The Workday Liberal

Right off the bat let me advise readers that I am not a regular viewer of Fox News. Nor do I make a point of flipping the radio to the various shows hosted by Fox News personalities. I will admit that every now and then I'll be flipping through the channels and happen across Fox... finding myself transfixed in horror at the spectacle of it all, until i come to my senses and quickly flip the channel.

Today Tony Snow interviewed Dick Cheney on his radio show. I didn't actually hear the interview mind you... I happened across the transcript of it at whitehouse.gov. (Click that link at your own risk my gullible friends, we all know how concerned the White House has been lately about our privacy. If I start getting fundraising mail from Ken Mehlman I think I'll be able to figure out how he got my info...)

The first thing that leaps off the screen when you read that transcript is how sickeningly Mr. Snow panders to the Vice President. Just check some of these cream cheese with chocolate covered frosting queries Mr. Snow delivers to Mr. Cheney:

Are you saying that the Democrats, rather than as they have promised to do, to capture bin Laden, that they'd be giving in to him instead?

Gee I don't know Tony... did he SAY that, or are you asking him to say it with that goofy question?

Q Today's release by Democrats contains a lot of second-guessing about what led up to the war and the early execution of it, including the notion that it was based on faulty security. Recently a number of documents that had been retrieved from Iraq have been translated, and what we're starting to get is a picture of Saddam Hussein actively involved in training terrorists, and even talking about weapons of mass destruction. Is it possible that we actually underestimated Saddam's involvement in the international terror network?

NEWSFLASH!! Tony Snow now has proof that Mr. Cheney actually under stated Saddams connections with terrorism. Further examination of the issue however (and believe me, whenever you hear it from the mouth of Tony Snow or Dick Cheney et al, further examination is always a great idea) brings us a newly released document that details a meeting in 1995 between an Iraqi stooge and Al Qaeda in Sudan. The main thrust of the meeting by the way was for Saddam to allow some fundamentalist preacher on Iraqi radio. The 9/11 commission documents meetings between Iraqi's and Al Qaeda in 1994 & 1995 so this is hardly breaking news here. And if Ralph Reed had dispatched Jack Abramoff to meet an Iraqi stooge in hopes of getting the 700 club broadcast in Iraq they would have thought they were doing their best to bring the word of God to the misbegotten Iraqi masses. There is nothing there Mr. Snow despite your leading questioning of Mr. Cheney.

The lovefest continued on Tony's show:

Q I want to be clear because I've heard you say this, and I've heard the President say it, but I want you to say it for my listeners, which is that the White House has never argued that Saddam was directly involved in September 11th, correct?

Yes! Lets be clear here. The fact is the administration DID argue that Saddam was involved with 09/11, as proven by the fact that the notification sent by the President to Congress regarding the invasion of Iraq included the following language:

acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

How one reads that notification to the Congress as anything other than a link between Saddam and 09/11 is beyond me. There are several other famous public instances of the administration doing the same thing, but it would be redundant at this point to dredge up the links.

Continuing with the Snow show transcript, here is Tony helpfully providing the Vice President with the opportunity to justify illegal activities by this administration while trying to make Democrats look weak:

Q Democrats also argue that they're going to improve intelligence gathering, at the same time they have opposed the National Security Agency's previous program of trying to conduct surveillance on electronic communications from al Qaeda -- known al Qaeda operatives, whether they're abroad or in the United States, and people within the United States. If that program had not been in place, would Americans have died?

Sheesh... If President Clinton was impeached for being serviced by an intern in the oval office, what punishment should there be for the Vice President being pleasured in Tony Snow's radio studio? I mean come on! This interview is nothing short of right wing political soft porn. No wonder Cheney demands all t.v. sets in his hotel rooms be tuned to Fox news. I will not even bother answering the several fallacies (nearly went falafel on you there... Oh look I did!) in the last question.

The Tony Snow job continues as he asks the Vice President to critique the effectiveness of the Democrats proposal for national security:

Q Mr. Vice President, got a half a minute, the last question -- do you think Democrats are playing with fire in this? Do you think this attempt to come up with a security strategy is going to backfire on them?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think it is, because if you look at -- let me just give you one example. They talk about improving our security, and yet, Harry Reid went out and bragged about killing the Patriot Act. Fortunately, they didn't get it killed. We were able to beat them on it. But their behavior has been totally inconsistent with what they're now promising they're going to do.

How absolutely wonderful of Mr. Cheney to give Democrats this sage political advice. Knowing that this is the administration who was on watch as the twin towers fell, Al Qaeda membership exploded, our allies abandoned us because of our bull headed leadership in insisting on fighting a needless war, which war when won was horribly mis-managed leading to a quagmire, while the side that hates the west wins election after election in the middle east to the point that a terrorist organization now rules as the Palestinian Authority, tried to sell control of our ports with one of three governments who allied themselves with the Taliban... I mean the list just goes on and on of this administrations failures in the war on terror. Yet they now say Democrats can possibly be worse? I believe the accumulated brainpower of your average kindergarten class would do better than what we see now.

I would love for some impish hotel employee to switch the channel to The Daily Show or Countdown during a Vice Presidential visit... Except for the concern that said employee would probably wind up strapped to a waterboard in Guantanamo Bay.