When the House Republicans needed foreign policy advice, they turned to the man most responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place.
Cheney was the war’s chief propagandist, who told the American public more spectacular falsehoods than anyone, including Bush himself. Cheney was the one who told us in 2002 that “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.”
He’s the one who tried to convince us that Saddam Hussein might have helped engineer the September 11 attacks, and who said in 2005 that the insurgency in Iraq was “in its last throes.” (The war went on for 6½ more years.)
Cheney had a central role in bringing on a war in which 4,500 Americans gave their lives, tens of thousands more were gravely injured, we spent a couple of trillion dollars, and somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 Iraqis died.
That’s right. The House GOP turned to the guy who was not only more responsible than anyone else for getting us involved in that mess in the first place, but the man who’s also been more wrong about all of it than everyone else too.
You have to hand it to Dick Cheney. How many people, knowing what has happened in Iraq over the last 12 years, would dare to write an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal recently containing this line: “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many” — and not be talking about George W. Bush? The man has chutzpah.
So tonight will likely be like a bad acid flashback. I fear that, this time, it’ll be President Obama making the case for war.
This morning, I was joined by Susie Madrak of Crooks & Liars and her own Suburban Guerilla blog, and Digby of Hullaballoo, Salon and the Blue America PAC.
In advance of the President’s speech tonight, if you plan on reading any one article, make it this one from Digby’s blog, “The Enemy of My Enemy is…. My Enemy.“
I’ll be back tomorrow with analysis and discussion about tonight’s speech… and we will be joined in the second hour by Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State too…
