Dick's Magical Mystical Menagerie of Mendacities There are lies, and there are lies. And Dick Cheney is the finest practitioner of the art form living today. If, after watching his appearance of Meet the Press you feel like you are living inside a Leonard Cohen song, you are not alone (however, Mr. Russert, if you felt this morning like a two-dollar whore who had been rolled by the john she intended to rob--you deserve it). Cheney, speaking on a show watched mostly by discriminating news geeks , managed to say things he knew we knew to be lies with seeming absolute sincerity. Some assertions he made were debunked weeks ago with authority, yet he didn't even blink, blush or bat an eye.
Cheney: We had intelligence reporting before the war that there were at least seven of these mobile labs that he had gone out and acquired. We've, since the war, found two of them. They're in our possession today, mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack.
The New York Times from August 9, 2003:Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials say.
The classified findings by a majority of the engineering experts differ from the view put forward in a white paper made public on May 28 by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which said that the trailers were for making biological weapons.
That report had dismissed as a "cover story" claims by senior Iraqi scientists that the trailers were used to make hydrogen for the weather balloons that were then used in artillery practice.
A Defense Department official said the alternative views expressed by members of the engineering team, not yet spelled out in a formal report, had prompted the Defense Intelligence Agency to "pursue additional information" to determine whether those Iraqi claims were indeed accurate.
Cheney also said this:
But we've got a very good man now in charge of the operation, David Kay. He used to run UNSCOM, a highly qualified, technically qualified and able individual. He's in charge of the operation now . . . I think David Kay will find more evidence as he goes forward, interviews people, as we get to folks willing to come forward now as they become more and more convinced that it's safe to do so, that, in fact, he had a robust plan, had previously worked on it and would work on it again.
Of course, it had been reported earlier in the week that Kay hadn't found what he expected:
THE HUNT for weapons of mass destruction, so far, has been a bust. Intelligence officials told NBC News there is no smoking gun. They thought they'd discovered a biological weapons lab, but it wasn[base ']t one.
A massive CIA investigation, led by former U.N. weapons inspector Kay, is turning up only what former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein planned [~] not what he produced.
"He[base ']s not finding the kinds of things the administration expected to find [~] large quantities of biological and chemical weapons or evidence that they were destroyed prior to the war," said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector.
And this exchange between Russert and Cheney is priceless:
Russert:The Pentagon predicted $50 billion: "The administration[base ']s top budget official [Mitch Daniels] estimated that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion...he said...that earlier estimates of $100 billion to $200 billion in Iraq war costs by Lawrence Lindsey, Mr. Bush's former chief economic adviser, were too high."
Cheney: No, I didn't see a one-point estimate there that you could say that this is the administration[base ']s estimate. We didn't know. And if you ask Secretary Rumsfeld, for example--I can remember from his briefings, he said repeatedly he didn't know. And when you and I talked about it, I couldn't put a dollar figure on it.
Russert: But Daniels did say $50 billion.
Cheney: Well, that might have been, but I don't know what is basis was for making that judgment.
So Cheney expects us to believe that when the Director of the Office of Management and Budget publicly attaches a price tag to the war, and at the same time uses that figure to discredit another member of the the administration, that is not a "one-point estimate". Just what the hell is the Director of the OMB for if not for credible estimates?
For one more example, check out Josh Marshall's deconstruction of Cheney's assertion that Iraq played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks.
9:12:17 PM 
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