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acgt

This NPR news doesn't require subscription.

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/12/1036389448/biden-declassifies...

So Saudis has connections with 9/11 terrorists, and Washington invaded Iraq instead?

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It's pretty widely accepted by now that the premise for Iraq 2.0 was manufactured by the GWB administration.

Regarding 9/11:

I think Cheney was pulling the shots and knowingly and cynically ignored all of those glaring warnings, thinking they'd get maybe a small attack somewhere with a smaller number of US deaths, which would sort of be the cost of doing business in the middle east, and that this could be politically expedient in the context of his larger vision on how to deal with "the Iraq/Saddam problem", and in the larger picture morally "fine".

Btw: Dick Cheney is actually still around. How he and GWB never were indicted is beyond me. Don't get me started on the GWB PR rehabilitation campaign that has been ongoing during the the past ~6 years.

> How he and GWB never were indicted is beyond me.

Same reason nothing will ever happen to Trump for January 6th (and many other things). Same reason Nixon was pardoned. Same reason Clinton got away with lying to Congress, nothing happened to Reagan or Bush Sr. over Iran Contra, and so on...

Once you reach a certain level, laws no longer apply.

This is a more likely explanation than more complex conspiracy theories for Saudi and Pakistani ISI involvement with the 9/11 hijackers. These people were never brought to justice because they are powerful, rich, or "valuable" in some other way. They're not subject to the law.

More like US Law is a tool and not a useful one, in leveraging political influence. In US Politics, the political presentation of events/behavior of individuals, are a sort of ammunition for both other individuals and associated groups. Nobody wants to go to war with a political opponent who can weaponize information effectively, so you never chase them down legally. Especially with no guarantee that legal recourse will do anything but drain coffers and political favors.

> I think Cheney was pulling the shots and knowingly and cynically ignored all of those glaring warnings, thinking they'd get maybe a small attack somewhere with a smaller number of US deaths

Did he have so much control that he could suppress intelligence about an attack? I know he was pretty powerful for a vice president, but it sounds weird to me that one guy who isn't even in command could do that.

Note I'm not American and don't know that much about that period.

He shot an attorney in the face, with a shotgun, and had the victim apologize to him https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/18/usa.dickcheney

"Harry Whittington, the Republican lawyer shot by Dick Cheney in a hunting accident in Texas last weekend, emerged from hospital yesterday and apologised to the vice-president for all the trouble the shooting had caused."

His face after the incident:

https://newsfeed.time.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2010/10...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Whittington

> Whittington told the paper that although many media outlets had described Cheney and him as "good friends", the pair had only met one another three times in 30 years, and had never been hunting before. The Washington Post article also said that Cheney had violated "two basic rules of hunting safety": he failed to ensure that he had a clear shot before firing, and fired without being able to see blue sky beneath his target. The paper also reported that Cheney has still neither publicly nor privately apologized to Whittington for the shooting.

He was a very unusual vice president. Often described as the most powerful american VP ever. It's not clear that GWB was in control of these aspects during his presidency.

You should watch Vice (2018).

That movie really made a shitload of sense to me after following politics closely since a bit before the Bush/Gore election in 2000.

Cheney and the well-aligned group he was part of clearly had extensive control, clearly demonstrated by how well he executed the policy in 2001-2005. It is helpful not to think of the current VP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris) as a comparison as her background [while worthy] was mostly local (SF) and state (CA) -- Cheney on the other hand decades of DC+White House experience (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney) with a strong and almost singular view on Foreign Policy.

W/r/t control beyond the whitehouse, he was publicly part of multiple groups with other key players (e.g., PNAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...) as well as part of non-public "groups" -- Neoconservative. He was clearly effective because his cohorts (Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Paul Bremer) were also part of the same circles, well placed in the DC foreign policy / defense apparatus, also shared the same singular focus of hawkish Foreign Policy.

It also helped that half the media landscape unashamedly supported the Cheney stance. Parts of other media (NY Times) reduced their critical thinking for several years until the disaster of the Bush administration became clear.

This is also why Comedy Central and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Show took off during that time -- because they (along with PBS News Hour and NPR) were one of the few consistently thoughtful sources of news during that time. Consider how much easier it is for Cheney to execute policy when the media check-and-balance has disappeared.

> Did he have so much control that he could suppress intelligence about an attack?

Not sure about suppressing intelligence - but he sure was powerful enough to generate fake intelligence about "Sadam having weapons of mass destruction" - overriding the skepticism of multiple established intelligence services in the process[1]. Cheney basically set up a parallel intelligence service out of his office to push the "weapons of mass destruction" angle with no factual/ground-intelligence basis.

1. https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/special-reports/iraq-intell...

Let's not forget about the nuclear bomb factories on rails. That story sounded fake from the get-go, and since it wasn't true, they just dropped it and let it slip out of the public's memory.

Don't forget that during the 2000 election, Dick Cheney was put in charge of deciding who should be Bush's VP running mate. And he chose Dick Cheney.

> I think Cheney was pulling the shots and knowingly and cynically ignored all of those glaring warnings

Finally some government blame that isn't brain-dead "Bush did it".

No, Washington invaded Afghanistan, despite arguably Rumsfeld wanting to target Iraq at first, but being told they did not have a case.

911 hijackers were Saudis and Osama Bin Laden was Saudi but it was decided to not look at KSA at all.

This was known to the Bush adminsitration who censored any mention of KSA from the 911 reports: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_28_pages

The GOP has always been a supporter of foreign and domestic terrorism. Them posing as antiterrorists is the biggest con of the 21st century.

Back then I was fond of saying that if George W Bush were president during Pearl Harbor we would have declared "War on Aerial Bombing" and invaded Korea.

As Ron Paul once said (about the Federal Reserve), "If that doesn't make any sense at all to you...then you understand it just fine."

Ron Paul ignores the entirely possible alternative of "you may just be an idiot", though.

I was just suggesting the Iraq war is a mistake.

I have never seen a coherent explanation of what was going through anyone's mind regarding the Iraq war. The nearest I've heard is that Iraq was Bush's idee fixe going into office. (My personal theory was that Bush realized Afghanistan was not going to get him re-elected to a second term.)

It's not really a complex mystery. GWB's admin was heavily stacked with people from a particular ideological clique, the Project for a New American Century folks. Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. These folks had done the essay and speech circuit for well over a decade before 9/11 happened, and were very clear about their perspective and aims. I'd summarize those as:

~"American hegemony is net good for the world, therefor the US should not hesitate to use military power, unilaterally, to reshape the world towards US interests, without apology."

These are people that rejected any concept of a collaborative or consensus based world order among peer powers, consent of those governed but subjects of a weaker state, etc, vs the US becoming a benevolent in their imagination unipolar power. They'd spent most of the 90s writing essays about why the US should just straight up depose Saddam and allow US private interests to take over all Iraqi oil infrastructure.

These people had an extremely hawkish take on US foreign policy and it's undeniable that 9/11 dropped a giant present right in their lap. They did exactly what they'd already told the world they wanted to do as a response just using 9/11 as a new justification. The only real surprise is they failed to convince everyone on taking over Iran too.

As for GWB himself, it's not clear what his personal views were other than he stacked his admin full of these people and clearly trusted them. The argument that he had a personal grudge vs Saddam due to his father makes perfect sense and would be an easy way to persuade him personally.

I think a lot of the Bush folks thought of Saddam as a kind of rogue asset. They'd funded him to attack the Iranians, and then he went off reservation when he invaded Kuwait, and later tried to assassinate HW Bush. They knew he had chemical weapons (because they had sold them to him), and tricked themselves into believing he was developing nukes. 9/11 ramped up the paranoia and gave the Bush administration license to lie their way into war.

Prior to the Iraq war Saddam was pressing the UN to lift a bunch of sanctions and courting Russian and European oil companies to come in and run their oil operations. By the time of the invasion Iraq's oil infrastructure had been gutted due to sanctions.

This was a complete anathema to the PNAC psychos' vision of the Middle East [0]. They basically wanted to exact control over the majority share of OPEC producers for power over economic rivals (as they saw them).

The PNAC [1] had been pushing for war in the Middle East from their founding in the 90s. They got a lot of buy-in from all the Nixonites in GWB's administration. Rumsfeld set up the Office of Special Plans [2] that stovepiped unvetted intelligence from a bunch of Iraqi expats and exiles to push PNAC narratives to GWB.

[0] https://archive.org/details/RebuildingAmericasDefenses

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans

The most credible theory in my eyes as to why they needed to invade Iraq, was that Saddam intended to boycott the US dollar, and rather sell Iraq's oil in Euros.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeur...

There's a de facto global tacit agreement to sell oil in US dollars - on pain of unilateral sanctions by the US or military intervention by the US military. All countries who deviate from this agreement are in fact deemed enemies of the US. This includes, Iran, Venezuela, Russia and China, and (formely) Iraq and Libya. When they don't, that means that the US can't simply print dollars as they please and force other countries (who purchases that oil) to purchase US debt as well. Pricing oil in currencies other than the worlds reserve currency (the US dollar) affects the dollar value greatly. The US printed about 10 trillion dollars in two years. The rest of the oil-dependent world pays the price.

> There's a de facto global tacit agreement to sell oil in US dollars - on pain of unilateral sanctions by the US or military intervention by the US military.

That is 100% how the US has managed to maintain as a "stable" global currency.

iirc there were some rumors that Iraq was personal for him because of his father’s handling of it, and subsequent electoral defeat.

There’s only one conspiracy that is logically consistent with the outcome - that Cheney was a witting or unwitting asset of the Iranian regime.

Not really. Cheney was under the influence of Ahmad Chalabi, who was a deep Iranian asset. Chalabi's job was to get the US to invade Iraq and dispose of Saddam. He succeeded admirably, and was given an award by Iran.

conspiracy theory**

As were our misadventures in Afghanistan.

I'm hoping to God that question was being asked sarcastically.

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