Revelations from Dick Cheney's New Book

Brought to you via Drudge:

·In a chapter entitled, SETBACK, Cheney is blunt about failures in Bush Administration foreign policy, especially in the second term. He criticizes 'concessions delivered' to North Korea 'in the naive hope that despots would respond in kind,' and says the president was badly served by his State Department, including through advice that was 'utterly misleading.'

·Cheney excoriates Colin Powell for standing by silently, knowing that his deputy Richard Armitage was responsible for leaking Valerie Plame's identity to the press.

·Says that it's not Guantanamo Bay that hurts America's image abroad but rather critics like Barack Obama who 'peddle falsehoods about it.'

·Says that Attorney General John Ashcroft approved the controversial Terrorist Surveillance Program that tracked terrorist communications no less than 20 times before his deputy, James Comey, objected. In a briefing delivered by Cheney and NSA Director Mike Hayden, Democratic congressional leaders Pelosi, Daschle, Harman and Rockefeller unanimously agreed the program should continue and that the administration should not seek any further authorization from Congress. 'The view around the table was unanimous... They feared, as did we, that going to the whole Congress would compromise its secrecy.' When it did leak in the NEW YORK TIMES, Cheney writes that the NEW YORK TIMES clearly violated the law by printing information about classified communications intelligence programs.

·Unrepentant on Iraq. Even in hindsight, Cheney asserts it was the right decision, even taking into account mistakes on intelligence. Says those Democrats, like John Kerry, who supported the war and then flipped for political expedience and accused the president of 'peddling untruths' are guilty of just that themselves.

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