, costly and bloody battle with significant
American casualties?

Cheney: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim,
because I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators.

[End of videotape]

Russert: In fact, it did unfold that way. It has been a long, costly
and bloody war.

Cheney: It has.

Russert: Mr. Vice President, Tommy Franks, when he landed in
Iraq, had a meeting and said, “All right, start making plans, we’re
going down to 30,000 troops at the end of this year in 2003.”
There was a view of the administration that you were going to
walk in, topple the government, and that was it. And now, three
and a half years later, we are in Iraq for a long, long time, with
2,500 deaths, 20,000 wounded and injured. There were some
fundamental misjudgments made.

Cheney: I think there’s no question, but that we did not anticipate
an insurgency that would last this long.

---

Note: I’m heading to Europe for a few weeks Czech Republic,
Bulgaria and Romania.

Brian Trumbore


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-09/14/2006-      
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Hot Spots

09/14/2006

Prelude to 9/11...Vice President Cheney

[Next Hott Spotts Sept. 28 see below]

Below are two topics related to the war on terror.

Timeline of events leading to 9/11, based on research by the 9/11
Commision June 16, 2004.

Mid-1996: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed meets with Osama bin
Laden and another al Qaeda leader, Mohamed Atef, to pitch
several plans for attacking the U.S., including one that was a
larger version of what would become the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr.
bin Laden wouldn’t commit to take part.

Early 1999: Mr. bin Laden summons Mr. Mohammed to
Kandahar, Afghanistan, to tell him that he is ready to back Mr.
Mohammed’s plan to use airliners as weapons for an attack on
the U.S.

Spring 1999: Messrs. Bin Laden, Mohammed and Atef meet in
Kandahar and develop an initial list of targets: the White House,
the Pentagon, the Capitol and the World Trade Center. A smaller
version of the plot also is planned for Southeast Asia.

Fall 1999: Four recruits for the suicide mission begin training at
the Mes Aynak camp in Afghanistan. Mr. Mohammed teaches
three of them basic English phrases as well as how to read the
phone book, use the Internet and make travel reservations. Later,
one of the three manages to smuggle a boxcutter on to a flight to
Hong Kong. The four travel to Kuala Lumpur.

November-December 1999: A separate group of four recruits –
from Hamburg, Germany – travel to Afghanistan to begin
training. They pledge allegiance to Mr. bin Laden and one of
them, Mohamed Atta, is chosen as the leader of the group, which
will become the core set of pilots in the plot.

Jan. 15, 2000: Two of the four original recruits from the fall of
1999 – Nawaf al Hazmi, Khalid al Mihdhar – become the first of
the 9/11 operatives to reach the U.S., when they travel to Los
Angeles.

March 2000: The Hamburg recruits return to Germany and
research flight schools there. They find that training in the U.S.
would be cheaper and faster. Mr. Atta, Marwan al Shehhi and
Ziad Jarrah get U.S. visas but Ramzi Binalshibh is rejected. He
will stay behind and help coordinate between Mr. Mohammed
and the other conspirators.

Spring 2000: Mr. bin Laden cancels the Southeast Asia part of
the plot, which would have involved the two other original
recruits from the fall of 1999. Mr. bin Laden was concerned
about the difficulty of coordinating the two operations. One of
the two recruits, Walid Muhammad Salih bin Attash, also known
as Khallad, is later involved in the bombing of the USS Cole.

May-June 2000: Messrs. Atta and Shehhi arrive in the U.S.
through Newark Airport in New Jersey. They travel to Venice,
Fla., where they meet up with Mr. Jarrah and attend flight
classes.

Mid-August 2000: Messrs. Atta and al Shehhi pass the Private
Pilot Airman test. Flight instructors describe them as aggressive
and rude.

Sept. 25, 2000: Hani Hanjour, another recruit who had studied in
the U.S. intermittently for years, gets a U.S. student visa. He had
been in Afghanistan, where he was identified by al Qaeda as a
pilot and recruited into the plot. He arrives in San Diego on Dec.
8, 2000.

December 2000: Mr. Hanjour reaches the U.S., arriving in San
Diego and later moving to Mesa, Ariz., where he meets up with
Mr. Hazmi. Mr. Hazmi had been alone. Mr. Mihdhar, the other
of the two original recruits to reach the U.S., had departed from
the U.S. and would remain overseas for a period of time.

By year-end 2000: The three Hamburg pilots – Messrs. Atta,
Shehhi and Jarrah – have begun to train on jet aircraft simulators.

January 2001: Mr. Atta makes a trip to Germany to meet with
Mr. Binalshibh. He reports that the pilots have completed their
training and are awaiting instructions.

March-May 2001: Messrs. Hanjour and Hazmi drive cross
country to the East Coast. They are stopped for speeding in
Oklahoma on April 1. After spending time in Virginia, they
settle in New Jersey.

April 2001: Additional “muscle hijackers,” charged with
storming the cockpits and controlling passengers, while the pilot
hijackers flew the planes, begin to arrive in the U.S. In all, 13
muscle hijackers arrive, joining Messrs. Hazmi and Mihdhar,
who also would plan that role.

May-June 2001: The pilot hijackers take surveillance flights and
get more aviation training. Mr. Shehhi took the first cross-
country flight, from New York to San Francisco, on May 24.
Mr. Jarrah flew from Baltimore to Los Angeles on June 7 and
Mr. Atta from Boston to San Francisco on June 28.

Early June 2001: In training test flights, Messrs. Jarrah and
Hanjour seek to fly the “Hudson Corridor,” a low-altitude route
along the Hudson River that passes landmarks including the
World Trade Center.

Mid-July 2001: Mr. Atta travels to Spain to meet with Mr.
Binalshibh and tells him he would need five to six more weeks
before setting a date for the attack. Mr. Atta said they
determined that the best time to seize airlines was 10-15 minutes
after takeoff, when the cockpit doors typically were opened for
the first time. He said the hijackers planned to crash the aircraft
if it appeared they would be unable to reach their targets. He
planned to crash his plane on the streets of New York, in such a
case.

July 20, 2001: Mr. Hanjour rented a plane for a practice flight
from Fairfield, N.J., to Gaithersburg, Md., a route that would
allow him to fly near Washington. He and Mr. Hamzi had been
asked by Mr. Atta to assess the feasibility of targeting the White
House. Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Mohammed had disagreed over
whether to strike the Capitol or White House. Mr. Atta was
concerned that the White House would be too difficult a target.

Summer 2001: Disagreements between Messrs. Atta and Jarrah
flared partly over the latter’s involvement in plotting the attack.
Mr. Jarrah had spent much of his time in the U.S. alone and had
made frequent trips out of the country to visit his girlfriend.
Messrs. Mohammed and Binalshibh discussed replacing Mr.
Jarrah as a pilot with Zacarias Moussaoui, who had arrived in the
U.S. in February 2001 and had been training as a pilot in
Oklahoma and Minnesota.

Aug. 16, 2001: Mr. Moussaoui is arrested.

Aug. 26-Sept. 5, 2001: The conspirators purchase their airline
tickets over the Internet, by telephone and in person.

Sept. 9-10, 2001: The conspirators move into position near the
airports from which they will launch their attacks. On Sept. 9,
Mr. Jarrah received a speeding ticket in Maryland while traveling
to the United Airlines Flight 93 staging point in New Jersey. The
American Airlines Flight 77 group stayed in hotels in Laurel,
Md., and then Herndon, Va., where they spend time working out
at a nearby gym. The Flight 175 and Flight 11 groups met in
Boston. On Sept. 10, Mr. Atta drove from Boston to Portland,
Maine, with one of the muscle hijackers. Early on Sept. 11, they
took a commuter flight back to Boston to connect with Flight 11.

---

Interview with Vice President Dick Cheney on “Meet the Press,”
Sept. 10, 2006 .a spirited defense of administration policy.

[Excerpts edited slightly by myself]

Tim Russert: Are there more terrorists now than there were five
years ago?

Cheney: It’s hard to say, Tim, and hard to put a precise number
on it. It’s changing and evolving to some extent. We’ve done
enormous damage to al-Qaeda, to the leadership of al-Qaeda.
We’ve captured and killed hundreds of their senior people. By
the same token, you’ve got one of the organizations, al-Qaeda
organizations, out there now that have only a remote connection
to the center. The groups, for example, that the Brits have
uncovered recently. These are second-generation immigrants to
the UK. These are not people living in the Middle East or who
have grown up in terror training camps in Afghanistan the way
the original group did. So it is changing and evolving. On the
other hand, I think we both have made – would say I think we’ve
made significant progress.

Russert: Here’s what the American people said in a recent poll.
Is the U.S. involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan creating more
terrorists or eliminating terrorists? And look at that.
Overwhelmingly, 54 percent believe we are creating more
terrorists.

Cheney: I can’t buy that. I mean, I think you’ve got to look at
what’s happening in Afghanistan and Iraq in terms of where we
were five years ago and where we are today. Take Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was governed by the Taliban, one of the worst
regimes in modern times, terribly dictatorial, terribly
discriminatory towards women. There were training camps in
Afghanistan training thousands of al-Qaeda terrorists. All of
those training camps today are shut down. The Taliban are no
longer in power. There’s a democratically elected president, a
democratically elected parliament and a new constitution and
American-trained Afghan security forces and NATO now
actively in the fight against the remnants of the Taliban. We are
much better off today because Afghanistan is not the safe haven
for terror that it was on 9/11.

Russert: Pakistan now has a peace pact with the terrorists in the
area where we think bin Laden is, creating what Richard Clarke,
the former White House adviser on terrorism, calls a “sanctuary.”
And reports from the RAND Corporation that the Pakistan CIA,
the ISI, are in cahoots with the Taliban. So if the Pakistanis
aren’t willing to seek bin Laden and have a peace pact with the
terrorists, where are we?

Cheney: I don’t buy the question, Tim. I think it’s wrong and I
think the sources you’ve quoted are wrong. The fact is we’ve
captured and killed more al-Qaeda in Pakistan than any place
else in the world in the last five years. President Musharraf has
been a great ally .the fact is Musharraf has put his neck on the
line in order to be effective in going after the extremist elements
including al-Qaeda and including the Taliban in Pakistan. There
have been three attempts on his life, two of those by al-Qaeda
over the course of the past three years. This is a man who has
demonstrated great courage under very difficult political
circumstances and has been a great ally for the United States.

---

Russert: [Quoting Bush from Aug. 31, 2006 “Iraq is the
central front in the war on terror.”] And yet if you ask the
American people, is the war in Iraq a part of the war on terror,
this is what they now say: 46 yes, 53 percent, a majority, say it is
not part of the war on terror.

Cheney: Well, I beg to differ. Let’s walk through it. Look at
where we are in Iraq today. I do think we’ve made major
progress. Fie years ago, Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq.
Iraq was a major state sponsor of terror. Saddam Hussein was
providing payments, bonuses to the families of suicide bombers.
He had a history of starting two wars, he had produced and used
weapons of mass destruction. It was one of the worst regimes in
modern times. We moved aggressively against Saddam Hussein.

Today, you’ve got Saddam in jail, where he’s being prosecuted
for having butchered thousands of people; you’ve got a
democratically elected government; there have been three
nationwide elections; there has been a new constitution written;
we’ve got almost 300,000 Iraqis now trained and equipped in the
security forces. And that’s significant progress by anybody’s
standards. It’s still difficult, there’s still, obviously, major work
to do ahead of us. But the fact is the world is much better off
today with Saddam Hussein out of power.

Think where we’d be if he was still there. He’d be sitting on top
of a big pile of cash, because he’d have $65 and $70 oil; he
would by now have taken down the sanctions because he had
already, with the corrupted Oil for Food program, nearly
destroyed them when he was still in power; he would be a major
state sponsor of terror. We also would have a situation where he
would have resumed his WMD programs. That was one of the
conclusions of the Duelfer Report. So to suggest that somehow
the world’s not better off by having Saddam in jail is just dead
wrong.

Russert: But Mr. Vice President, the primary rationale given for
the war in Iraq was Saddam had weapons of mass destruction .
(We learned later) they did not exist along the lines that you
described, the president described, and others described. Based
on what you know now, that Saddam did not have the weapons
of mass destruction that were described, would you still have
gone into Iraq?

Cheney: Yes, Tim, because what the reports also showed, while
he did not have stockpiles – clearly the intelligence that said he
did was wrong. That was the intelligence all of us saw, that was
the intelligence all of us believed .when George Tenet sat in the
oval Office and the president of the United States asked him
directly, he said, “George, how good is the case against Saddam
on weapons of mass destruction?” the director of the CIA said,
“It’s a slam dunk, Mr. President, it’s a slam dunk.” That was the
intelligence that was provided to us at the time, and based upon
which we made a choice.

Russert: All the while, North Korea, which had one or two
potential bombs in 2000 when you came into office, now has
double or triple that amount. So again, you took your eye off of
North Korea to focus on Iraq.

Cheney: Let’s go back to the beginning here. Five years ago,
Tim, you and I did this show, the Sunday after 9/11. And we
learned a lot from 9/11. We saw, in spite of the hundreds of
billions of dollars we’d spent on national security in the years up
to 9/11, on that morning, 19 men with box cutters and airline
tickets came into the country and killed 3,000 people. We had to
take that and also the fact of their interest of weapons of mass
destruction and recognize, at that time, it was the threat then and
it’s the threat today that drives much of our thinking, that the real
threat is the possibility of a cell of al-Qaeda in the midst of one
of our own cities with a nuclear weapon, or a biological agent.
In that case, you’d be dealing – for example, if on 9/11 they’d
had a nuke instead of an airplane, you’d have been looking at a
casualty toll that would rival all the deaths in all the wars fought
by Americans in 230 years. That’s the threat we have to deal
with, and that drove our thinking in the aftermath of 9/11 and
does today.

Now what Saddam represented was somebody who had for 12
years defied the international community, violated 16 UN
Security Council resolutions, started two wars, produced and
used weapons of mass destruction and was deemed by the
intelligence community to have resumed his WMD program
when he kicked out the inspectors. Everybody believed it. Bill
Clinton believed it, the CIA clearly believed it. And without
question it was a major proposition. But I also emphasize while
they found no stockpiles, there was no question in the minds of
Mr. Duelfer and others in that survey group that Saddam did in
fact have the capability and that as soon as the sanctions were
ended – and they were badly eroded – he would be back in
business again.

---

Russert: Wasn’t it a flat-out mistake to say we were in the last
throes of the insurgency? [Referring to a statement Cheney
made on 5/30/05]

Cheney: I think there’s no question that the insurgency’s gone on
longer and been more difficult than I had anticipated. I’ll be the
first to admit that. But I also think when we look back on this
period of time 10 years from now that 2005 will have been the
turning point. Because that’s the point at which the Iraqis
stepped up and established their own political process, wrote a
constitution, held three national elections, and basically took on
the responsibility for their own fate and their future.

Russert: Leading up to the war, three days before the war, you
were on this program and (said from 3/16/03 videotape) “Now
I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq from the standpoint
of the Iraqi people, my belief is, we will, in fact, be greeted as
liberators.”

[Also from videotape]

Russert: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as
liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist,
particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are
prepared for a long, costly and bloody battle with significant
American casualties?

Cheney: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim,
because I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators.

[End of videotape]

Russert: In fact, it did unfold that way. It has been a long, costly
and bloody war.

Cheney: It has.

Russert: Mr. Vice President, Tommy Franks, when he landed in
Iraq, had a meeting and said, “All right, start making plans, we’re
going down to 30,000 troops at the end of this year in 2003.”
There was a view of the administration that you were going to
walk in, topple the government, and that was it. And now, three
and a half years later, we are in Iraq for a long, long time, with
2,500 deaths, 20,000 wounded and injured. There were some
fundamental misjudgments made.

Cheney: I think there’s no question, but that we did not anticipate
an insurgency that would last this long.

---

Note: I’m heading to Europe for a few weeks Czech Republic,
Bulgaria and Romania.

Brian Trumbore