WAR ON IRAK: PROPAGANDA WATCH

Toronto Star: Deconstructing Dick Cheney

In his brief televised address last Monday, George W. Bush offered no rationale for the U.S. attack on Iraq.

The U.S. president left that task to his vice-president, Dick Cheney, described last week by the Wall Street Journal as having "the highest credibility with Bush" among White House war advisers.

For months, Cheney has quietly disparaged the diplomatic manoeuvres on Iraq, counselling Bush to topple Saddam Hussein by force.

Last Sunday, the reclusive Cheney made his first talk-show appearance in seven months to offer perhaps the U.S. administration's fullest justification yet for war in Iraq.

Here are excerpts from Cheney's interview with Tim Russert on Meet The Press:


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Cheney: "We have to address the question of where might these terrorists acquire weapons of mass destruction ... and Saddam Hussein becomes a prime suspect.... We know he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization."

Even the most hawkish supporters of war on Iraq acknowledge that the Bush administration has continually failed to establish a substantive link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, which drew most of its funding and its Sept. 11 hijackers from Saudi Arabian sources and sought refuge in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan and Florida, but not Iraq.

There is no evidence Saddam, in his more than 20 years in power, shared his weapons with terrorists.

And International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors can find no evidence of a current Iraqi nuclear program.

Terrorists would most likely tap the huge and poorly guarded nuclear-weapons stockpile of Russia, or equip themselves with nuclear material that an impoverished North Korea, desperate for hard currency, is openly threatening to sell to all comers.

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