Rising Tides

The Man Behind the Curtain

Why We Must Take Dick Cheney’s Freedom to Restore Our Own

By Matthew Patterson

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. He doesn’t want you to know the truth. He wants you to be afraid. The problem is, we are paying attention, we do know the truth, and now it’s his turn to be afraid.

In the last eight years, Dick Cheney, the man elected to replace the President in the event of his death, all but replaced him while alive. It is now clear that Dick Cheney cynically abused his influence to deceive and frighten America into an unnecessary war with illegal tactics. Acting in the role of a bully, Mr. Cheney actively sought to cultivate and then manipulate weaker members of the White House, the Department of Justice, the CIA, and the Department of Defense (DoD) into fabricating and supporting his case for war. With the assistance of his associates, Mr. Cheney orchestrated perhaps the largest and most costly crime ever perpetrated upon the American people by our own government.

The record clearly shows that well before the events of September 11, 2001, a small group of neo-conservative thinkers within the Bush administration openly sought the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Following September 11, this group, lead by Mr. Cheney, sought to falsely link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda and mobilize the public for war. When the CIA was unable to find any evidence of such a link, Mr. Cheney, along with Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, created their own intelligence agency within the DoD. This Office of Special Plans claimed evidence of a meeting between a 9/11 hijacker and Iraqi officials in Prague. Also claimed was evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons, seeking “high-strength aluminum tubes” and a shipment of weapons-grade uranium called “yellowcake” from Niger. Despite the CIA and State Department’s firm assessments that these allegations were false, Mr. Cheney and the administration continued, from September 8, 2002 onward, to disingenuously assert these claims in the media as solid evidence of a link.

In late 2002 the CIA was ordered to produce a National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, on Iraq. According to CIA analysts, in the two-week period in which the NIE was produced, Mr. Cheney and his Chief of Staff Scooter Libby took no less than ten trips to the CIA to personally question and pressure analysts. Never before had a Vice President or administration member visited the CIA to interfere in an impartial intelligence operation. According to Tyler Drumheller, Chief, CIA European Division, “Many, many of them [analysts] have told me they were pressured.” The final version of the NIE, as well as the sanitized CIA “white paper” included Mr. Cheney’s claims of an Al Qaeda- Iraq link and Iraqi efforts to obtain nuclear materials.

Paul Piller, a high ranking CIA analyst and primary author of the white paper, now disavows it. “It was clearly published for policy advocacy purposes. What was the purpose of it? The purpose was to strengthen the case for going to war with the American people. Is it proper for the intelligence community to publish papers with that purpose? I don’t think so.” Colin Powell later made a speech before the United Nations including evidence from these documents, assured by the CIA’s George Tenet that the facts were “ironclad.” In his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush repeated this discredited intelligence, claiming that “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

In addition to perpetrating this fraud upon the American people, Dick Cheney is primarily responsible for ignoring the US Constitution and authorizing the illegal interrogation and torture of enemy combatants. Through his contacts at the Justice Department, Cheney was able to procure the infamous “torture memos,” authored primarily by John Yoo. These memos ignored the will of Congress and granted the President unprecedented war powers to interrogate detainees using techniques deemed to be torture under the Geneva Conventions, such as waterboarding. In December 2008, Dick Cheney, in an interview with ABC, admitted authorizing the interrogation tactics used against Khalid Sheik Mohammed. When reminded that this included waterboarding, and asked whether he believed this tactic was appropriate, Mr. Cheney replied, “I do.”

It is now clear that Mr. Cheney carefully orchestrated and executed an attack upon our Constitution, our soldiers, our values, and our fellow man. While those too weak to oppose or resist Mr. Cheney, including Mr. Bush, are either complicit or negligent, no one else in the administration is as clearly responsible for the planning and execution of these crimes. Because of his gross abuse of power, betrayal of the American trust, careless waste of lives, and proud authorization of illegal torture, Mr. Cheney must be held to account. The most valuable prize a free society can take, without diminishing itself, is another man’s freedom. Taking Mr. Cheney’s freedom for his crimes would show that we take our laws, and our values, seriously. Let’s show the man behind the curtain that we are paying attention, we do know the truth, and that it’s his turn to be afraid.

G-20 Leaders Commit to Greater Global Aid, Regulation

By Matthew Patterson

LONDON, England — Attempting to learn from history and avoid mistakes made leading up to the Great Depression, the leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies agreed today to sweeping and unprecedented changes in the international financial system. The agreement has pledged $1.1 trillion in loans and guarantees to support developing countries most affected by the global financial crisis. The $1.1 trillion would be managed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) along with $250 billion more in Special Drawing Rights, an artificial currency that the IMF can use to forgive debts owed by member countries. In a bow to the wishes of continental Europe, the agreement will also impose strict regulations across a broad swath of international finance including previously unregulated hedge funds, ratings agencies, and tax shelters. While the agreement addresses the issues of mitigation and prevention of future crises, questions remain over how to restore a trend of growth to the world’s largest economies.

Heading into the summit, Barack Obama, the new American President, was faced with the task of persuading European and world leaders to commit to a new injection of fiscal stimulus directly into the global economy. Mr. Obama was not successful in this task, however, meeting opposition from European countries unwilling to commit to more direct stimulus. Resistance came primarily from Nicolas Sarkozy the President of France, and Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany. President Sarkozy had earlier threatened to walk out the summit if regulatory demands were not met, while President Obama successfully intervened in a heated discussion between Mr. Sarkozy and Hu Jintao, President of China regarding tax havens. China has resisted such regulation, as territories including Hong Kong and Macau are considered such havens. In addition, regulations were agreed upon to limit bankers’ pay and further regulate ratings agencies, such as Moodys and Standard & Poors, considered to have contributed to the crisis through lax assessment standards.

In an attempt to stimulate global trade and discourage protectionist policies which contributed to the Great Depression, leaders also committed to greater international trade and to singling out countries that erect trade barriers. Global markets rallied on news of the agreement, on hopes that this would mark the turning point in the recession that has crippled the global economy and some of the world’s largest companies including Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, AIG, GM, and Chrysler.

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