What's more, Cheney can't stop the lying and distortion. In commenting early this week about Rep. Jack Murtha's (D-PA) proposal to immediately begin withdrawing our troops, Cheney said such an early exit would be a "terrible blow" to America's security and would empower the insurgents in Iraq:
"The terrorists believe that by controlling an entire country they will be able to target and overthrow other governments in the region, and to establish a radical Islamic empire that encompasses a region from Spain, across North Africa, through the Middle East and South Asia, all the way to Indonesia. They have made clear, as well, their ultimate ambitions: to arm themselves with weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate all Western countries and to cause mass death in the United States."
Can you believe Cheney's audacity and arrogance? Even as he's chastising the Democrats for a lack of honesty and integrity, even as his original reasons for invading Iraq have now been proven unfounded, he's still sounding the WMD alarm and the grave threat posed to the United States by the "terrorists." The last time Cheney lied to us about WMD we embarked on an unjust war that's now killed 2100 U.S. soldiers, maimed and wounded 20,000, and cost $400 billion. Perhaps if we stop listening to the lies we just might be able to get out of this quagmire.
Cheney's also steadfast in maintaining that the Democrats and Congress had access to the same pre-war intelligence documents as the White House. Leading Democrats including Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have refuted this assertion, as has Republican Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Said Kennedy: "It defies belief that the vice president can continue to say with a straight face that Congress had the same intelligence as the president and vice president had."
