There comes a point in which a candidate just doesn’t care anymore. He’ll say anything, make any charge, draw any conclusion, as long as it scares his audience and generates a few votes. Dick “Go F— Yourself” Cheney reached this point years ago, but he keeps making it worse.
Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday that Saddam Hussein had given “safe harbor” to Al Qaeda when he ruled Iraq, reviving a debate about the nature of the former Iraqi leader’s contacts with the terror network.
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Cheney added that Hussein had “provided safe harbor and sanctuary to terrorists for years … and had provided safe harbor and sanctuary as well for Al Qaeda.”
The fact that we’re still even having this conversation is stunning. Every claim Cheney’s made connecting Iraq to al Queda — and, for crying out loud, there have been so many — has proven bogus. But he just keeps making them, without proof, evidence, or support. It’s as if he has a nervous tick, or something.
I was talking to a friend of mine in Wisconsin yesterday about the political environment there and he noted that too many people simply don’t know whom to believe. In a situation like this, Cheney insists there was a Saddam-al Queda connection, while Dems, experts, independent analysts, the 9/11 Commission, and intelligence sources from around the world say there was no connection.
For many voters who haven’t done their own research on the topic, the truth, they figure, must be somewhere in between. They find it hard to believe that their Vice President would make an outlandish charge about such an important issue, so there must be some accuracy to it. It’s a shame when people aren’t cynical enough for contemporary politics.
I don’t have a real point here, other than to note that voters who assume that one side will say one thing, the other side will disagree, and the truth is probably in the middle are missing a key ingredient — one side happens to be lying.