Cheney lied

UPDATE: If anyone can tape Hardball tonight when IT'S ON AGAIN (it repeats in 3 hours), see if you can post onnline (or email me) a video clip of Chris Matthews re-playing Cheney's prior appearance in which he specifically links Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I know that title is a bit like saying "the sun will rise tomorrow." But in this case, I think it's not just an obvious point to be raising. Cheney outright lied about having linked Saddam to 9/11. He specifically and repeatedly said that Mohammad Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence agents in the Iraqi embassy in the Czech Republic. It never happened, and Cheney has repeatedly tried to deny that he repeatedly said it was true. As someone just noted in the comments to another post, apparently Chris Matthews on Hardball just pulled up an old Cheney interview where he made the connection. (And the Washington Post a few months ago pulled up a similar interview transcript when Cheney lied back then about never having made the connection - hell, in that interview, he even adamantly denied saying the SPECIFIC PHRASE HE ACTUALLY USED!)

The thing that's really disturbing is Cheney's brazen ability to lie about something so obviously true on its face. The man lies about his own exact words. We're not talking nuance here. We're not talking "did you vote for a tax increase, or against a tax cut." We're talking you said the Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists were meeting and they WEREN'T, and then you go and lie about what you said, even though lots of reporters have your specific quote on the record.

To me, that was the most troubling part of this entire debate. I don't necessarily care that Cheney actually DID meet Edwards before, even though he said he didn't. But I do care when this administration lies about the reasons for going to war, then lies about the lies, as if we're all going to simply forget what they said just a year ago, on a recorded TV show no less!

A friend said to me earlier today that this administration truly is Orwellian. We are at war with you, we have always been at war with you, and we always will be at war with you. And tomorrow, we'll be at war with someone else, and we will have always been at war with them, etc. The truth is irrelevant. Facts are irrelevant. History is irrelevant. When you rule by the divine right of kings, right and wrong are inconvenient conventions best left to the little people.

Well it's time for the little people to stage a little revolution.