Vice-President Cheney This Morning
Courtesy of ABC News

Dick Cheney, in his interview with George Stephanopoulis this morning, was resplendent in a beautifully tailored dark suit, white shirt, and yellow silk tie, a flag pin on his lapel, the perfect compliment to the whole look; For a man of his age, with a history of serious heart problems, I was struck with how remarkably well he looks, in the pink and then some, a tribute to American tailoring and a level of health care most Americans can barely imagine anymore.

Mr. Cheney's voice was softly hearty as well, the words flowed in quick succession, without hesitation, but the impression of vigor was undermined by the total vacuity of what he had to say. Less a matter of telling untruths than of refusing to confront, or even acknowledge, thorny contrary facts, though lies there were.

What the interview proved to be, by its end, was a superlatively embarrassing though hardly singular display of this administration's total disconnect from what most Americans would call "reality." Not that George S betrayed an iota of an iota of embarrassment, for the VP or for himself.

Mostly George and Dick talked about Iraq.

The Vice-President's position was dumbfounding; yes, he does understand that all manner of Americans are angry, upset, weary, or worried about our role in Iraq, including, as George kept bringing up, many Republicans, and now many certified Neo-Cons, like Richard Perle and Ken Adleman, who are newly critical of the administration's incompetent prosecution of the war/occupation or whatever the hell it is were doing in Iraq, (although Cheney refused to comment on the latter's comments), but despite all the general angst about Iraq, Cheney and the President will not abandon a "winning" strategy just because Americans are threatening to lose their nerve.

Cheney made clear that neither the President nor his VP intend to be influenced by polls, the opinions of pundits, academics, experts, fellow Republicans, former supporters, or, presumably, by facts on the ground as reported by the media, or even by their own military and security apparatus, and certainly not by the wishes of Iraqis themselves.

This iron determination was presented by Mr. Cheney as a form of toughness, a toughness the Prez and the Veep have, but which few others, outside of the administration, do, especially those of their brethren reduced to running in an election - the toughness to tough out what Cheney admitted frequently through-out the interview was a tough situation in Iraq. Yes, I am implying that the Vice-President's grasp of the often contradictory details of what is happening in Iraq, let alone his grasp of the nuances of our situation there was nonexistent And in the most startling section of the interview, Cheney made it perfectly clear that no one should expect anything as inconsequential as a mid-term election to make any change in the way he and the President conduct either the war in Iraq or the Global War On Terror, of which, Cheney insisted, Iraq is a crucial front. It was at that point Cheney mentioned their policy would be "full speed ahead" to victory in Iraq. George didn't ask Dick how we would know when we, and the Iraqi people, had won.

If the Democrats manage to pick up both houses of congress, it’s going to be an interesting two years.

So what strategy is this winning strategy of which Mr. Cheney speaks, you may be wondering? Why to stand up an Iraqi government which can govern the Iraqi people, to involve Iraqis in the defense of their own country, and to defeat the terrorists who would keep all that from happening. How much clearer could a strategy be? How many years have we heard that these are our strategic goals; how many crucial "next six months," have come and gone, that this administration has been saying the same thing, not to mention that "last throes" the insurgency was supposed to be in, according to Dick?

You see Cheney, like Mr. Bush, Churchilian statesmen both, are taking the long view; what will their performance in Iraq look like in twenty years? Surely different from any possible perspective now. George was forced to agree with that truism, although it is typical of the Washington pundit class that it didn't occur to him to suggest it might well look even worse from a genuinely historical perspective.

No mention was made by George S of a pending, or quite possibly, an already occurring civil war in Iraq. No mention of the total lack of security ordinary Iraqis have been experiencing since the Summer of 2003. No mention of the total failure to have made any significant strides in rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure, which might give the three different communities that make up Iraq some sense that theirs is a real country worth saving. No mention of the large percentage of Iraqi's who say they wish we would leave, because we are only making the insurgency worse. No mention of the need for more American troops, if it is up to us to restore some sort of civil security; no mention of the increasing evidence that the administration has short-changed the entire project of training Iraqis, not to mention the numbers of our own soldiers who still don’t have the kind of armor they need to protect themselves. And perhaps the biggest no mention of all; we are not winning in Iraq, we are losing ground daily, and we haven't even mentioned Afghanistan yet.

In fact, I began to find the interview more interesting for the questions and followups that Little Georgie didn't ask then for what Cheney had to say.

Let's take Cheney's portrayal of Democrats, for instance.

Stephanopoulos started out strongly, asking the VP if his comment that insurgents were trying to influence an American election meant that a Democratic victory on Tuesday would be a victory for the insurgents.

That was too raw for Cheney to fully embrace, so he rewound the question to start with the insurgents, asking, "what was their strategy?" His answer: to break the will of Americans vis a vis Iraq. So when insurgents see something like what happened in Connecticut, where Joe Lieberman was "purged" because of his support for Bush policy in Iraq, that tells them when the going gets tough, Americans might not be tough enough to stay the course.

Those weren't Cheney's precise words, but that's what he meant, which is as crude a formulation as that which George S had offered the VP. But Stephanopoulos couldn't wait to get to the next question. Nor did George remark on the notion of a free election in which Democratic voters chose which of several possibilities they wished to run for Senator on a Democratic ticket being described as a "purge."

Despite Stephi's insistent questions about all the Republicans who have stated a desire that the administration consider other options besides "staying the course," which means doing exactly what they've been doing since the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis in the Spring of 2004, Cheney insisted the bulk of the opposition to the Bush Cheney policy in Iraq has come from Democrats.

Okay, now I don't expect Stephi to say what I might have said to Mr. Cheney, i.e., "Have you thought about offering to make an ad for the Democrats saying just that, because I’m betting they might be willing to pay for your getting that message across to American voters. "

But surely, when the Vice President repeatedly misstates Democratic positions on Iraq and on the larger "GWOT," George might want to offer a challenge, or at least correct the record.

Forget about that happening. We don’t call it Pundit Pap and Sunday Gasbaggery for nothing.

Cheney went without challenge when he insisted that the only plan the Democrats have is various versions of giving up; he went unchallenged when he pretended that Iraq and Afghanistan are one seamless enterprise, and that we dare not leave Iraq lest Karzai and Mussharif lose confidence in us. Not once did George ask Cheney about a key Democratic idea - that the challenge in Iraq is a political one, not a military one. That’s one which all manner of Democrats, from Murtha to Kerry to Biden have repeated endlessly.

And when Cheney invoked the millions of Muslims around the world who had signed up on our side, (he seemed to mean all those who voted both in Iraq and Afghanistan), who would feel betrayed if we left Iraq, but could mention only Karzai and Mussharif, George didn’t mention a word about the claim by our own security establishment that Iraq has become a breeding ground for extremism, and is helping to make more terrorist than its destroying.

As to mistakes made after the successful invasion of Iraq, which George did try and bring up, asking Cheney if more of our troops might be home by now but for those key mistakes, including most grievously, a total lack of planning for contingencies that were perfectly predictable, Cheney simply refused to accept the premise of the question. There had been no mistakes made, no failure to make adequate plans for an actual occupation. Wars are unpredictable.

And like all members of the higher echelons of the Bush administration, Cheney was sure to remind George’s audience that their administration was presented with a global situation not of their making; 9/11, according to the VP, happened very soon after the Bush administration took office; they didn’t get to decide which issues they were going to be forced to deal with. George didn’t ask about the axis of evil formulation, or what Iraq had to do with 9/11; can’t say as I blame him; how boring is it to get into another wrangle with a member of this administration over how they got us into a war in Iraq.

George did make a stab at discussing one well documented mistake made early on in Iraq; the disbanding of the Iraqi army. Astonishingly, when Cheney said the Iraqi army melted away before our troops got to Baghdad, George let that distortion go with a simple "Point taken."

No George.

Yes, the Iraqi army melted away in the sense that over a hundred thousand relatively young men walked home rather than fight for Saddam, and took their weapons with them, which argues that Saddam’s hold on his own country was a good deal less firm than this administration kept insisting, and which could have meant we might have dislodged him with measures far short of a full-scale invasion.

However, that Iraqi army was readily available to call back into service with their own commanders, during that period of looting and the beginning of the insurgency, had not Viceroy Bremer decided it was a better idea to disband it, as part of his de-Bathification policy, thus creating a contingent of thousands of young, bitter, unemployed, largely Sunni Iraqi men with weapons.

It isn’t that George Stephanopoulus is any more supine than the rest of our Sunday pundits, it’s that they are all so much alike, and all so totally unable to pierce the unreality in which this administration insists on dwelling

I have Iraqi friends I met in London several decades ago, so I’ve spilled a lot of tears over Iraq, over Saddam’s terrible regime, over the Reagan/Bush policy of tilting toward Saddam, over our abandonment of the Shia after the first Gulf War, and finally, over the horror of the last four years. Listening to Cheney, I could feel the tears welling up again. If this President and Vice-President do really stay in charge of our foreign policy, unhindered and unrepentant, Iraq is doomed, and so may we all be.

Oh, yes, Cheney predicted that Democrats would raise taxes and spoil the gangbusters economy the Bush tax cuts hath wrought. Interesting how George S. never mentions the Clinton years as points of comparison when Bush & co make their extravagant claims about the economic well-being of Americans. And Cheney thinks he wouldn't appear before either house of congress, even if issued a subpoena, though why George asked that idiotic question I have no ide.

Howard Dean appeared next and he was terrific, so terrific, in fact, that I urge you to take advantage of ABC's Video on demand and take a look for yourself.

Little Georgie, and he seemed considerably smaller while having a go at Dean, went straight for this season's favorite pundit cliche, that one about the Democrats having no real plan to deal with Iraq, only disperate positions on the subject. Howard just mowed right over the question; "actually, George," he lectured, "there is a fundamental commanlity that all Democrats agree with;" he went on to list them: that the problem is political in nature and not military; that neither an immediate withdrawal of troops nor a rushed one is an option, primarily because of the enormous problems created in Iraq not by Iraqis but by the incompetence of the Bush administration, and that the steps to finding a way out include phased withdrawal, a strikeforce left in place not in Iraq, but nearby, and redeployment of some troops to Afghanistan, where, Dean reminded everyone, we're not doing all that well, either.

What was best about Howard Dean this morning was the way he wouldn't let Stephanopoulas get away with any mistatement about Dean's of the Democratic Party's views, while, at the same time, reminding the audience at every turn that the mess in Iraq and around the world, and a lot of what is making Americans feel insecure econonically here at home are solely the result of Republican policies. A quick for instance; when George went after him about Democratic perceived weakness on taxes, Dean demolished the whole idea that Republicans are taxcutters for the middle class, and managed to remind viewers that Republicans let a tax cut for college students expire this year, and that one of the Democratic Party's goas is to reinstate Pell grants.

Despite going a mile a minute, Dean was calm, assured, relaxed, full of energy, while at the same time being clear, informative, and in total charge of the discourse that was going on.

Remember, we're all supposed to laugh at Howard Dean; he's been one of the media's favorite targets, the crazy guy who, makes strange noises, the guy who thought Democrats ought to be competitive in all fifty states, and ought to be investing money in grassroot GOTV efforts; don't look so crazy anymore, does he? Howard answered Cheney, did a checkmate on George, and articulated a series of Democratic policies that sure sounded like they'd be appealing to independents as well as Democrats, and even some dissatisfied Republicans, too. Go