From Frontline:
All of us remember what a gut punch that day was. It knocked the sense out of me for a while, and it must have been a much more wrenching experience for those primarily responsible for our national security. I don't envy any of them for what that must have felt like. Even if they genuinely believed they'd done all they could, that would be a body blow.
If this view is correct -- that 9/11 put the zap on Cheney's head -- then this is a picture of Dick Cheney becoming a Sith Lord:
Frontline notes: "Cheney will soon announce from Camp David that the United States will have to work the 'dark side.'"
I never had any regard for George Bush's intellect, but I thought he'd assembled a foreign policy A Team. Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condi Rice looked like a set of heavyweights to me. In retrospect, they seem like the worst possible people to have held those offices at that time.
When I look at that photo of Cheney, I see a righteously angry man grimly determined that he will do anything and everything to right the grievous wrong he'd just endured. Unfortunately, most of what he would go on to do would make things very much worse.
In never-before-released photographs taken on Sept. 11, 2001, the shock, horror and gravity of the terrorist attacks can be read on the faces of President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, their wives Laura and Lynne, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet and other senior Bush and Cheney staffers.
The photos were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Colette Neirouz Hanna, coordinating producer for the Kirk Documentary Group, which covered the Bush administration in many films for FRONTLINE, including Bush’s War, Cheney’s Law and The Dark Side.
The photographs, which were taken by the vice president’s staff photographer, show Cheney watching footage of the World Trade Center attack in his office. Other photos show Cheney and other senior staffers meeting in the President’s Emergency Operations Center, or the secure bunker deep underneath the White House.
As Frontline notes, "Those in the room that day say the attacks had a profound effect on Cheney and shaped his entire time in office." The photos were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Colette Neirouz Hanna, coordinating producer for the Kirk Documentary Group, which covered the Bush administration in many films for FRONTLINE, including Bush’s War, Cheney’s Law and The Dark Side.
The photographs, which were taken by the vice president’s staff photographer, show Cheney watching footage of the World Trade Center attack in his office. Other photos show Cheney and other senior staffers meeting in the President’s Emergency Operations Center, or the secure bunker deep underneath the White House.
All of us remember what a gut punch that day was. It knocked the sense out of me for a while, and it must have been a much more wrenching experience for those primarily responsible for our national security. I don't envy any of them for what that must have felt like. Even if they genuinely believed they'd done all they could, that would be a body blow.
If this view is correct -- that 9/11 put the zap on Cheney's head -- then this is a picture of Dick Cheney becoming a Sith Lord:
Frontline notes: "Cheney will soon announce from Camp David that the United States will have to work the 'dark side.'"
I never had any regard for George Bush's intellect, but I thought he'd assembled a foreign policy A Team. Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condi Rice looked like a set of heavyweights to me. In retrospect, they seem like the worst possible people to have held those offices at that time.
When I look at that photo of Cheney, I see a righteously angry man grimly determined that he will do anything and everything to right the grievous wrong he'd just endured. Unfortunately, most of what he would go on to do would make things very much worse.
"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
