Dishonest and Reprehensible!

Preface: This one has been in the back of the fridge for a couple of days. It may be a little stale, but I've decided to heat it up before I start cooking up anything new. As my mom taught me as I was growing up - never waste a good post when there are bloggers starving in Africa! Or something like that . . . .

In the first of his two terror-filled speeches last week, Dick Cheney made a couple of statements that have stuck with me like a spooky horror film. First, he said:

The suggestion that’s been made by some U.S. senators that the President of the United States or any member of this administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.

And then he added:

The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone – but we’re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history. We’re going to continue throwing their own words back at them.

After making these statements, reporters immediately found numerous examples where Cheney had said one thing, only to contradict himself later. It was apparently not hard, although I’m sure there were too many to find them all. At the risk of seeming like the Van Helsing of the Blogosphere, I’m determined by Cheney’s own words to relentlessly keep hunting down more examples so I can throw them back at him! Here’s one that I haven’t seen discussed anywhere else:

Following what seemed to be the operable party line at the time on the Iraq war, Cheney’s first speech also included this statement (with emphasis added):

Some of the most irresponsible comments have, of course, come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein. These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence, and were free to draw their own conclusions. They arrived at the same judgment about Iraq’s capabilities and intentions that -- made by this Administration and by the previous administration.

And his second speech reiterated the point:

Some of the most irresponsible comments have come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein. These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence materials. They are known to have a high opinion of their own analytical capabilities. And they were free to reach their own judgments based upon the evidence.

However, back on June 19, 2004, the NY Times reported that shortly after the 9/11 Commission concluded that there was no link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Cheney was asked in a television interview whether he knew things about Iraq’s links to terrorists that the commission did not know, to which he replied “probably!” This led the Commission to ask for additional information to back up Cheney’s claims, which the Vice President refused to provide for “security reasons.”

So, Dick – which history do you want write this time? When you needed the 9/11 Commission to stop raising questions about your reasons for war, you were more than willing to imply that you had intelligence that members of Congress did not have. If they only knew what you knew, they would agree with you, right?

But now that all of those reasons have been proven wrong, and you want to deflect the blame for a disastrous war, you are willing to get up and rewrite history by saying that the Congress had all the intelligence you had!

Dishonest and reprehensible is right! And evil! Just don’t get hit by the words on their way back at you!