Has there ever been a high-ranking White House official as hopelessly, uncontrollably dishonest as Dick “Go F— Yourself” Cheney? Nixon, maybe, but I maintain that the scales tip in Cheney’s favor.
I read Cheney’s speech to the D-Day Museum in New Orleans yesterday and initially deleted my post about it. His mendacity was just overwhelming; it would have taken too long to refute the whole thing. In fact, I started wondering if perhaps that was part of the new strategy — one or two lies are easy to spot and refute, but a whole speech littered with constant inaccuracies is harder to challenge.
But instead of going point-by-point, let’s just stick to Cheney’s favorite lie: the non-existent connection between al Queda and Saddam Hussein.
“Saddam’s regime also had long established ties with al Qaeda. These ties included senior-level contacts going back a decade. In the early 1990s, Saddam had sent a brigadier general in the Iraqi intelligence service to Sudan to train al Qaeda in bomb-making and document forgery.”
For the millionth time, there were no “long-established ties.” A 9/11 Commission staff report made this quite clear by concluding two weeks ago that Iraq and al Queda did not have “a collaborative relationship.” Cheney surely knows this; it’s disturbing that he believes repeating the lie makes it less false.
As for the “brigadier general” who trained al Qaeda in “bomb-making and document forgery,” this is a new one.
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank checked with “senior intelligence officials” about this fresh and previously-unheard claim. Each said they had “no knowledge” to substantiate the claim.
In other words, Cheney, in his desperation, is left to making stuff up as he goes along. It’s quite sad, really.
The LA Times noted that if Cheney really is unveiling a new, heretofore unseen piece of evidence, he certainly hasn’t shared with the 9/11 Commission, as he’s supposed to.
Previous comments by Cheney about the brigadier general, as well as comments on other elements of the Iraq-Al Qaeda ties, prompted the chairman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission two weeks ago to urge the vice president to turn over any additional information that the panel did not have.
Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, would not comment Thursday on whether the White House had provided the panel’s staff with any new information since then. But he said the staff had not reviewed any new material that had led it to revise its findings.
“We believe we have seen all the information the vice president has seen, and stand by the staff statement released at the last hearing,” Felzenberg said.
I’m sorry I keep doing this, but I really have to wonder when the national press will start tying Cheney to his record of untruths the way they slammed Gore for his alleged exaggerations four years ago.
[T]he national news media have repeatedly portrayed [Gore] in a much more sinister light: as a willful liar who may even live in a world of his own delusions.
This harsh assessment has been handed down across the media spectrum — from The Washington Post to The Washington Times, from The New York Times to the New York Post, from NBC’s cable networks to the traveling press corps. Journalists and pundits freely denounce Gore as “a liar,” “delusional,” “Pinocchio,” a “Zelig” character who inserts himself into improbable historical events.
A closer look at Gore’s record showed that he hadn’t exaggerated his achievements; it was sloppy reporting and circular sourcing. And yet, while Cheney’s record of distortions and obvious falsehoods is extraordinary, reporters are loath to say so.
In 2000, it was all-too-common to hear or see a report that started, “Gore, whose exaggerations have generated political problems for his campaign….” When will reporters start treating Cheney the same way?