Reply #15: The case against Dick Cheney is strong [View All]

[BLUSH]

May 02, 2007

The resolution offered by the gentleman from Ohio reads sensibly. It alleges crimes high and low, misdemeanors galore — all of them representing an effort to mislead the American people and take them into war. It is Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment directed at Dick Cheney. The vice president will, of course, deny he's a liar. As long as Kucinich is at it, add that to the articles.

In his articles of impeachment, Kucinich details the many statements Cheney made that turned out to be factually wrong. For instance, he quotes Cheney as saying, "We know they (the Iraqis) have biological and chemical weapons," which of course, they didn't. Still, that was excusable since it was early in the game and little contradictory evidence was being presented. As Condi Rice said Sunday, "When George (Tenet) said 'slam dunk,' everybody understood that he believed that the intelligence was strong. We all believed the intelligence was strong."

But in Cheney's case, the slam-dunking went on and on — way past the point where it was possible anymore to believe him. He continued to insist that Saddam Hussein had high-level contacts with al-Qaida — "the evidence is overwhelming," he once said — while others in the government not only knew that the evidence was not overwhelming but that it hardly existed. It was the same with Cheney's insistence — not just wrong, but irrefutably so — that Iraq had "reconstituted" its nuclear weapons program. The percussive march of these statements is so forceful, one after another after another, that it suggests Cheney wanted war no matter what. If he was lying to himself as well as to the rest of us, that is only a mitigating circumstance — sort of an insanity defense.

In his articles of impeachment, Kucinich alleges that Cheney "purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress" — and that, as the expression goes, is the gravamen of the charge. Kucinich doesn't stand a ghost of a chance of making it stick because Congress is not about to vote impeachment. But no one who reads Kucinich's case against Cheney can fail to conclude that this is a rational, serious accusation. It's possible that each individual charge can be rebutted, but the essence of it is shockingly apparent: We were being manipulated.

Richard Cohen

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