There was a great PBS Frontline about Dick Cheney a few months back. In the first Gulf War, he was Sec. Def. for Bush I and the CIA was totally wrong about Hussein’s WMD programs. Hussein was much closer to getting the bomb than the CIA had suspected. Since that time, Cheney has been highly suspicious of intelligence from the CIA. That’s why he was so gung-ho to set up the OSP to end run around the CIA during the runup to the second Iraq war. He simply doesn’t trust the CIA. A better course of action probably would have been to work with the CIA to improve their intelligence gathering in the middle east, but of course I’m sure that’s easier said that done (these are all government employees we’re talking about here, Cheney included).
The bottom line is that Cheney let his ideology cloud his judgement and negatively affect his job performance; he may have also done something illegal in the process. Sad.
