November 17, 2005

Leave it to Dick Cheney, the chief liar of them all when it came to the Iraq War, to now smear critics of that war for questioning the truthfulness of the Administration.

It was Cheney who started banging the drums for war way back on August 26, 2002: “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.”

It was Cheney who kept insisting that Mohammad Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague, a meeting that evidently did not occur.

It was Cheney who practically took up residence at Langley, leaning on the sifters of intelligence over at the CIA to come up with anything that might help make the case for war.

It was Cheney who said, just days before Bush launched this reckless war, that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted nuclear weapons when, in fact, U.N. weapons inspectors said he hadn’t even reconstituted his nuclear weapons program and the CIA itself said he was a ways away from acquiring them.

So who is Cheney to say anything about this now, except perhaps, “I’m sorry, I messed up”?

But no apology has passed from Cheney’s lips.

Quite the contrary.

There he was on November 16, saying Senators who dare to suggest that the Bush Administration manipulated the intelligence are making “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.” Dishonest and reprehensible?

Those adjectives more aptly apply to the Vice President himself.