It seems that Darth Cheney and his demon spawn daughter are on a book tour these days, pimping their latest masterpiece: Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America, otherwise known as Dick and Liz pretend that all of America's problems started when the evil Kenyan usurper got elected. I hate to break it to them, but other than in the wingnut echo chamber that still thinks the Bush administration could do no wrong, there's not enough polish in the world to shine up the giant turd his administration left behind known as the invasion of Iraq.

Of course, their enablers in the corporate media have been more than happy to help them try to revise history. CBS let them on the air this Sunday for a nice softball interview that we discussed here: Liz Cheney: America Feels 'Gratitude' To My Dad 'Matched Only By Our Love For Him'. Hannity is giving them a full hour this Friday night in a special called... get this... "Restoring America's Greatness: An Hour With Dick and Liz Cheney." Not to be outdone by Fox, CNN gave them an interview with their correspondent, Jamie Gangel, which from the looks of the previews is just as big of a slobber-fest as the interview they had on CBS, and they're airing the entire thing on Anderson Cooper's show tomorrow night.

CNN's Brianna Keilar, filling in for Wolf Blitzer this Monday, played a portion of that CNN interview and brought in New York Rep. and resident Irish terrorist lover, Peter King to see what he thought of Dick Cheney's charge that President Obama lost the invasion of Iraq, and of course King took up for Cheney.

KEILAR: Part of the blame game between Democrats and Republicans over Iraq for instance played out I think in this interview with the former Vice President. He said, he refuted this idea that the invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration created instability in the region and gave ISIS and al Qaeda a toehold there. What was your reaction to that?

KING: I agree with the Vice President. I mean, obviously there was instability in '04, '05 and '06, but with the surge in '07 and '08 and the time President Obama came into office, I mean he himself said that Iraq was stable and secure and that was the rationale that he gave for withdrawing our troops, that there was stability in Iraq, that it was a government capable of defending itself and capable of providing political leadership. So I have... to me it's clear that the time line that the President, not withdrawing the troops so precipitously, made it clear that he wanted to get out, that ISIS would not have the foothold or the strength that it has today.

KEILAR: But a lot of critics of the Bush administration's war in Iraq, invasion of Iraq will say, if that hadn't begun, ISIS wouldn't have had this toehold. Is there any truth to that?

KING: Well, if the war in Iraq hadn't begun, Saddam Hussein would still be in power and as far as the world would know, including the allies, they thought he had the chemical and biological weapons as did every leading Democrat in the Senate did and in the House, as did all the allies in the Middle East. And also Libya would not have turned over his nuclear weapons. The fact is, you take the world the way it's given to you and at the time President Obama took over, there was stability in Iraq. Iraq was a stable country and that's why he himself said he was going to withdraw the troops.

I was in Iraq during the tough times in both '04... '03 and '04 and back again in '07 and '10 and the difference between '07 and '10 was a stable country. Now, it was not perfect, but it was nowhere near what it is today and ISIS, which back then was known as al Qaeda in Iraq had basically been decimated.

First of all, it's not a "blame game." Republicans are continually lying about there being a great victory in Iraq, and "the surge" working and that Iraq was stable. Second, she couldn't be bothered to bring up something called the status of forces agreement. So instead she just let King go on and on and lie like a rug.

As we've discussed here more times than I can count, the surge did not work, it was delaying the inevitable and staying longer would have just postponed it, but not prevented the instability unless we were going to occupy that country forever, which their leaders and population were not going to stand for.

Here's more on that from Marcy last year: If The NSA 'Won' The War In Iraq, Why Are We Still Losing It?:

To Shane Harris’ misfortune, his book, @War, out today, came out on the same day that General Daniel Bolger’s book, Why We Lost, came out.

That means Harris’ first excerpt, initially titled “How the NSA Sorta Won the Last Iraq War,” came out just days before Bolger’s op-ed today, mourning another Veteran’s Day to contemplate the 80 men he lost. Bolger wants us to stop telling the lie that the surge won the Iraq War.

Here’s a legend that’s going around these days. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and toppled a dictator. We botched the follow-through, and a vicious insurgency erupted. Four years later, we surged in fresh troops, adopted improved counterinsurgency tactics and won the war. And then dithering American politicians squandered the gains. It’s a compelling story. But it’s just that — a story.

The surge in Iraq did not “win” anything. It bought time. It allowed us to kill some more bad guys and feel better about ourselves. But in the end, shackled to a corrupt, sectarian government in Baghdad and hobbled by our fellow Americans’ unwillingness to commit to a fight lasting decades, the surge just forestalled today’s stalemate. Like a handful of aspirin gobbled by a fevered patient, the surge cooled the symptoms. But the underlying disease didn’t go away. The remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgents we battled for more than eight years simply re-emerged this year as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Harris’s story, which explains how network analysis and then hacking of Iraqi insurgents — including Al Qaeda in Iraq — helped us to win the surge, relies on that legend. Read on...