E&P: Is Dick Cheney the New 'Baghdad Bob'?

[sabra]

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http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000967845

Is Dick Cheney the New 'Baghdad Bob'?

Is it just me, or is Vice President Cheney, who repeated Thursday that the Iraq insurgency is in its final throes, starting to sound like former Saddam spokesman, "Baghdad Bob"? Is it time to start calling him "Baghdad Dick"?

By Greg Mitchell

(June 24, 2005) -- Is it just me, or is Vice President Cheney starting to sound like another balding, rose-colored-glasses wearing, war spokesman, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, better known as “Baghdad Bob”?

Is it time to start calling him Baghdad Dick?

Yesterday, after a week of serious criticism, and mockery, for claiming that the insurgency in Iraq was in its “last throes,” Cheney refused to back down, even after Gen. John Abizaid, our top military commander for the Middle East, proclaimed that the insurgency, in fact, was as strong as ever, and “a lot of work” remained to be done to defeat it. Earlier this week, GOP Senator Chuck Hagel had said he was sick of sunny assertions about the war from the White House, and declared that the U.S. indeed might be losing, not on the edge of victory.

Yet Cheney said on Thursday, “If you look at what the dictionary says about 'throes,' it can still be a violent period.” He compared this time to the end of World War II when tough battles “occurred just a few months before the end. I see this as a similar situation.” Give this man a beret!

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[Pirate Smile]

1. Love it. So True.

[NewJeffCT]

2. good article

I already put a few similar points in an LTTE earlier this week.

[readmylips]

3. Cheney is the same MoFo his mama aborted...

Jeez, you can see Satan in his face.

[seabeyond]

4. i dont want definition of throes, i want definition of "last"

and "other faith"

[mdelaguna2000]

9. Haha good one "last." n/t

[seabeyond]

10. i thought. would be funny to ask cheney. get a chuckle anyway

and then ask for definition of other faith. i want to know if he is saying i am a satan worshipper

[babylonsister]

5. Cheney is really proving to be an embarrassment; so I

say, give him all the air time he can handle!

[fishwax]

6. what an awesome headline

:rofl:

[Jacobin]

7. Now THAT's what I'm talkin' about

:woohoo:


Take that gravelly voiced mofo's idiotic utterances spoken with such 'gravitas' that the media swoons over and throw it in his fucking face like a shit pie.


:woohoo:

[rooboy]

8. Someone should beat Dick Cheney with their shoes. n/t

[Jack Rabbit]

11. A dark version of him, perhaps

Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the former Iraqi Information Minister, was admired by just about everybody. Even as he spoke of how Iraq's army would repel the invasion, the sight of US tanks in the background contradicted him. He was speaking such obvious nonsense that it was hard to take anything he said seriously. If he was trying to deceive anybody, it was pathetic.

And, of course, he was the spokesman for Saddam Hussein. Who would expect the truth out of a spokesman for Saddam Hussein? As ridiculous as he looked, Sahaf was only doing his job.

Dick Cheney is putatively the Vice President of the United States. We expect him to support the putative president, but we shouldn't expect such outrageous lies and obvious propaganda out of American leadership. That's for a regime like Saddam's. If Mr. Cheney cannot support Mr. Bush's policy and tell the truth at the same time, then he should, at the very least, remain silent. If Sahaf had refused to do his job, he might have ended up with a bullet between his eyes; if Mr. Cheney refuses to tell lies for Bush, nothing will happen to him. In fact, Bush wouldn't even be able to ask for Cheney's resignation, as he could demand if some other regime member (Dr. Rice, for example) decided to stop lying for him.

Too many of us still remember Walt Rostow's "light at the end of the tunnel" optimism over Vietnam; the remark was made about three months before the Tet Offensive. Cheney's "last throes" remark seems more reminiscent of that than anything Sahaf said as US tanks rolled into Baghdad. Rostow, who was National Security Adviser to President Johnson, was almost certainly self-deluded; with Cheney, it's hard to say whether he's self-deluded or just lying. Cheney has just lied about Iraq before. For example, when he spoke of Saddam's "reconstituted" nuclear capability, he knew the real facts didn't justify such a remark; he and his Chief of Staff, Mr. Libby, were spending a great deal of time at CIA headquarters making sure that intelligence analysts wrote what they wanted the world to think, not what known facts justified putting in a report.

We have been getting the kind of lies and propaganda from the Bush regime that we would expect from a regime like Saddam's. Regime change in Iraq was warranted, but it was up to the Iraqi people, not George W. Bush. Regime change is warranted in the US. And it is up to us.