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Cheney's Rules for the Press
"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, what I said was that that the al Qaeda strategy is based on the notion that they can break the will of the American people. They know they can't beat us in a stand-up fight. But they do believe -- and I think there's evidence to support this -- that they can, in fact, force us to change our policy if they just kill enough Americans, create enough havoc out there. And they cite Beirut in 1983; Mogadishu, 1993, kill Americans, America changes its policy and withdraws. And Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri believe this. They talk about it. It's not a mystery.
"And my point was that if we follow what I believe Speaker Pelosi really wants to do in terms of withdraw, that that would validate the al Qaeda strategy. I was very careful in those words I selected. I didn't say 'give aid and comfort to terrorists.' I didn't say 'unpatriotic.' I said it would validate the al Qaeda strategy."
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The transcript then shows a "****" which typically means that the interview went even further on background -- most likely off the record -- before resuming. One can only imagine what was said there.
Cheney and the Bomb
David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times: "The audacity of a suicide-bomb attack on Tuesday at the gates of the main American base in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney underscores why President Bush sent him there -- a deepening American concern that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are resurgent."
The strike "demonstrated that Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger and more emboldened in the region than at any time since the American invasion of the country five years ago, and since the Bush administration claimed to have decimated much of their middle management. And it fed directly into the debate over who is to blame.
"The leaders with whom Mr. Cheney met on his mission to Pakistan and Afghanistan have appeared increasingly incapable of controlling the chaos, and have pointed fingers at one another.
"Mr. Cheney said the attack was a reminder that terrorists seek 'to question the authority of the central government,' and argued that it underscored the need for a renewed American effort.
"His critics, on the other hand, said the strike was another reminder of how Iraq had diverted the Bush administration from finishing the job in Afghanistan."
Griff Witte writes in The Washington Post that "the attack demonstrated that insurgents in Afghanistan are becoming increasingly bold, willing to attack a heavily fortified U.S. target in the face of unusually tight security. . . .
"'It's pretty striking that they're capable of planning and executing an attack on Bagram on fairly short notice and under changing circumstances. We haven't seen anything like this before,' said Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who until last month worked on South Asia policy at the State Department. 'Psychologically, this has to be seen as a serious blow.'"
Cheney's is now back in Washington, having landed at Andrews Air Force Base shortly before 4 this morning.
Black Sites
Back in September, three months after the Supreme Court ruled that Bush's approach to interrogation and trials for terror suspects violated both the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, Bush suddenly announced that all 14 prisoners left in the up-until-then officially undisclosed CIA black sites had been transferred to Guantanamo.
