David Corn has been reading Cheney's memoir. Would it surprise anyone here to know that Cheney lies?
It's not shocking that in Cheney's telling, Libby, his loyal lieutenant, was no more than an innocent bystander sideswiped by a runaway investigation caused by a cowardly Powell and a guilty Armitage. To protect Cheney (and presumably distance the vice president from the White House's get-Wilson crusade), Libby had lied to FBI agents about how he had come to learn of Valerie Wilson and her CIA position, and a jury found the evidence against him convincing. Yet Cheney claims that nothing untoward transpired and that Libby had merely experienced "a faulty memory." Cheney suggests that Bush, who commuted Libby's prison term, failed the guts test by declining to pardon Libby at the end of his presidency.
In his memoir, Cheney is not experiencing faulty memory; he is photoshopping history in the most heavy-handed manner. But that's appropriate. The Wilson scandal was a microcosm of the larger tale of the administration's use of false information and misrepresentations to guide the nation to war in Iraq. Cheney, Libby, Rove, and their allies always knew this. And with this new book, Cheney is again trying to beat back the judgment that he and Bush dishonestly pitched the case for the Iraq war. Yet his retelling of the smaller story of the CIA leak affair is proof he remains an unreliable source.
