Libby Replacements Addinton and Hannah are NeoCon Thugs

From Asia Times Online:

"Libby's two positions will now be shared by different people, both attorneys. His hardline legal counsel, David Addington, is taking over the chief-of-staff post, while John P Hannah, who served as Libby's deputy in the national security position, will move up the advisor's spot. ...

"Addington has served the vice president in a variety of posts, dating all the way back to the mid-1980s, when Cheney was a member of the Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives defending then-president Ronald Reagan over the Iran-Contra affair.

"He has reportedly been a strong proponent of both unilateralism in US foreign policy and of sweeping presidential power, particularly in time of war. A close associate of UN Ambassador John Bolton, Addington, who almost obsessively shuns the public spotlight, also regards international law with undisguised contempt.

"Addington has been accused by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch of being among the strongest advocates within the administration for exempting detainees taken in the "war on terror" of any constitutional due process rights or of the protections of the Geneva Convention.

"According to the National Journal, he has also argued aggressively and so far successfully - even over the objections of President George W Bush's legal counsel and political aides - for refusing to turn over critical documents concerning the White House's treatment of pre-Iraq war intelligence to the Congressional Intelligence committees.

Hannah, who was hired by Libby in 2001, has a much shorter history with Cheney and spent two years working as a senior advisor to Bill Clinton's first secretary of state, Warren Christopher.

But he, too, is seen widely seen as a hardliner who, according to published records, acted as the main White House contact for the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a group led by Ahmad Chalabi, that provided "defectors" and other intelligence in the run-up to the 2003 invasion that later turned out to be bogus.

Hannah has also worked particularly closely with the INC's main Pentagon contact, Harold Rhode, a Middle East specialist and close collaborator of a group of hardline neo-conservatives based mainly at the American Enterprise Institute who have urged confrontation with Syria, Iran and even Saudi Arabia.

Hannah also served two stints, in the late 1980s and mid-1990s, as senior fellow and deputy director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank established in the mid-1980s by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group. "

http://atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GK03Aa01.html