92,000 Pages -- And Counting -- As "The Truth" Outs, On Mr. Cheney's Miscues

In the coming hours, days and weeks, many other writers will, no doubt, do a better job than this of connecting the WikiLeaks trove to misleading statements by Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush. But in a bit of flash analysis, I found these passages from one of The New York Times' stories tonight worthy of highlight:

. . .The Central Intelligence Agency has expanded paramilitary operations inside Afghanistan. The units launch ambushes, order airstrikes and conduct night raids. From 2001 to 2008, the C.I.A. paid the budget of Afghanistan’s spy agency and ran it as a virtual subsidiary.

Over all, the documents do not contradict official accounts of the war. But in some cases the documents show that the American military made misleading public statements — attributing the downing of a helicopter to conventional weapons instead of heat-seeking missiles or giving Afghans credit for missions carried out by Special Operations commandos. . .

Mr. Cheney, I think you will find that these documents -- as much as, or more than any others yet released -- paint your wilful refusal to engage in Afghanistan as one of the 21^st Century's greatest military miscalculations. One that has cost tens of thousands of lives (civilian and military), and nearly a trillion dollars.

I do pray that your LVAS keeps working -- and working well. You need to read the papers, here, in Germany and in the United Kingdom, for the next few weeks and months. Only then will you have the beginnings of an accurate sense of how history is actually going to capture your endless hubris, and highly-lethal ineptitude.