Dick "Last Throes" Cheney launched an attack on Nancy Pelosi yesterday via Rush Limbaugh as reported in the LA Times:
Vice President Dick Cheney scolded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday for "bad behavior" in traveling to Syria, a country that he said promoted terrorism.Stop media. You know Dick Cheney lies and has no credibility. Just because he says something to Rush Limbaugh of all people doesn't mean it's true. But lets talk about nonsensical statements that don't make any sense. On March 29, 2003, the Washington Post provided a synopsis of Cheney's pre-war spin:
In a conversation with fellow conservative Rush Limbaugh on Limbaugh's radio show, Cheney belittled Pelosi's public statement after she met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on Wednesday.
"It was a non-statement, a nonsensical statement, and didn't make any sense at all that she would suggest that those talks could go forward as long as the Syrians conducted themselves as a prime state sponsor of terror," Cheney said.
On CBS's "Face the Nation" on March 16, Cheney said the fight would be "weeks rather than months. There's always the possibility of complications that you can't anticipate, but I have great confidence in our troops." Cheney also predicted the fight would "go relatively quickly, but we can't count on that." That same day on NBC's "Meet the Press," Cheney said, "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." It was then he predicted that the regular Iraqi soldiers would not "put up such a struggle," and that even "significant elements of the Republican Guard . . . are likely to step aside." Asked if Americans are prepared for a "long, costly and bloody battle," Cheney replied: "Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way. . . . The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein, and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that." Cheney has spoken that way for months.How about his post-war comments as this debacle has dragged on and gotten worse. Does anyone in the media remember Cheney's comment about how the insurgency was in the "last throes"? He said that on June 20, 2005.
Yet, the media is buying the White House spin that Nancy Pelosi made a foreign policy blunder. The entire Bush administration has been a foreign policy blunder -- and a lot of people are dead because of those failures.
As Dan Froomkin noted earlier this week, "too many reporters prefer uncritical transcription to the kind of tough but fair analysis that would be required to put what the president [or vice president] says in context." Too many reporters never provided context to White House statements. They regurgitate them -- even when it's Dick Cheney spewing on Rush Limbaugh. That's just absurd on its face. But, the White House knows how to play them. As usual, Tim Russert fell for it this morning on the Today Show -- acting all sanctimonious as he discussed this issue with foreign policy expert Matt Lauer. The Bush team counts on just that kind of reaction from the patsies in the press. And, true to form, they got it.
George Bush is a miserable failure as President. The American people know it.
