EW, I haven’t read Cheney’s book. But I commend you for having the skill and the stomach to dissect Cheney’s reconstruction of the events and decisions.

“Osama bin Laden — Wanted Dead or Alive” NOT. That “poster” was never torn down by the Bushies. For example, as late as Nov 13, 2002 – “The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.” – G.W. Bush. But we have good reason to doubt that OBL remained No. 1 (or even high on the list of priorities).

Before November 2002, Cheney had already declared in his speech to the VFW on August 27, 2002, that the time for a decision on Iraq was near — that the risk of not acting was becoming greater than the risk of acting. And the new Bush doctrine of preemptive war was about to go to press in the form of a National Security Strategy adopted on September 17, 2002.

So Bush-Cheney clearly took their eye off the bin Laden target late in 2001 after the Taliban were routed and OBL slipped out of Tora Bora and took haven in Pakistan in December 2001. They had another country to go after, and old scores to settle, and so the new primary target became the Axis of Evil, as declared by Bush in the State of the Union speech in January 2002. And by Fall 2002, the most urgent target had become Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

“our special operations forces were able on May 1, 2001, to find and kill bin Laden. (341)”

Shouldn’t this be “May 1, 2011”?

For reasons I might get around to expounding on in more detail, later, Goldsmith’s piece on Deadeye is unmitigated bullshit. Skilled, carefully crafted bullshit, but bullshit nonetheless.

In short, Goldsmith’s argument is that, if Cheney had played better with others, he might have gotten more of the Presidential dictatorship to which he nightly honed his bone. False: the precedents for (to name a few) torture, eternal imprisonment with out charge or trial, warrantless wiretapping, creating internal secret police/spying systems (like in NYC) and denying relief to those harmed by them were set under Cheney and remain unmolested. They are, like the loaded gun metaphor used in Youngstown, still lying around waiting for some ambitious pol to pick up and use in the next purported “crisis”. Meanwhile, the architects of those plans and policies have been ensconced in government where they can pass on and approve the policies they helped create. To pick one example, the damage the Bush appointees on the DC Circuit have done to habeas (in interpreting the S.Ct. decision in Boumedienne, they’ve effectively eliminated it) is far more than Cheney could have ever hoped for from a legislative suspension of the writ and, since there never has been a suspension of the writ, a non-existent habeas remedy is what passes for habeas.

Frankly the best I can say about Goldsmith’s piece is that it might represent a residual nub of moral sense rising up in a man who abandoned his (if he ever had any) to get to the jobs where he’s been and now is. More likely, it’s a job application because he feels left out from the big task of building a better dictatorship in his ivory tower in Cambridge and wants back in on the inside.

@emptywheel: The whole premise of a “tell-all” book wouldn’t have been curmudgeon PapaDick’s “never put anything in writing” idea.

But PapaDick’s only reptilian soft spot must be for Daddy’s Little Girl, and as an intellectually bankrupt and lazy ideologue, if a book must be written, he might as well get the familial dullard to do most of the work.

Oh, and fetch my slippers!

@Bay State Librul: that link doesn’t work for me?
@7 – if that’s the gist of it, that’s Goldsmith. The problem he always saw with the policies was that the gang of torturers wasn’t big enough, not that there was an inherent problem with the torture policy. Even now, knowing all of what he knows, he’s unrepentant over the non-combatants shipped off to GITMO and elsewhere and disappeared and feels that the main thing to get right is to get Congress more tea-party-ee and more on board with disappearing non-combatant civilians around the world and subjecting them to carefully covered up torture in the name of security. NOt a hero – a creepy creepy man.

EW, yes thank you for the other Bush quotes. I recall that he said it didn’t matter that much. I started out this morning looking for those quotes and to my surprise found the one from Nov 2002. But we all know what he was really up to after Tora Bora, and that’s prepping for Shock and Awe.

@emptywheel: That’s a dog built for hunting, acting out. Hunting dogs – of most breeds – will go after smaller yappy dogs, cats, squirrels, chipmunks, skunks, you name it. And they will kill them, too. My setter does some of the most gorgeous points … on the neighbor’s cat. I have to use both hands on the leash to keep her from killing the cat, but only when the cat decides to leave. Until then, she’ll be locked up pointing and have her nose a foot or two from the cat, but the leash can be slack – she doesn’t lunge until the cat “flushes”.

Calling “treat” is an effective way, if the dog is trained to treats and/or food-oriented, to interrupt whatever is going on in a way that “come”, “stop” or “whoa” won’t. You’re substituting a greater inducement (treat) for the lesser (killing a smaller animal) and it works.

@scribe:
Good point on the dogs, not something routinely known here.

Also, good reminder on the press corps stuff, OBL only ever came out when a Two Minutes Hate session was needed due to one more example of Bu$hie incompetence.

Don’t forget that Perry is Shrub Lite.