US Vice President Dick Cheney offered the White House's most comprehensive rebuttal to a growing tide of skepticism about justifications for the Iraq war on Thursday, arguing that it would have been "irresponsible in the extreme" to ignore the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons program.
Cheney's remarks, in a rare speech that was given at a conservative policy institute, sought to refute growing criticism, both on Capitol Hill and across the country, that the administration exaggerated the danger of Iraq's weapons to justify the war. His comments also reflected an effort to recast the Iraq war as part of the broader campaign against terror, a linkage that administration officials say puts Iraq in a better political light for them.
PHOTO: AP
Cheney did not mention the debate over President Bush's State of the Union address in January, which included information, since discredited, that Iraq sought uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons. But his advisers said the speech was intended, in part, to tamp down that debate. "This was partly in response to the recent unpleasantness," one adviser said. "We had to get out of the hole we were in."
In his speech, Cheney tried to put the administration's critics on the defensive. "At a safe remove from the danger, some are now trying to cast doubt upon the decision to liberate Iraq," he said. "Those who do so have an obligation to answer this question: How could any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat?"
Cheney then read from four sections of a recently declassified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons programs. That report's conclusions have also come under increasing scrutiny.
"Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles with range in excess of the UN restrictions," he said, reading from the document. "If left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."
He continued, "All key aspects -- the R and D, production and weaponization -- of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program are active, and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War."
But many of the assessment's conclusions are increasingly open to challenge and more attention is falling on a dissenting view attached to the intelligence estimate in which the State Department said "the activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case" that Iraq was pursuing a comprehensive plan to obtain nuclear weapons. Moreover, in the three months since Saddam's government collapsed, American military forces have found virtually no evidence of Iraqi chemical or biological weapons.
Cheney's assertions were toned down from some of his earlier warnings about Iraq. In March, he said on the NBC News program Meet the Press that Iraq "has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." On Thursday, he fell back on the more cautious language in the intelligence assessment.
He said on Thursday that Saddam had "cultivated ties to terrorist groups" but did not repeat White House assertions that Iraq had connections to al-Qaeda.
Officials at the American Enterprise Institute, where he spoke, said they were told on Tuesday that Cheney, a former trustee, wanted to give "a major address" on Thursday. Except at fund-raisers, Cheney rarely speaks in public, and, when he does, it is a usually a sign that the White House needs to deliver a message with exceptional impact.
His speech on Thursday coincided with the release of a congressional report critical of the government's failure to prevent the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
While aides said the timing was unrelated, Cheney used the occasion to underscore the administration's post-Sept. 11 commitment to rooting out terrorists and their sponsors worldwide.
"We will not permit outlaw states and terror groups to join forces in a deadly alliance that could threaten the lives of millions of Americans," he said. "We will act and act decisively, before gathering threats can inflict catastrophic harm on the American people."
He warned that "loose and decentralized networks of terrorism are still finding recruits" to plot attacks against Americans. But he cautioned: "No one should doubt the intentions of our nation. One by one, in every corner of the world, we will hunt the terrorists down and destroy them."
Democrats on the Hill were mainly focused on the Sept. 11 report, but some accused Cheney of using the speech to try to divert attention from contentious intelligence issues and near-daily deaths of American soldiers in Iraq.
"He's trying to put the events of recent weeks in Iraq in the broader context of the war on terror because that plays to the president's strengths," said one senior Senate Democratic aide. "Never mind that was not an extension on war on terrorism, but a distraction from it."
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion