Cheney Makes Notes Proving He's Almost as Stupid as His Boss

Found this link over on WRH to a TPM document. It's a copy of the Joseph Wilson op-ed, What I Didn't Find in Africa, with Dick Cheney comments written in the margin.

Cheney wrote:
1. Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb[assador] to answer a question.
2. Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us?
3. Or did his wife send him on a junket?

I was shocked, I tell you, shocked. The 3 questions Dick notes are not those of a major player in the game or even of someone who knows half of what's going on. (Leaving a written trail isn't all that brilliant either.)

1. Cheney has to ask if the CIA sends an ambassador to answer a question? What kind of question is that for an old political hound who has been around the Bushes and CIA as long as he has? Who but a dumbass would ask that? The CIA can do anything, whether they have done it before or not.

2. Would YOU do pro bono work for the CIA? If so, why would you? Why would Cheney even care if Wilson was paid?

3. How many DC'ers on the cocktail circuit knew Wilson's wife could have sent him on a junket? How covert does a cover have to be for the VP to not know the agent is covert? Because that sounds to me like an offhand comment about somebody and something which everyone else knew – Plame's job as an in-house analyst.

In Wilson's op-ed piece he also states: "Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the (1)ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, (2) a separate report written by the embassy staff, (3) a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and (4) a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure."

SOP FYI: (1)The embassy would document Wilson was in the country but (2) an embassy debriefing report is not always made, (3) and (4) if the administration wants it - the CIA can make reports go away, disappear, poof. And if, as Wilson suggests, a report was "delivered orally" that's 1 document that would not be in the US Government archives "confirming his mission."

I've no idea what Cheney's published notations are supposed to prove, disprove, or inform the public of regarding the entire Cheney-Wilson-Plame game.

But – it convinces me of one thing - that Dick "The Sneer" Cheney too is a big bald evil puppet, doing the bidding of unseen and unnamed powerful others. It means to me Sharpshooter Dick didn't recognize a set-up for his own downfall if the need came to be, and he was staring right at it. Who the hell is really running the country. (Rhetorical question.)