Fair and Balanced

Sometimes blogging requires a meal of one's own words. In my case, a comment in the previous KSM thread about Cheney's relative timidity on the trial coming to Manhattan and the whole terror-underbomber imbroglio in general. Darth will blast his way onto the Sunday shows today to discuss.

The specter of this apparently rings fear into some liberal hearts--Obama will send Joe Biden out to mess with his predecessor on TV while the leftosphere was busy Saturday evening working up their pre-emptive strikes. A couple of pundits were afraid the talking heads wouldn't ask the right questions, so they penned a few they hope will be asked.

HuffPo's Jason Linkins came up with several gotchas, some of them fairly decent. For instance, he uses this link to claim Cheney was hot to trot on trying Zacarias Moussaoui in federal court, and it looks that way, but the article goes on to explain why that wasn't a very good idea. So really, this is one Cheney could admit to being wrong about, and still be right.

He makes the comparison between Richard Reid and Abdulmichelob, who are exactly the same to liberals despite the time difference and protocols in place, but nevertheless this might elicit an interesting response. Personally I don't have a big issue with trying him in federal court, I have a big issue with them saying they had gotten all the intelligence possible within 50 minutes then reading him the same rights they'll one day read me when they get tired of all this.

Linkins then points to a Village Voice column containing a real cogent observation:

Afterward the disgraced former Vice President retired to his hyperbaric chamber to suck the blood out of a living infant.

Evil! Worse than Osama! That's followed by a joke about the guy Cheney accidentally shot.

Maureen Dowd of the Times was not to be outdone. Her strictly objective no-nonsense story was entitled "Icicles, Inside and Out", an imaginary conversation between Cheney, Obama, and Richard Robert Gates. Here's a zany outtake:

OBAMA: You keep saying there were no terror attacks after 9/11, Dick. That’s like saying that blimps were safe after the Hindenburg. I wouldn’t have been caught flat-footed reading “The Pet Goat” to second graders.

CHENEY: No, you’d have been teaching a graduate seminar on “The Pet Goat.” Don’t you Muslims eat pet goats?

Hard-hitting Times journalism! Imagine the worst boilerplate lefty war criticism from the Bush era and you can make up the rest without wasting the energy to click.

But in some respects they've got a point--the national media (including them) has shied away from asking the really hard-hitting questions of our political elite. So here's a suggestion for the next Obama interview..

Ask him about whether former Marxist and now Professor John Drew's memory of that little evening in San Francisco is correct, and about where he stands on Rawlsian social justice.

Then maybe ask him why he hasn't allowed anyone to see much from his Occidental and Columbia days. Inquire about Percy Sutton's claim that Khalid al-Mansour helped him into Harvard. Then about what was so private about that Rashid Khalidi tape the LA Times spiked. And how in the world Christopher Andersen could possibly claim that domestic washed up terrorist/neo-communist William Ayers ghost wrote "Dreams". And why no one asked Robert Gibbs about any of this.

Ask him if he continues to think his decision to not support the surge in Iraq was a good one based on events on the ground now, and whether he would now support it in hindsight after being in office and having the responsibility, or does he still think he would withdraw to the horizon. Perhaps the interviewer could include recent comments about the brewing success in Iraq made by the very same guy he's sending out today to slap Cheney around.

Ask him if anything attributed to him in "Game Change" is true. And whether Recovery.gov was worth 18 million or whether that was actually part of the Stimulus.

And finally on the underbomber, ask him if he really expects anyone to believe that Holder acted completely independently on the KSM decision, and why it's OK for al-Nashiri to be tried in a commission. And how KSM can get a fair trial after the leader of the free world has already declared him a dirty, filthy, guilty terrorist headed for hell.

Ya know, this honesty stuff could be pretty fun! Just think of it as 'media justice'.

MORE 2/14/10

Cheney on ABC. A very good, adult-like interview with Jonathan Karl. Cheney:

"If they are going to take credit for [Iraq], fair enough, for what they’ve done while they are there. But it ought to go with a healthy dose of ‘thank you George Bush’ up front," he said.

Darth also condemned Biden's comment about a low likelihood of more 9/11 style attacks, which he said would lower preparedness. In a pre-emptive response, Biden basically said they've already won the war:

"The reason it's unlikely is because we have been relentless," Biden said.

As mentioned previously, that's a pretty risky strategy, probably one designed to line up with the "terrorists are nuisance criminals" position of HolderBama, due in part to the political cancellation of most of BushCheney's terror tools.

But if there's less threat of a 9/11 style attack why are we currently surging and kicking ass in Afghanistan? Isn't it to stop terrorists from having a safe-haven (right next door to a nuclear Pakistan) to create more attacks, as Obama has said?
Isn't Biden's comment sort of like declaring 'mission accomplished'?

Cheney then caused massive head-explosions by tacitly supporting the repeal of DADT. As to KSM in New York, no surprises--he didn't want anyone released from Gitmo. Cheney must be a great poker player.

MORE BIDEN 2/14/10

Biden's comment about Iraq not being worth it is certainly his opinion- at least today. But while he's welcome to his own facts, he's not welcome to his own, ah, well here..

Assessing Obama’s Iraq plan on September 13, 2007: “My impression is [Obama] thinks that if we leave, somehow the Iraqis are going to have an epiphany” of peaceful coexistence among warring sects. “I’ve seen zero evidence of that.”

And from 2002:

Biden on Meet the Press in 2002, discussing Saddam Hussein: “He’s a long term threat and a short term threat to our national security… “We have no choice but to eliminate the threat. This is a guy who is an extreme danger to the world.”

Keep in mind this was not entirely based on Bush's intelligence, since he'd been saying the same things before 2001. But that was then. Again from 2007, during his run for the presidency, addressing the comment above from 2002:

SEN. BIDEN: That’s right, and I was correct about that. He must be, in fact—and remember the weapons we were talking about. I also said on your show, that’s part of what I said, but not all of what I meant. What I also said on your show at the time was that I did not think he had weaponized his material, but he did have. When, when the inspectors left after Saddam kicked them out, there was a cataloguing at the United Nations saying he had X tons of, X amount of, and they listed the various materials he had. The big issue, remember, on this show we talked about, was whether he had weaponized them. Remember you asked me about those flights that were taking place in southern Iraq, where—were they spraying anthrax? And, you know, what would happen? And, you know, so on and so forth. And I pointed out to you that they had not developed that capacity at all. But he did have these stockpiles everywhere.

MR. RUSSERT: Where are they?

SEN. BIDEN: Well, the point is, it turned out they didn’t, but everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them. He catalogued—they catalogued them. This was not some, some Cheney, you know, pipe dream. This was, in fact, catalogued. They looked at them and catalogued. What he did with them, who knows? The real mystery is, if he, if he didn’t have any of them left, why didn’t he say so? Well, a lot of people say if he had said that, he would’ve, you know, emboldened Iran and so on and so forth.

The problem with Biden--and the reason I can't help but like him--is that he can't control himself enough to keep from blubbering out some honesty every now and then.

MORE 2/14/10

From the WaPo analysis:

White House officials say they have been unmoved by criticism from Cheney, whom they note is one of least popular political figures in America.

That's their rebuttal? For real? Sounds appropriate--for ninth grade.