Dick Cheney’s ‘facts’

September 11, 2006

[tag]Dick Cheney[/tag] made his first appearance on [tag]Meet the Press[/tag] in three years yesterday, and given his performance, he’ll probably consider waiting another three before going back.

The Senate Intelligence Committee released some of its “Phase II” report on Friday, and since it contradicts much of what the administration has been saying over the last several years, one might assume the White House would take a look at it, especially in prepping Cheney for a national television appearance in which it might come up.

Instead, Cheney, true to form, repeated debunked claims, presented them as facts, and ignored the widely-reported conclusions of the Senate Intelligence Committee. This exchange stood out:

Cheney: [Y]ou’ve got Iraq and 9/11, no evidence that there’s a connection. You’ve got Iraq and al-Qaeda, testimony from the director of CIA that there was indeed a relationship, Zarqawi in Baghdad, etc. Then the third…

Russert: The committee said that there was no relationship. In fact…

Cheney: Well, I haven’t seen the report; I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but the fact is…

Russert: But Mr. Vice President, the bottom line is…

Cheney: We know, we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went in to 9/11, then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of ’02 and was there from then, basically, until basically the time we launched into Iraq.

Yes, after all these years, and all that we’ve learned, Cheney is still anxious to try and connect Saddam Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda.

For the umpteenth time, all available evidence suggests, at the most, there may have been low-level, episodic contact between Iraq and al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission concluded that Saddam and Al Qaeda did not have a “collaborative operational relationship.” Saddam Hussein didn’t try and establish a connection to al Qaeda; he did the opposite, warning his Iraqi supporters to be wary of the network. Cheney clearly tried to give the NBC audience a different impression because, well, he has a certain aversion to the truth.

I was particularly fond of Cheney’s choice of words — “The fact is…” — when describing Zarqawi and Iraq. On Friday, a comprehensive Senate report, the results of which have not been challenged by anyone, concluded that a CIA assessment in October 2005 concluded that Hussein’s government “did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates.” Saddam didn’t help Zarqawi; he wanted to arrest him.

But for Cheney, the report isn’t worth reading — why would it be, it doesn’t tell him what he wants to hear — and his false assertions are “facts.” Why? Because Cheney says so, evidence be damned.

There was also this gem:

“So you look at situation today in Afghanistan or even in Iraq, and you’ve got people who have doubts. They want to know whether or not if they stick their heads up, the United States, in fact, is going to be there to complete the mission. And those doubts are encouraged, obviously, when they see the kind of debate that we’ve had in the United States, suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, simply feed into that whole notion, validates the strategy of the terrorists.”

It’s quite an argument. It’s not the administration’s policy that is doing harm in Iraq and Afghanistan; it’s the debate over the administration’s policy that is doing harm. Cheney and Rumsfeld aren’t the problem; we are the problem.

Only 861 more days….

It is a difficult prospect to have a conversation with an authoritarian, let alone argue with one. Dick Cheney is a thug – politically and economically. His “democracy” only has room for his oil buddies. “Completing the mission” for him is bolting down Iraqi oil for the profit margins of the oil industry. He is brazen in his use of fear against liberty. Mr. Cheney and his ilk have accomplished what the “terrorist” cannot: a crackdown on a democratically free society. -Kevo

  • I didn’t watch because can’t stand Cheney, or Condi for that matter. Whenever either of them come on I take great pleasure in letting them get one word out before I hit the fast forward.

    His phrase would have been perfect if it had included his other hackneyed expression, preferably said while snarling: “The fact is, as it were,….”

  • The thing about this that bugs the hell out of me (OK, besides the fact that an elected public official is lying to the country and not being held to account for it) is that postulating a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda was bad for the war on terror. It distracted us from the key targets, exhausted our resources, prompted a powerful jihadist movement in Iraq that is now a bigger enemy than al-Qaeda ever was, and caused us to remove an enemy of the active terrorist-supporter Iran. It wasn’t a convenient assumption which led us in the right direction (á la Agatha Christie), it was a bad assumption that led us in exactly the wrong direction. You fucked everything up with your stupid Saddam-al-Qaeda, theory, Dick, aren’t you totally ashamed of yourself??!!!??? Aaaah, never mind.

  • WASH POST: After letting bin Laden escape in late 2001, Bush called off the hunt for Osama and instead prepared for war in Iraq
    by Joe in DC – 9/10/2006 02:52:00 PM

    http://www.americablog.com

    Bush called off the hunt for bin Laden only 6 months after September 11 because Bush wanted to invade Iraq. So much for 3,000 dead Americans. Bush gave up on them before the smoldering ashes at Ground Zero had barely gone cold. We are literally in greater danger as a country because of the incompetence of the man running our nation. God help us.

    From today’s Washington Post
    On the videotape obtained by the CIA, bin Laden is seen confidently instructing his party how to dig holes in the ground to lie in undetected at night. A bomb dropped by a U.S. aircraft can be seen exploding in the distance. “We were there last night,” bin Laden says without much concern in his voice. He was in or headed toward Pakistan, counterterrorism officials think.

    That was December 2001. Only two months later, Bush decided to pull out most of the special operations troops and their CIA counterparts in the paramilitary division that were leading the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for war in Iraq, said Flynt L. Leverett, then an expert on the Middle East at the National Security Council.

  • Like Ed Stephan, I just switched away from Cheney and Rice. It’s not even worth listening to collect their lies to use against them anymore.

    Somehow, the American People are going to have to learn that whatever we do in Iraq, eventually the Terrorists (or at least, al Qaeda) is going to claim victory as long as Osama bin Laden and his deputies are alive. But Boy George II and Donnie Rumsfeld didn’t want to get ObL, they wanted to fight a war in Iraq. Rocky gets that totally right and BC states the consequences eloquantly.

    “So you look at situation today in Afghanistan or even in Iraq, and you’ve got people who have doubts. They want to know whether or not if they stick their heads up, the United States, in fact, is going to be there to complete the mission.” – Vice President and asshole in Chief Dick Cheney

    I read this to mean he’s talking about potential allies, either internal to those countries or others who might help free up American troops. Dicky boy, the problem is that YOU have no crediablity with the world anymore, and thus America has no allies that it can rely on.

    I note the fact that now Zarqawi is supposed to have fled before us from Afghanistan and gone to Iraq to set up operations. The Cheney, he changes his story every time but every time, it’s a lie. Zarqawi fled into nominally Kurdish controlled regions near the border with Iran. He was outside of areas under Saddam’s control and as such not really Saddam’s responsibility.

  • I understand why the GOP in Cngress would not want to impeach Bush, but I tell you, Cheney would have been a great sacrificial lamb for impeachment.

  • Cheney: Well, I haven’t seen the report; I haven’t had a chance to read it yet…

    Here’s the point where I would differ from Tim Russert. At this point, I would stop and start questioning the Vice President on why he hadn’t read the report. “What do you mean you haven’t read the report yet?”; “I’ve read the report and I’m just a journalist; you’re the President of the Senate, the body that published the report!”, “I’ve asked you on this show to discuss the report and you haven’t even read it?”, “What could possibly be more important to this administration than understanding what alleged intelligence failures occurred? Did you have a big fundraiser to go to or something?”

    But I guess if Russert asked those questions, he wouldn’t get invited to the best cocktail parties….

  • To 50% of the people Cheney isn’t lying. He’s telling them what they believe. There’s the vaunted “balance.”

  • Hasn’t read it my ass.

    There is no way he wouldn’t have read it before it was made public much less before going on MTP. I know Cheney thinks the American public are as stupid, whipped, brainwashed, clueless and/or a combination of any/all of the above, but please, he can’t seriously believe the general public will buy this load of crap. I’ll say it again – Hasn’t read it my ass.

    I won’t even go into the content of what he said – this is Cheney after all. He pretty much hasn’t gotten anything right and has a whole lot to loose.

  • Let’s be sincerely blunt—Dick Cheney wouldn’t know a fact, if it were loaded into a gun and shot into his face at point blank range. He wouldn’t know a fact, if it were packed into an improvised explosive device and detonated under his chair in the middle of Sunday brunch. He wouldn’t know a fact, if it were installed into the cockpit of a 747 and flown into his house while he was in the bathtub. The man’s motto is:

    Facts?!? Weeeee dohn’t neeeeeed no steeeeeeenking facts!!!

    *Apologies the Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong….

  • Russert is lucky VP Chinny didn’t whip out a shotgun. “How DEAH you contradict me you horrible little commoner?”
    Ka-blam!

    At times like these I’m really glad I don’t have children. I know in 20 years the little tykes would be asking “Why didn’t you do something about this creep?” Since I would only be able to shrug and mutter as my face turned bright red it would just be more proof that adults are like, mega-stooopid.

  • The Cheney, he changes his story every time but every time, it’s a lie. Zarqawi fled into nominally Kurdish controlled regions near the border with Iran. He was outside of areas under Saddam’s control and as such not really Saddam’s responsibility.

    Comment by Lance —

    How insulting & disingeneous – the knuckle-dragger just lies with abandon.

  • What do (good) teachers do when a student admits they haven’t done the day’s reading? Do they keep asking the student questions as if they will somehow catch up while making up a bogus answer? Or do they move on to the next student? Really, at the point where Cheney said, “I haven’t read it yet…”, the interview should have simply ended, point blank termination. Just cut him off and go to a commercial break. See ya! Not interested in exploring your bullsh*tting skills today, Mr. Cheney. God, what I would give to see ol’ Dick-head shut down like a greenhorn freshman in The Paper Chase.

  • Punkinhead sold his soul a long time ago to Jack Welch. The fantasies about what he could have and should have said/done to Cheney are, while juicily satisfying, merely wishful thinking. At the risk of repeating something I once reported on the selling of the soul of Russert to Welch (then head of GE/NBC), allow me to reiterate:

    “In private, Welch was proud to have personally cultivated Tim Russert from a “lefty” to a responsible representative of GE interests. Welch sincerely believed that all liberals were phonies. He took great pleasure in “buying their leftist souls”, watching in satisfaction as former Democrats like Russert and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews eagerly discarded the baggage of their former progressive beliefs in exchange for cold hard GE cash. Russert was now an especially obedient and model employee in whom the company could take pride.”

  • “How insulting & disingeneous – the knuckle-dragger just lies with abandon.” – pdoff

    You have managed to totally confuse me. Who is the anticedent of “knuckle-dragger” here?

  • “And those doubts are encouraged, obviously, when they see the kind of debate that we’ve had in the United States, suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, simply feed into that whole notion, validates the strategy of the terrorists.” D.C. in DC

    And those doubts are encouraged by:
    1. Going into Iraq with insufficient forces to safely occupy and rebuild Iraq
    2. Failing to implement a preinvasion plan to rebuild Iraq
    3. Failing to secure caches of high explosives during our invasion of Iraq
    4. Tipping our hat about our insufficient troop strength via IRRs and reserve call ups
    5. Reelecting Bush in 2004
    6. Comments from McCain, Hagel, and retired generals
    7. Not rescinding the Bush tax cuts to pay for the war
    8. Bush’s keeping Rumsfeld as SoD

    The righteous right is sowing the seeds of blaming their defeat on those who questioned their performance and forewarned them of their defeat. So the “defeatists” will get the blame instead of the coalition of the defeated. No matter the outcome, bad or badder, the defeated will claim that they were preempted from achieving their strategy for victory. Hmmm. Dick, please give me the 8 shot load instead of the number 4s.

  • The thing about this that bugs the hell out of me (OK, besides the fact that an elected public official is lying to the country and not being held to account for it) is that postulating a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda was bad for the war on terror. It distracted us from the key targets, exhausted our resources, prompted a powerful jihadist movement in Iraq that is now a bigger enemy than al-Qaeda ever was, and caused us to remove an enemy of the active terrorist-supporter Iran.

    What’s more, this is exactly the response bin Laden predicted. Naive as I was, I was sure no American administration could ever be that stupid.

  • What GP said.

    Cheney admits he didn’t read an important paper? Then throw his ass off the set, and tell him to come back when he’s read the report and can stand to be questioned about it.

    Russert is a stooge, and he bears the responsibility here. Cheney’s job apparently is to continue to confuse people, but Russert’s job SHOULD be to clear up confusion, not enable it.

  • Does Cheney also consider the Weekly World News “facts”?

    “Pregnant man gives birth, that’s a fact!”

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