The hits just keep coming from smilin’ Dick Cheney, who apparently didn’t get the memo about the president dialing back the attack dogs against war critics. In fairness, the veep’s latest tour of his snarling alternate Wonderland, Cheney likely illustrated the two sides to the White House’s spinback strategy: Bush tries to rebuild his credibility with the public by presenting a smiling, congenial face and sounding conciliatory notes with the opposition. At the same time, Cheney tosses around red meat like a rabid butcher – the kind of grist that turns the conservative base’s mill.
For those of you who missed it, Cheney chose a slow news Monday to reiterate his complaints about war critics. From The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank:
Vice President Cheney protested yesterday that he had been misunderstood when he said last week that critics of the White House over Iraq were "dishonest and reprehensible."
What he meant to say, he explained to his former colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute, was that those who question the White House's use of prewar intelligence were not only "dishonest and reprehensible" but also "corrupt and shameless."It was about as close as the vice president gets to a retraction.
President Bush, traveling in China on Sunday, appealed for calm in the acidic debate over Iraq, which reached its low point Friday night when Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), in office little more than 100 days, implied that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a decorated Vietnam veteran, was a coward. Bush said there should be an "honest, open" discussion about Iraq and "people should feel comfortable about expressing their opinions" without their patriotism being questioned. "This is a worthy debate," he asserted.
Cheney tried to follow his boss's edict. "I do not believe it is wrong to criticize the war on terror or any aspect thereof," he said.
But exactly three minutes later, the vice president added this caveat: "What is not legitimate, and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible, is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president . . . misled the American people on prewar intelligence." This, he said, "is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety."
He floated the notion that "one might also argue that untruthful charges against the commander in chief have an insidious effect on the war effort itself" -- before adding: "I'm unwilling to say that."
No word apparently on what Cheney thinks of the revisionism that he himself was peddling. Even since his speech of last week, more information has emerged about how the administration ignored warnings that it was peddling poor intelligence, this from German intelligence officials who said that the Iraqi source known as “Curveball” was in fact not shooting straight.
Of course with front page play on the Post and in the New York Times, one could argue that Cheney’s attacks could hardly be sub-rosa bones thrown to the right. But with his poll numbers cratering worse than Bush’s, who else but the hard core wingers take him seriously these days?
Oh, and -- say it with me: Being accused of being “corrupt and shameless” by Dick Cheney is like …