The VP Debate
There's been a joke going around for a while that goes "How can you tell when Dick Cheney is lying? His lips are moving." Before last night, I thought that was a little harsh, but no longer.
The saddest part of the debate last night was the way the Vice-President didn't just stick with the well-polished lies that are the standard GOP stump speech, but, for no apparent reason, added new ones. Frankly, the quality of these new additions, as lies, was very poor, in that they could be, and were, disproven within seconds by those with access to Google, much less Lexis/Nexis. It leaves one wondering "Why bother?"
Is it merely that he wants to fill the air with so much chaff that it can't all be stopped? Is he just so cynical that he thinks no one will bother looking it up, or if they do, it won't matter? Is it that he's just lost track of the distinction between truth and falsehood? His memory for details seemed unimpaired, which undermines the more charitable interpretation that he's getting senile, or that his heart meds have ruined his memory. Does Dick Cheney have a psychological disorder that makes him tell falsehoods repeatedly?
I'll save myself the trouble of cataloging them all, and point you to the Democrats Top 10 List, and the (thankfully, finally plentiful) fact-check articles in the press.
Knight-Ridder. The New York Times. The Washington Post. The LA Times. USA Today. CBS News. Associated Press.
In these articles, you'll notice that Edwards is also guilty of statements that were wrong, or exaggerated, or not fully proven. But in my reading, they do not form such a pattern of intentional deception and obfuscation as what Mr. Cheney said. For example, Edwards used the regular Kerry/Edwards charge that the Iraq war has cost us $200 billion. Cheney rightly pointed out that in this fiscal year there's only $120 billion spent, and the amount allocated for next year, which Kerry/Edward count, is partly intended for Afghanistan. But, as someone else has written, this is a bit like saying their car cost $646 dollars, because that's all they've spent on payments this year. Anyone who thinks we'll get out of Iraq for under $200 billion is dreaming.
On to my pick of Cheney's assortment. First, there is the sanctimonious story about how he, as Vice-President, presides over the Senate: "I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight." But he has met Edwards before, multiple times, including sitting next to him for over an hour on the dais at the 2001 National Prayer Breakfast. (Videos of this appearance are on many of the blogs listed to the right.) More, the implication that he regularly meets Democratic Senators when he goes to the hill is ALSO false. The LA Times reports:
It was a silly little charge, but it's resoundingly, demonstrably false. And it makes one wonder, if he'll lie about something like this, what else is he going to lie about? Why even make a charge that, upon investigation, underlines his very own contribution to the "lack of bipartisanship" that he complained about in another answer: "We used to be able to do more together on a bipartisan basis than seems possible these days. I'm not sure exactly why"? You're not sure why, Dick? Maybe it has something to do with the way you "diss" Democrats every week.
Next on my "silly lie" list, he attacked with "Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you Senator Gone." Except, as the TAPPED blog reports, it wasn't his hometown newspaper, the Raleigh News-Observer. It was a community newspaper, published 3 times a week, in Southern Pines, NC. And even they think that Cheney was off-base:
You'd think he'd choose to stick to the old ones that people have gotten tired of disproving every time they are mentioned, instead of providing fresh ones that highlight how often they do this. But of course his base lives for lines like that, regardless of truth. They AREN'T going to look it up. And they'll ignore those who do, and will parrot the line over and over again, laughing derisively as they do.
Still, I think there was one untruth last night that even Cheney's base may be surprised to hear: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11." He probably hasn't said in so many words that Iraq caused 9/11, but suggested? He has suggested, as they say, "up the wazoo!"
In fact, he's suggested it so often, and once came so close to saying it outright, that the President himself had to come out and say there wasn't a connection, just to make things look good. The Washington Post lists a few times:
And on the subject of shooting oneself in the foot, in his attempt to defend against Edwards (accurate) charges about Halliburton, Cheney told people to go to "factcheck.com." Actually, the site he was thinking about was factcheck.org. The happy, Kerry-leaning owners of the factcheck.com domain quickly pointed it to a page at George Soros' website featuring reasons why people should NOT vote for Bush. But, in the "multiple independent levels of untruth" way he has, he was not only giving people the wrong site, but the right one doesn't say what he said it says. Today at factcheck.org they wrote: "Cheney wrongly implied that FactCheck had defended his tenure as CEO of Halliburton Co., and the vice president even got our name wrong."
Finally, in the "sticks in my craw and really ticks me off" department, Cheney repeated Bush's mendacity about the nuclear proliferation activities of Pakistan's AQ Khan: "The suppliers network that provided that, headed by Mr. A.Q. Khan, has been shut down." Bush's version was "The A.Q. Khan network has been brought to justice." In fact, AQ Khan, responsible for Pakistan's nuclear armaments, was pardoned by Pakistan, called a national hero, and now lives in multiple villas. Meanwhile, the IAEA has an ongoing investigation into his network, and a recent arrest suggests that it's still operating.
There are many more that come to mind. That blather about Zarqawi, for instance, who a) may, in fact, be a rival of Osama's, not a minion, b) wasn't based in Saddam's Iraq before the war, but in the Kurdish area under our no-fly zone, and c) according to an NBC report, avoided getting hit by cruise missiles three separate times when Pentagon strike plans were cancelled by the White House in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Or that tripe about Libya, who first offered to give up its WMD before the war, after 10 years of international pressure, overtures from the Clinton administration, and the successful negotiation over the Lockerbie reparations. Or ...No, I have to stop. Go read the other pages for yourself.
The saddest part of the debate last night was the way the Vice-President didn't just stick with the well-polished lies that are the standard GOP stump speech, but, for no apparent reason, added new ones. Frankly, the quality of these new additions, as lies, was very poor, in that they could be, and were, disproven within seconds by those with access to Google, much less Lexis/Nexis. It leaves one wondering "Why bother?"
Is it merely that he wants to fill the air with so much chaff that it can't all be stopped? Is he just so cynical that he thinks no one will bother looking it up, or if they do, it won't matter? Is it that he's just lost track of the distinction between truth and falsehood? His memory for details seemed unimpaired, which undermines the more charitable interpretation that he's getting senile, or that his heart meds have ruined his memory. Does Dick Cheney have a psychological disorder that makes him tell falsehoods repeatedly?
I'll save myself the trouble of cataloging them all, and point you to the Democrats Top 10 List, and the (thankfully, finally plentiful) fact-check articles in the press.
Knight-Ridder. The New York Times. The Washington Post. The LA Times. USA Today. CBS News. Associated Press.
In these articles, you'll notice that Edwards is also guilty of statements that were wrong, or exaggerated, or not fully proven. But in my reading, they do not form such a pattern of intentional deception and obfuscation as what Mr. Cheney said. For example, Edwards used the regular Kerry/Edwards charge that the Iraq war has cost us $200 billion. Cheney rightly pointed out that in this fiscal year there's only $120 billion spent, and the amount allocated for next year, which Kerry/Edward count, is partly intended for Afghanistan. But, as someone else has written, this is a bit like saying their car cost $646 dollars, because that's all they've spent on payments this year. Anyone who thinks we'll get out of Iraq for under $200 billion is dreaming.
On to my pick of Cheney's assortment. First, there is the sanctimonious story about how he, as Vice-President, presides over the Senate: "I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight." But he has met Edwards before, multiple times, including sitting next to him for over an hour on the dais at the 2001 National Prayer Breakfast. (Videos of this appearance are on many of the blogs listed to the right.) More, the implication that he regularly meets Democratic Senators when he goes to the hill is ALSO false. The LA Times reports:
Although Cheney is the Senate's presiding officer, he actually sits in the chamber only on rare occasions, such as to break a tie vote and to swear in new senators.In fact, it was a comment from Senator Leahy about this avoiding of Democrats that earned Leahy the famous anatomically-impossible suggestion from Cheney. And in fact, a look at the record of Senate presiding officers on Tuesdays, the day Cheney cited, shows that in the last four years, he's presided twice, exactly as often as John Edwards!
He does attend the GOP senators' weekly luncheons to discuss party strategy. But only Republicans attend, and Cheney usually breezes into the building, goes to the meeting, then leaves without hobnobbing with Democrats.
It was a silly little charge, but it's resoundingly, demonstrably false. And it makes one wonder, if he'll lie about something like this, what else is he going to lie about? Why even make a charge that, upon investigation, underlines his very own contribution to the "lack of bipartisanship" that he complained about in another answer: "We used to be able to do more together on a bipartisan basis than seems possible these days. I'm not sure exactly why"? You're not sure why, Dick? Maybe it has something to do with the way you "diss" Democrats every week.
Next on my "silly lie" list, he attacked with "Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you Senator Gone." Except, as the TAPPED blog reports, it wasn't his hometown newspaper, the Raleigh News-Observer. It was a community newspaper, published 3 times a week, in Southern Pines, NC. And even they think that Cheney was off-base:
"The Pilot hasn't "taken to calling him" anything. ... The [single] reference was to Edwards' frequent absences from the Senate floor as he traveled here and there (mostly there) pursuing his presidential ambitions.Yet another example of distortion, and selectively picking words out of context, like so many of their swipes at Kerry, most lately "global test."
But we also wrote: "Members of the senator's staff point out that Edwards' attendance record this year has been better than the three other Democratic senators who are campaigning for president -- Joe Lieberman, Richard Gephardt and Bob Graham. And the aides also say none of the votes Edwards missed was close, so his presence on the floor would not have changed the outcome."
You'd think he'd choose to stick to the old ones that people have gotten tired of disproving every time they are mentioned, instead of providing fresh ones that highlight how often they do this. But of course his base lives for lines like that, regardless of truth. They AREN'T going to look it up. And they'll ignore those who do, and will parrot the line over and over again, laughing derisively as they do.
Still, I think there was one untruth last night that even Cheney's base may be surprised to hear: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11." He probably hasn't said in so many words that Iraq caused 9/11, but suggested? He has suggested, as they say, "up the wazoo!"
In fact, he's suggested it so often, and once came so close to saying it outright, that the President himself had to come out and say there wasn't a connection, just to make things look good. The Washington Post lists a few times:
On Dec. 9, 2001, Cheney said on NBC's "Meet The Press" that "it's been pretty well confirmed that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack." On March 24, 2002, Cheney again told NBC, "We discovered . . . the allegation that one of the lead hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had, in fact, met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague."There is still a ridiculously large number of people out there who believe that Saddam DID have something to do with 9/11, precisely because Cheney and others worked hard to suggest it. I'm wondering what, if anything, they think of Cheney backing away from this now. (I guess it's "hard work" keeping your lies consistent.)
On Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney, again on "Meet the Press," said that Atta "did apparently travel to Prague. . . . We have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer a few months before the attacks on the World Trade Center." And a year ago, also on "Meet the Press," Cheney described Iraq as part of "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
And on the subject of shooting oneself in the foot, in his attempt to defend against Edwards (accurate) charges about Halliburton, Cheney told people to go to "factcheck.com." Actually, the site he was thinking about was factcheck.org. The happy, Kerry-leaning owners of the factcheck.com domain quickly pointed it to a page at George Soros' website featuring reasons why people should NOT vote for Bush. But, in the "multiple independent levels of untruth" way he has, he was not only giving people the wrong site, but the right one doesn't say what he said it says. Today at factcheck.org they wrote: "Cheney wrongly implied that FactCheck had defended his tenure as CEO of Halliburton Co., and the vice president even got our name wrong."
Finally, in the "sticks in my craw and really ticks me off" department, Cheney repeated Bush's mendacity about the nuclear proliferation activities of Pakistan's AQ Khan: "The suppliers network that provided that, headed by Mr. A.Q. Khan, has been shut down." Bush's version was "The A.Q. Khan network has been brought to justice." In fact, AQ Khan, responsible for Pakistan's nuclear armaments, was pardoned by Pakistan, called a national hero, and now lives in multiple villas. Meanwhile, the IAEA has an ongoing investigation into his network, and a recent arrest suggests that it's still operating.
There are many more that come to mind. That blather about Zarqawi, for instance, who a) may, in fact, be a rival of Osama's, not a minion, b) wasn't based in Saddam's Iraq before the war, but in the Kurdish area under our no-fly zone, and c) according to an NBC report, avoided getting hit by cruise missiles three separate times when Pentagon strike plans were cancelled by the White House in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Or that tripe about Libya, who first offered to give up its WMD before the war, after 10 years of international pressure, overtures from the Clinton administration, and the successful negotiation over the Lockerbie reparations. Or ...No, I have to stop. Go read the other pages for yourself.
posted by Paul at 11:55 AM |
|
email this
