I'm re watching these segments as you might of guessed, sober & unemotionally (read: I accept its PBS, I'm looking for nuggets of interest knowing its covered in a slime of bias), and I can't help but note how right Cheney was to be skeptical of the CIA's assessment of Iraq's connection to Al Qeada, terrorism, 9/11 and WMD's (at first anyway, CIA eventually got on board with that aspect). Jambo was quite right to bring that up.
In his long career in DC Cheney had witnessed the CIA (first hand mind you) 1.) Miss the collapse of the USSR. 2.) Missed the Iranian Revolution, didn't perceive it would happen that is. 3.) Missed Saddam's intent to invade Kuwait until he was dancing in the Kuwaiti oil fields. 4.) Missed the 1990's nuke program - Saddam was 8 months away from getting "the" bomb.
How could he not be skeptical and favor the DoD's assessment over the CIA's I ask you? First the agency had little to no men "on the ground" and the Iraqi National Congress, even with Chalabi would certainly seem more credible at that time given the CIA's history. Add to that Cheney was a former SecDef - first hand he came to the conclusion that their intel was more reliable and the military as an orginizatio run more efficiently then the CIA. Why on earth would he not favor the DoD version of Saddam in that instance? I'm sorry, but the agency was up against its own reputation, not a good place to be.
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