{"id":5867,"date":"2005-11-17T14:31:55","date_gmt":"2005-11-17T19:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5867"},"modified":"2005-11-17T14:31:55","modified_gmt":"2005-11-17T19:31:55","slug":"bush-chooses-a-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bush-chooses-a-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush chooses a side"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly after Dick Cheney accused Democrats of making “dishonest and reprehensible” attacks, the issue came up during a presidential press conference<\/a> in Korea.<\/p>\n

Q: Mr. President, Vice President Cheney called it reprehensible for critics to question how you took the country to war, but Senator Hagel says it’s patriotic to ask those kinds of questions. Who do you think is right?<\/p>\n

Bush: The Vice President.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Apparently, the exchange was more interesting in video. The Washington Post reported<\/a>, “Bush’s face tightened and he answered sharply, ‘The vice president.'”)<\/p>\n

Pressed to explain why, Bush said “Democrats…looked at the same intelligence I did, and they voted — many of them voted to support the decision I made.” The president is apparently under the impression that if he repeats a falsehood often enough, people might forget that he’s not telling the truth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it was a great question for Bush. Chuck Hagel said<\/a> that “the Bush administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them.” Dick Cheney said those questioning the administration’s policies are undermining American troops.<\/p>\n

Bush made it pretty clear last week<\/a> which side of this divide he was on, but this was a helpful confirmation before an international audience that the president has little tolerance for dissent. Let the demonizing begin<\/strike> continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shortly after Dick Cheney accused Democrats of making “dishonest and reprehensible” attacks, the issue came up during a presidential press conference in Korea. Q: Mr. President, Vice President Cheney called it reprehensible for critics to question how you took the country to war, but Senator Hagel says it’s patriotic to ask those kinds of questions. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}