Cheney Swipes Reid on Iraq – Kerry Rips Cheney’s “Interpretative History”
by Pamela LeaveyDick Cheney took a swipe at Harry Reid today saying that Reid’s comments were “uninformed and misleading.” and accused him of “defeatism” on Iraq.
Cheney said he felt compelled to make a statement in front of cameras to express his personal frustration with Reid, D-Nev., after the Senate majority leader told reporters last week the war was lost. Cheney’s remarks also showed the high stakes involved for the White House in trying to stave off Democratic efforts to end the war.
Watch the video of Dick Cheney here:
John Kerry hit Cheney back, ripping Cheney’s attacks on Reid “as disturbing as they are disingenuous” and he dismissed the vice president as “the American Idol of outlandish claims.”
Kerry’s full statement on Cheney’s comments about Harry Reid, after the Republican Senate Caucus lunch, is as follows:
“Dick Cheney’s attacks on Harry Reid are as disturbing as they are disingenuous. He is the American Idol of outlandish claims. No one has been more wrong about Iraq from day one than Vice President Cheney. The Cheney Doctrine has been a recipe for disaster in Iraq that has put American troops in unforgivable danger and made America less secure. The Vice President has only been consistent in his miscalculations and misdirection,” Kerry said.
“I could hardly believe my ears when the Vice President had the nerve to accuse Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of being uninformed. This is the same man who claimed that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq and that the Iraqi insurgency was in its last throes, when in fact the civil war was growing. It is time for the Vice President to return to his secure, undisclosed location to rejoin his neocon friends rather than attack the Majority Leader who is fighting to keep faith with American troops.”
Bush repeated his vow to veto the Iraq spending bill today, “on grounds that it would “embolden our enemies,” undermine troops in the field and threaten Americans’ safety at home.”
H/T to Taylor Marsh for the video. Iraq War enthusiast Jules Crittenden has the definitive wingnut round-up on the verbal dual on the Hill over the Iraq spending bill.
Bottom line… BushCo is abandoning the troops if he veto’s the bill. And contrary to the opinion in the N.Y. Post, it’s Dick Cheney who “needs to put a cork in it.”
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Harry Reid is misleading? Is playing politics with the war? Please. The Republican Party is all about playing politics and misleading statements – they are the jokers who got us into this mess in the first place!
Bush and Cheney are two very ignorant and sick people.
Both VP Cheney and President Bush have consistently misled us on Iraq:
1. They predicted weapons of mass destruction and chemical stockpiles. There were none.
2. They predicted that we would be greeted as liberators with flowers. We were not, instead we were greeted with mines, gunfire, and suicide bombers.
3. Well over a year ago VP Cheney said that the enemy resistance was “In it’s last throes.” This proved to be a pipe dream.
4. President Bush in a PR stunt appeared on the deck of the USS Lincoln, beneath a banner which declared, “Mission Accomplished.”. This was just another lie AKA pipedream.
5. At first our stated mission was to rid Iraq of the imagined WMD’s. When there proved to be none, our mission was changed to rid Iraq of it’s evil dictator Sadam.
6. Then we achieved the new goal. Sadam and his sons are dead. The regime was overthrown. We still did not leave. Our new stated mission was to install a democratic government similar to our own. This goal has not and will not be achieved. The administration will not admit that we are now in the center of a civil war, which has gone on unabated for thousands of years. So we continue to waste the precious lives of our military for a goal which is not attainable!!
Being a Vietnam veteran, I always support our troops! However, I do not support this mission. Hence, we who are of a like opinion, are labled defeatists, and traitors! Since when has putting the lives of our troops first become treasonist? It was this administration who sent them in with inadequate armor and vechiles. It was this administration that sent then in premptively without an end plan. It was this administration that sent them to war with inadequate support staff. It is this asministratio which won’t allow the caskets of our war dead to be shown, for fear it will outrage even more. It is this administration which utterly diregarded most suggestions of the Iraq study group and of its leading generals in the field!
Yet Cheney has the utter audacity to state that Senator Reid’s comments were “Uninformed and misleading”! No Mr. VP it is your very own statements over these past 6.5 years which have been totally uninformed and misleading. This war is and always has been about oil, which they they will never admit.
It’s sometimes totally amazing to me that VP Cheney suffers from heart problems, because his behavior would most often indicate that he doesn’t have one!!