It's a very weird time in the political world since the ISIS started their march into Iraq. In what is a shocking move by our beltway media, instead of deriding Bush administration officials for their part in instigating the Iraq war, they've invited all the war architects back on television to either flog President Obama or try to rewrite history on their role in promoting lie after lie about Saddam Hussein.
How many lies did BushCo. tell the American people, you ask?
Back in 2008, the Center for Public Integrity and its affiliated group, the Fund for Independence in Journalism, released a study of the false rationales that led the nation into the Iraq War. It found that leading Bush administration officials had publicly lied at least 935 times. The major lie was about the Saddam Hussein regime possessing weapons of mass destruction. But the second most common lie was that there was a link between Saddam and al-Qaida, which made the possibility of an Iraqi nuclear weapon falling into the hands of the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11 particularly frightening.
One of the major culprits in the run up to the war was Vice president Dick Cheney. He played the media like Jascha Heifetz played the violin and he;s just co-authored an op-ed with daughter in the WSJ attacking Obama for the situation in Iraq, I kid you not.
Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is "ending" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as though wishing made it so. His rhetoric has now come crashing into reality. Watching the black-clad ISIS jihadists take territory once secured by American blood is final proof, if any were needed, that America's enemies are not "decimated." They are emboldened and on the march.
Dick Cheney was the virtual co-president with George Bush from 2000-2008, and between the two of them, they made up the worst president in all of our lifetimes. He lied us into attacking a country that didn't attack us, which has now destabilized the entire Middle East and fueled new terrorist groups around the world. The idea that he can shovel crap around without batting an eye or taking any kind of responsibility is astounding. His piece is a disgusting attempt to blame the unrest in the Middle East and Iraq, not on his own policies and lies, but on President Obama, who's trying to clean up their mess.
The gall of this man is unparalleled.
I'm sure he'll be on Sunday talk shows soon enough and the media will never question him on the lies he told the American people, or the false narratives he spun to the media at every turn.
Here's one of the his more famous quotes. While being interviewed by Larry King for CNN in 2005: Iraq insurgency in 'last throes,' Cheney says
"I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time," Cheney said. "The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."
We all know what happened after he said those words.
In 2007, I wrote a post with video and showed how Cheney manipulated the media and the American people into thinking there was a connection between Mohammad Atta and Saddam Hussein. Linking Iraq to al-Qaeda was a priority for Bush and Cheney, so he spun a lie about Mohammad Atta meeting with Iraq forces in Czechoslovakia to blame Iraqis for the 9/11 tragedy.
From Hardball 11/08/05. Remember when Dick Cheney said it was pretty well confirmed before he didn’t?
In ‘01, Cheney said this on MTP:
CHENEY: It‘s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April.
On 6/19/04 CNBC, he said:
GLORIA BORGER, TV SHOW HOST: You have said in the past that it was, quote, “pretty well confirmed.”
CHENEY: No, I never said that. BORGER: OK.
CHENEY: I never said that. BORGER: I think that is…
CHENEY: Absolutely not.
And that's only a smidgen of what Dick Cheney pulled. IN the WSJ piece, he quotes Ronald Reagan.
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan said, "If history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom."
Yes, if history teaches us anything, it should teach us that you Dick Cheney is not worthy to comment on the situation in the Middle East until he admits he betrayed the American people.
The post was corrected.
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