"Dark Side" resources online

No, this is not about voodoo pagan potions to make for midnight nekkid dancing.

It's about the PBS Frontline program broadcast last night, The Dark Side, about the Dark Lord himself, Dick Cheney. The program itself isn't yet available for viewing online. But the PBS Web site has a lot of related information available.

For instance, there's an interview with Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA's Bin Laden Desk 1995-9. He talks about the link between Al Qaida and Saddam's government. Linking Saddam's regime to Al Qaida and the 9/11 attacks was one of the two requirements in the October 2002 Iraq war resolution passed by Congress. From the interview:

Were you aware that there was an impulse inside the agency or some kind of message being sent that we've got to prepare and start thinking about Iraq?

I don't think in September to December '01, no. But by the spring of 2002, it was becoming very apparent that they were thinking about going to war against Iraq. I think it could be said that the people working counterterrorism didn't take it all that seriously. In the judgment of people who were working the issue of Al Qaeda and thinking about Iraq, the threat level was so infinitesimal from Iraq and so dramatic from Al Qaeda that I don't think people really took it seriously. It was kind of talk. You knew that Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld [had] and certainly the president has the reputation of wanting to get Saddam for having tried to kill his dad.

But clearly, Saddam was a Third World, tinpot, disarmed, ruthless dictator. Osama bin Laden we were worried about, according to the words of the president and all of his advisers, were worried about him having a nuclear weapon to use on the United States. There really wasn't any balance between the two threats, but clearly by 2002 in the springtime, it was almost taken for granted that we were going to go to war with Iraq, in addition to having missed Osama bin Laden.

And for those of you who knew about terrorism and counterterrorism, that must have been like a --

It was a nightmare. I know Tenet was briefed repeatedly by the head of the bin Laden department, that any invasion of Iraq would break the back of our counterterrorism program, and it was just ignored. Maybe the part of the agency that dealt with Iraq was eager to get rid of the problem and tried to do it, but the counterterrorism section of the agency thought it was really shooting your foot with a great big gun, because compared to Al Qaeda and what it represents, Saddam was a zero threat.

| +Save/Share | |