USA: Dick Cheney ångrar inget

WASHINGTON – Ångrar inget?

– Ångrar inget.

Det fråga-svar-utbytet summerar en längre intervju med förre vicepresidenten Dick Cheney i tv-kanalen NBC (special på måndagkvällen, utdrag här).

Cheney har just utkommit med sina memoarer, In My Time, med dottern Liz som medförfattare.

– Huvuden kommer att explodera, säger han också till reportern Jamie Gangel om reaktionerna i Washington.

Men förre utrikesministern Colin Powell som inte porträtteras snällt i boken understryker (i denna msnbc.com-artikel) att hans huvud sitter kvar och att Cheney bara tuggar om sådant som hände sju-åtta år sedan. Efterträdaren Condoleezza Rice som Cheney avfärdar som oerfaren avböjer att kommentera (men hon kommer med en andra memoarbok senare i höst). Samma gäller George W Bush, trots att en del av hans hågkomster skiljer sig från Cheneys, bl a rörande anfallet mot Bagdad.

I boken försvarar Cheney såväl Irakkriget som de hårda förhörsmetoderna. En nyhet är att Bush vägrat lyssnat till hans råd om att bomba en kärnanläggning i Syrien.

Här en sammanställning av vad som sägs om boken med den vanliga invändningen att Cheney utelämnar en del och inte medger några som helst misstag – men också att han berättar öppet om sin familj, sin hälsa och hjärtoperationerna.

Nedan några citat som Politicos Mike Allen valt ut:

–[In July 2003, after the Joe Wilson op-ed in The N.Y. Times, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said during an Air Force One gaggle, re the 16 words Iraq and uranium: ”We’ve said now we wouldn’t have put it in the speech if we had known what we know now.”] Cheney writes: ”The result was the conflagration I had predicted. … Rice realized sometime later that she had made a major mistake by issuing a public apology. She came into my office, sad down in the chair next to my desk, and tearfully admitted I had been right. Unfortunately, the damage was done. [CIA Director] George Tenet was furious at having had to apologize.”

–”In the wake of the New York Times terrorist surveillance story [in Dec. 2005], Andy Card hosted a meeting in his office that I attended along with some of the president’s communications team. Communications Director Dan Bartlett was urging that we be more forthcoming in revealing to the press and the public just what these programs entailed. He said that the president was ’just carrying too much baggage’ from all the ’secret’ activities we had under way. … ’Dan,’ I said, ’we aren’t doing these things for our entertainment. We’re doing them because we’re at war. These programs – and keeping them secret – are critical for the defense of the nation.’ The president and I and everyone else serving in the administration had one mission: to defend the nation, even if it resulted in negative press stories.”

–On Dec. 7, 2006, the day after release of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report, ”We had our Oval Office intelligence brief earlier than normal because the president and Prime Minister Tony Blair were having breakfast at 8:00 a.m., followed by a joint press conference. As the intelligence brief wrapped up, a staffer came in with a copy of the president’s opening remarks for the press conference. I didn’t usually get involved with drafts of presidential speeches, but a quick glance at this one sent up a red flag. I’d seen an earlier version and it had the word ’victory’ in it. Someone had taken it out of the remarks.

”For some time, Dan Bartlett, the director of communications, and Josh Bolten, the chief of staff, had been arguing that the president shouldn’t say ’victory.’ They viewed that as the equivalent of arguing to stay the course. They were concerned that the press would hear it and write that the president hadn’t understood the message of the midterms we’d just lost. They worried it would lead to stories that the president was ’stubborn’ and ’wasn’t listening.’ They urged repeatedly that for optics’ sake, we make clear we had a changed strategy … I disagreed. … ’Mr. President,’ I said, holding up the proposed remarks, ’you can’t refuse to talk about winning’ … The president understood immediately, and a few hours later when he appeared with Prime Minister Blair, he said, ’We agree that victory in Iraq is important.'”

–”On Tuesday morning, May 22 [2007], a David Ignatius column appeared in the Washington Post titled ’After the Surge: The Administration Floats Ideas for a New Approach in Iraq.’ It quoted administration officials on the need to revamp policy in order to attract bipartisan support and to take into account the fact that the surge might not have the destabilizing effect we had hoped. I was very concerned when I read the piece, and I raised it with the president in the Oval Office. ’Whoever is leaking information like this to the press is doing a real disservice, Mr. President,’ I said, ’both to you and to our forces on the ground in Baghdad.’ … ’We have to correct this, particularly with our generals in the field.’ … A short time later [national security adviser] Steve Hadley came into my office and closed the door. He told me that he was the source for Ignatius and that he’d talked to him at the instruction of the president.”

–”On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama was elected … [Bush chief of staff] Josh Bolten decided to host a unique session for the incoming chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, during our last weeks in office. Josh gathered all the living former chiefs of staff, about a dozen of us. Don Rumsfeld was there, Howard Baker, Jack Watson, John Sununu, and Leon Panetta, among others, and we met around the table in the office we had all once inhabited. Josh went around and asked each of us to give Rahm our most important piece of advice. By this time, of course, there’d been years of stories about how I was the evil genius controlling the Bush administration from behind a curtain, so when it came my turn I advised Rahm, ’Whatever you do, make sure you’ve got the vice president under control.’ It was one of my better lines.”