WASHINGTON - Amid growing pressure to
begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq and mounting
charges by Democrats that senior administration
officials misled the nation into war there, Vice
President Dick Cheney appears to have taken charge
of defending his boss and taking on the critics.
In his second public appearance in less
than a week, Cheney told a specially invited
audience at the neo-conservative American
Enterprise Institute (AEI) Monday that suggestions
"by some US senators" that President George W Bush
or any member of his administration "purposely
misled the American people" before the war was
"dishonest and reprehensible".
"The flaws
in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight,
but any suggestion that pre-war information was
distorted, hyped or
fabricated by the leader of
the nation is utterly false," he said. "... This
is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless
variety."
But in what was a clear attempt
to refocus the debate in a less partisan way,
Cheney, who left AEI without taking any questions
from the audience, focused more on the possibly
disastrous consequences of a premature US
withdrawal that he predicted would bring al-Qaeda
to power in Iraq.
"Would the United States
and other free nations be better off or worse off
with [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi, (Osama) bin Laden
and (Ayman al-) Zawahiri in control of Iraq?" he
asked. "Would be we safer or less safe with Iraq
ruled by men intent on the destruction of our
country?"
As indicated by his hasty
departure from the podium in what could only be
considered the friendliest audience imaginable,
Cheney's leadership and visibility in the
administration's counteroffensive represent
something of a gamble.
Not only have the
vice president's public approval ratings fallen
further and faster than Bush's in recent months -
according to one recent poll, only 19% of
respondents said they held a "favourable" opinion
of the vice president - but his office has also
been identified by some former officials, as well
as Democrats, as being the focal point for the
manipulation of intelligence before the war.
Cheney's strong opposition, which he has
so far failed to discuss publicly, to pending
legislation that would ban torture and inhumane
treatment of suspected terrorists has also made
him a lightning rod for growing numbers of
Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
Cheney's appearance Monday was the latest
in a series over the past 10 days by top US
officials, including Bush himself, Rumsfeld, and
national security adviser Stephen Hadley. The
purpose was twofold: to rebut growing charges that
the administration manipulated the pre-war
intelligence on former President Saddam Hussein's
alleged weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) programs
and ties to al-Qaeda to rally the country to war,
and to counter growing pressure in Congress to
begin withdrawing substantial numbers of troops of
Iraq after next month's elections.
While
the two are not directly related, recent public
opinion polls show that as a majority of the US
public has come to believe that the administration
did indeed exaggerate the intelligence, a slightly
greater majority has come to favour withdrawing US
troops sooner rather than later.
The
administration was caught off-guard early last
week after a majority of Republican senators
joined Democrats in voting for a resolution that
requires it to establish benchmarks for
transferring security functions to Iraqis during
2006 and report on progress towards meeting those
benchmarks.
While that was widely
interpreted as a Republican vote of little
confidence in Bush's handling of the war, passions
reached a high point late last week after a senior
Democratic hawk, Rep John "Jack" Murtha, called
for Washington to withdraw its roughly 150,000
troops from Iraq over a six-month period beginning
after the December 15 elections. Murtha's plan
would leave a "quick-reaction" force and an
"over-the-horizon" Marine presence to prevent
al-Qaeda or its affiliates from taking over Iraq
or using its territory.
The administration
and Republican lawmakers reacted initially with
fury, accusing the highly decorated Marine combat
veteran of "cutting and running" and giving aid
and comfort to the enemy.
After a raucous
debate in the House of Representatives over these
attacks on November 18, however, party leaders
appeared to realize that taking on someone with
Murtha's record and stature was a fool's errand,
as an unnamed Republican aide told the Wall Street
Journal. "If the House of Representatives want to
make Jack Murtha the face of the Democratic
Party," he said, "then Republicans will really be
trounced next year."
That appeared to be
the assessment by the White House as well. By
Sunday, Bush himself was calling Murtha a "fine
man, a good man" and insisted that the pros and
cons of withdrawal constituted a legitimate
subject of debate.
In his AEI address,
Cheney followed the same line. Murtha, he said,
was "a good man, a Marine, a patriot, and he's
taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate
discussion".
The rest of his speech,
however, was boilerplate Republican fire and
brimstone, directed particularly against critics
who charge that the administration hyped the
pre-war intelligence and against the
"self-defeating pessimism" of those who favor
withdrawal.
"The [terrorists'] only chance
for victory is for us to walk away from the
fight," he said. "They have contempt for our
values, they doubt our strength, and they believe
that America will lose our nerve and let down our
guard," citing a letter purportedly written by the
group's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to the
leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
and allegedly intercepted by US forces last July.
"But this nation has made a decision; we
will not retreat in the face of brutality, and we
will never live at the mercy of tyrants or
terrorists," he declared.
Consistent with
previous attacks on the critics, Cheney argued
that both Democrats and Republicans agreed at the
time that Congress voted to authorize military
action against Saddam in October 2002, that Iraq's
WMD programs constituted a "threat", particularly
after the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks.
But, unlike recent attacks, he did not
assert that lawmakers in Congress had seen the
same intelligence that the administration had
before the war, a particularly inflammatory charge
that has been strongly rejected by Democrats, much
of the media, and even some Republicans in recent
days.
And while he insisted that the
administration had handled the intelligence in
good faith, he confined his remarks solely to the
pre-war assessment of Saddam's WMD programs,
omitting any mention of his own repeated
assertions, long rejected by US intelligence
agencies, that Sadam worked closely with al-Qaeda,
possibly in preparing or sponsoring the 9/11
attacks themselves.
Cheney's decision to
harp more on the prospect of an al-Qaeda takeover
of Iraq suggests that he and his neo-conservative
supporters believe that prospect to be the
strongest barrier to a total collapse of their
Iraq policy. In a series of articles and media
appearances over the last several days, prominent
neo-conservatives such as AEI fellow Richard
Perle, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol,
have made the same argument.
"What would
be intolerable would be to lose to the terrorists
in Iraq," wrote Kristol and another prominent
neo-conservative, Robert Kagan, in The Weekly
Standard's lead editorial this week. "Immediate
withdrawal from Iraq is a prescription for
catastrophe."
At the same time, the fact
that the war's defenders have moved so quickly to
this argument is testimony to how swiftly the
political climate has changed here.
