Toujours l'audace

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the sharpest White House attack yet on critics of the Iraq war, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday accusations that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify the war were a "dishonest and reprehensible" political ploy.

Cheney called Democrats "opportunists" who were peddling "cynical and pernicious falsehoods" to gain political advantage while U.S. soldiers died in Iraq.

The comments were the latest salvo in an aggressive White House counterattack on war critics, launched as Democrats step up their criticism of the war and polls show declining public support for the conflict.

Cheney repeated President George W. Bush's charge that Democratic critics were rewriting history by questioning prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction even though many Senate Democrats voted in October 2002 to authorize the invasion.

"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," said Cheney, a principal architect of the war and a focus of Democratic allegations the administration misrepresented intelligence on Iraq's weapons program.

Cheney said the suggestion Bush or any member of the administration misled Americans before the war "is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city."

Well, I guess if there's anyone who knows about cynical and pernicious falsehoods, it would be him.

Who was it who said:

"He also had an established relationship with al Qaeda, providing training to al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons, gases, making conventional bombs."

Source: Remarks by Vice President Dick Cheney at the Heritage Foundation, White House (10/10/2003).

Or:

"Iraq was the place where we were most fearful that that was most likely to occur, because in Iraq we've had a government -- not only was it one of the worst dictatorships in modern times, but had oftentimes hosted terrorists in the past . . . but also an established relationship with the al Qaeda organization . . . ."

Source: Vice President Dick Cheney Remarks at Luncheon for Congressman Jim Gerlach, White House (10/3/2003).

Or:

"The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization."

Source: Meet the Press, NBC (9/14/2003).

Or:

"I don't want to talk about, obviously, specific intelligence sources, but it's now public that, in fact, he has been seeking to acquire, and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel, the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge. And the centrifuge is required to take low-grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched uranium, which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb."

Source: Meet the Press, NBC (9/8/2002).

Or:

"But we do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon."

Source: Meet the Press, NBC (9/8/2002).

Or:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."

Source: Vice President Speaks at VFW 103rd National Convention, White House (8/26/2002).

Or:

"This is a man of great evil, as the President said. And he is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time."

Source: Late Edition (CNN), CNN (3/24/2002).

Did he not realize people were writing this stuff down? Does he really think that no one remembers? Of course not. But similar Rovean "Big Lie" attacks have managed to turn paper tigers into nuclear threats, and decorated war heroes into wimps. So why not try? It is all they seem to know how to do successfully.

You do have to acknowledge the boldness of them accusing the other side of a dishonest and reprehensible political ploy. Ha! It would really be funny, if it weren't the fate of our nation and the deaths of thousands we were talking about.

These and many more bits of un-rewritten history can be found at the invaluable Iraq on the Record.