George Washington's Blog: All Roads Lead to Dick Cheney

09/11/2001
George Washington's Blog: All Roads Lead to Dick Cheney

Most people know that Vice President Dick Cheney is former CEO of Halliburton, which makes billions of dollars a year from oil and primarily defense-related construction contracts, and that Cheney was secretary of Defense under George H. W. Bush. Many people know that Cheney was a congressman from Wyoming. Some even know that he was one of the founders of the Project for a New American Century.Well-read people know that the Project for a New American Century, in turn, called for a new American empire well before 9/11, and lamented that, without a "catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor", transformation of America into an empire would be very slow. But even well-informed people probably don't know that -- in the 70's -- Cheney was instrumental in generating fake intelligence exaggerating the Soviet threat in order to undermine coexistence between the U.S. and Soviet Union, which conveniently justified huge amounts of cold war spending. See also this article. This scheme foreshadowed Mr. Cheney's role in generating fake intelligence about Iraq by 30 years.And did you know that Cheney has been perhaps the leading advocate for strengthening the powers of the White House to the point of monarchy for at least 20 years?To recap, Cheney's past includes: • Oil• Defense• Faking intelligence and using scare tactics about enemies to justify a pre-planned military agenda• Lobbying to give the president the powers of the king• Calling for an American empire and lamenting the lack of a "new Pearl Harbor"Did all of these aspects of Mr. Cheney's background converge in the Iraq debacle? Did they converge on 9/11?This last question is not merely academic: vice President Cheney was apparently in charge of ALL 5 of the war games which occurred on 9/11 and coordinated the government's "response" to the attacks. See this CNN article; and this essay. And Cheney is the one who monitored flight 77 for many miles as it approached the Pentagon and -- when a military man asked "do the orders still stand?" -- Cheney responded affirmatively:"The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?"Watch the video for yourself.Postscript: Cheney obviously did not act alone in his actions. But he was an important player.