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A Quick Note on VP Cheney's Comments

VP Cheney said some good things and some bad things in defending himself yesterday.

Among the good things:
"The vice president called debate over U.S. operations in Iraq a sign of a healthy democracy."

Among the bad things:

Those who argue that the United States "stirred up a hornet's nest" by entering Iraq overlook the basic fact that the United States was not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney said.

"And the terrorists hit us anyway," he said. "The reality is that terrorists were at war with our country long before the liberation of Iraq and long before the attacks of 9/11."

Why is that bad? Well, it implicitly ties Iraq to 9/11--it's just another bit of support for the "charge that U.S. leaders intentionally misled the American people about prewar intelligence." Mr. Cheney calls the people making such charges reprehensible.

Yet here Mr. Cheney draws ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda. A columnist for the Boston Globe writes here in response that "details that Cheney cited to make the case that the Iraqi dictator had ties to Al Qaeda have been dismissed by the CIA as having no basis, according to analysts and officials." President Bush agreed that there was no tie. In fact, The 9/11 Commission Report rejects any tie between Iraq and 9/11 as well.

So what's my point? If he actually wants to discredit charges that the administration has consistently misled the American people to justify the war in Iraq, Mr. Cheney should stop misleading the American people to justify the war in Iraq. Doublespeak is a much more effective political tool than lying outright, because it's more difficult to refute. The term used most often to describe the administration's communication with the people, however, is "misleading," which is sufficiently broad to cover Mr. Cheney's particular brand of doublespeak. To charge I make no claims as to whether to pull out of Iraq or not--that is for the military strategists to decide--but merely claim that even in answering the charges against him, Mr. Cheney yet again committed the same offense with which he has been charged--misleading the American people.

Time for class, more later.