The Media is Turning -- Cheney as Extremist

Analysis - By Jim Lobe

In the 2000 elections he was the thoughtful, grey-haired Washington veteran who reassured nervous voters that candidate George W. Bush would indeed have adult supervision if he became president of the United States.

Now three years later, the image of Vice President Dick Cheney is changing.

In particular, his Sep. 14 appearance on the Sunday television news programme 'Meet the Press', when he not only defended the administration's pre-war optimism about Iraq, but also revived two stories long dismissed by the intelligence community -- that one of the 9/11 hijackers had met an Iraqi spy at a Prague cafe just five months before the attacks on New York and the Pentagon and that Iraq sponsored the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre -- has attracted unprecedented attention.

After an exhaustive investigation, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded a year before the March invasion of Iraq that the hijacker, Mohammed Atta, was in the United States at the time of the alleged meeting. Moreover, the Iraqi spy, who has been in U.S. custody in Iraq since July, has apparently failed to back up the story despite, no doubt, repeated suggestions that he do so.

Cheney's suspicions -- and their lack of any grounding in reality -- have now become fair game in the media. ''Cheney in Wonderland'' was how the 'Los Angeles Times' titled one editorial, while accounts in 'Newsweek' and the Post have gone to unusual lengths to debunk the theories.

There had long been hints that Cheney was not quite the reasonable and deliberate presence that he so effectively conveyed throughout his long career.

And more. Jim Lobe is a leading authority on the neo-conservatives.