The more Dick Cheney talks, the more it becomes obvious that he is still operating under the warped version of reality that guided his time in office. So his recent book promoting media blitz has given Rev. Al Sharpton a treasure trove of material for his nightly “gotcha” segment, where he calls out political leaders for making false, misleading, or hypocritical statements.
In fact, it’s given Rev enough material to honor Cheney with a PoliticsNation first, a hat trick of gotchas.
Cheney earned his first award after an interview on a conservative radio show in which he complained about the incompetence of the Obama administration.
“I think the incompetence of this administration in the way they’ve handled these kinds of affairs, especially in the Middle East, is one of the worst aspects of this presidency,” he said on the Hugh Hewitt radio show.
Accusations of incompetence? Coming from the man who scammed Americans into the Iraq War over false claims? Cheney, for anyone who’s forgotten, was part of the administration that brought our diplomacy to new lows. He failed to give any credit to the Obama administration for capturing Osama bin Laden, instead quickly complaining that the administration failed to acknowledge the work done during the Bush years. Of course, anyone who actually heard President Obama’s speech that night knows he did recognize the “tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals” that occurred over years.
That particular oversight earned Cheney his first “Nice try, but we gotcha.”
Next, Cheney hit up the Sunday show circuit, where cleared the air about a big misconception. Was he admitting that a 9/11 bomber didn’t meet with Saddam Hussein, as he claimed in the lead up to the Iraq War? Nope. He wasn’t denying he shot his hunting buddy in the face either.
No, Cheney decided to push back against Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi’s claim that he and Cheney were friends. “Mike also said he and I are fishing buddies, which is simply not true,” Cheney replied. “Never happened.”
“The American people won’t forget what [Cheney’s] refusing to talk about,” Sharpton said on Monday’s PoliticsNation. “Mr. Vice President, that wasn’t even a nice try, but we still gotcha.”
For Cheney’s third “gotcha” he delved back into the war on terror.
“My concern was then and it remains today is that the biggest threat we face is the possibility of terrorist groups like al Qaeda equipped with weapons of mass destruction, with nukes, bugs or gas. That was the threat after 9/11 and when we took down Saddam Hussein we eliminated Iraq,” he said on Fox News Monday evening.
Sharpton called out this latest bit of word trickery, pointing out that Cheney used to use nearly identical language more than a decade ago, when he was still trying to justify the Iraq War.
“We also have to address the question of where might these terrorists acquire weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons?” he said on Meet the Press in March 2003. “And Saddam Hussein becomes a prime suspect in that regard.”
The connection was weak then, and it’s still weak now.
Nice try, Cheney, but three strikes. You’re out.
PoliticsNation