The Workday Liberal

Today on the Situation Room Dick Cheney is interviewed. Here is some of the online blurb given by at CNN regarding this interview, with my response interspersed:

Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed the growing ranks of bipartisan critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, stressing instead in an interview to be aired in full this afternoon on the "Situation Room" that "there has been a lot of success" in the war-torn country.

By "a lot of success" the Vice President is talking about the swelling ranks of our real enemy Al Qaeda, managing to send that ruthless thug Saddam to the afterlife as a martyr, inflaming world opinion against us, death and destruction on a biblical scale... and the list of what is wrong with this war could go on and on. Just whose side is Cheney on here? Based upon this one statement alone I believe the Vice President ought to resign.

But wait! It gets better.

The vice president cited Iraq's "democratically written" constitution and three national elections as evidence of progress, while expressing confidence that the violence will abate.

Oh no he did'n... Vice President Cheney just can not get over the notion that the insurgency is in it's last throes. By adding up the numbers provided at Icausualties.org I count 1,397 fatalities to American forces in Iraq since the last time Cheney talked about the insurgency dying down. Again, simply based upon the inability of the Vice President to grasp the true nature of this war, and for hearkening back to one of the most embarrasing pronouncements made by any administration toady in the course of this war, I believe Vice President Cheney ought to resign.

"We still have more work to do to get a handle on the security situation, but the president has put a plan in place to do that," Cheney said.

Saying we still have work to do on security is simply a preposterous understatement. Using that term in relation to the current situation in Iraq entirely underestimates the nature of the disaster the Vice President so blithely helped lead us into. Actually that is the point of the entire interview as I read it. To obfuscate the disaster, to downplay the consequences, to pretend it is ok... to serve those who still believe another dose of the koolaid.

I only hope that this interview of Cheney is given wide play. The opinions he expresses are manifestly wrongheaded, and instructive as to why the administration has lost all credibility on the war. There is a certain portion of the population who will be heartened by Cheney's blather, but the vast majority of Americans, if they hear this, will be reminded why this administration is not worthy of their support.