Murray Waas has yet more on Cheney (and his major-domo, Irvin L. "Scooter" Libby (let's just start calling him by his first name, Irvin. It's fun.)) lying and breaking laws at the same time. This time, "the" Dick and Irvin are lying to Congress!
Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.
2004...right...something else was happening that year, right? What was it? Oh, yeah, that's it: THE ELECTION.
A former senior administration official familiar with the discussions on whether to turn over the materials said there was a "political element" in the matter. This official said the White House did not want to turn over records during an election year that could used by critics to argue that the administration used incomplete or faulty intelligence to go to war with Iraq. "Nobody wants something like this dissected or coming out in an election year," the former official said.
You've doubtless all heard the phrase spewing forth from the spittle-encrusted mouths of Republicans and Fox News talking heads: "the criminalization of politics."
Yes, politics have been criminalized. BY CRIMINALS. Dick Cheney, Irvin Libby, Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, even Little George the boy emperor -- these are the guys that have been breaking laws faster than the Barker gang. And why have they been committing crimes? Politics, of course. So see, they're "criminalizing politics." What would Congress have done had they not been lied to? Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan. and Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., weigh in:
"I doubt if the votes would have been there," Roberts said. Rockefeller asserted, "We in Congress would not have authorized that war, in 75 votes, if we knew what we know now."