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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (180973)	1/19/2004 3:02:04 PM
From: Alighieri	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574379

I wonder what lies he will tell tomorrow nite? Oh...they'll think of some, even though they have never come clean on the lies they have told so far. Al ================================================= Cheney says it's too soon to tell on Iraqi arms Mon Jan 19, 7:29 AM ET By Judy Keen, USA TODAY Vice President Cheney says he believes "the jury's still out" on whether Iraq (news - web sites) had the chemical and biological weapons that were the Bush administration's justification for war. "I am a long way at this stage from concluding that somehow there was some fundamental flaw in our intelligence," Cheney said in an interview with USA TODAY and the Los Angeles Times. In the nine months since the fall of Baghdad, David Kay, a former United Nations (news - web sites) weapons inspector heading the search for such weapons, has found no conclusive evidence of them. Democrats have accused Cheney of exaggerating the weapons threat to justify the invasion, and former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, who served on the National Security Council, says in a new book that he saw no evidence before the war that Iraq had chemical or biological weapons. Cheney suggested that biological weapons are hard to find because they could be produced on short notice. "The stuff is perishable and doesn't last very long anyway," he said. But, he added, intelligence is "never perfect. It's rarely 100% complete." In the interview, Cheney spoke publicly for the first time about O'Neill's criticism of the administration in The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind. In the book, O'Neill describes President Bush (news - web sites) as detached and asserts that attacking Iraq was a priority even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. As Bush's Cabinet recruiter, Cheney brought O'Neill into the Bush administration. Cheney and O'Neill had known each other since they worked together in the Ford administration. Cheney fired O'Neill in December 2002 after the Treasury secretary objected to Bush's tax cuts and made several embarrassing public remarks. "I was a big advocate of his, without question, and it's turned out to be a big disappointment," Cheney said. "We were friends. It's one of those things that happens periodically - you put a round peg in a square hole, and it didn't work." Cheney said he thought O'Neill would do a good job because of his experience as deputy budget director under President Ford and his success as CEO of Alcoa. "Why it failed? I don't know. I don't want to get into that," Cheney said. "Paul has had his say. I disagree with his analysis, obviously. But he's had his day. I feel badly for him, to some extent, that he has ended his career on this note. That's his choice." In the rare, 30-minute interview in a hotel suite, Cheney also said: • The Iraq invasion is helping the administration deal with other foreign policy hot spots. "If you do, in fact, use military force, as we did in Iraq, it makes your diplomacy more effective going forward, dealing with other problems." • He believes Democratic presidential candidates are "having trouble" finding ways to attack Bush. "They started out with an effort to try to use the economy against us. The economy's looking pretty good," he said. Progress in Iraq, particularly the capture of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), has "to some extent taken the wind out of their sails." • He's not worried about his image as the secretive sculptor of Bush policies as he takes a more public role in the campaign. "What's wrong with my image?" he asked with a laugh. Cheney said he's effective working behind the scenes and doesn't believe voters will choose the next president based on running mates. "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?" he said. "It's a nice way to operate, actually."