Talboito.com

Others have noted sections of this story by Dana Milibank of the Washington Post, where Vice President Cheney claims collaboration between Saddam’s Iraq and Al Qaeda without corroboration of evidence.

But why stop at lies about The Now if he can also lie about The Back Then.

Cheney says of (presumably) the Clinton era:

“This,” Cheney said, “was the situation when President Bush and I came to office: a world where terrorists were emboldened by years of being able to strike us with impunity, where unprecedented new attacks were being planned, where outlaw regimes provided terrorists sanctuary without cost or consequence.”

Observers might recall the results of investigations into the first WTC attack and the Oklahoma City bombings. Clinton’s Justice department caught the killers.

I’m not sure which part of this article from the libertarian Cato Institute indicates that terrorists were “able to strike us with impunity”:

And then there were the attacks known as the “Wag the Dog” bombings. The first came in the August 1998 missile strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan, three days after Clinton’s grand jury testimony and in the midst of a media firestorm over his televised non-apology for the Lewinsky affair. The administration has refused to release the evidence it claims to have relied on for its assertions that the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant made nerve gas and that its owner was linked to terrorist Osama Bin Laden.

The second “Wag the Dog” bombing occurred on the eve of the House impeachment debate when the president ordered air strikes on Iraq. Attempting to explain the curious timing of the attack, Clinton asserted that “we had to act and act now [because] without a strong inspections system, Iraq would be free to retain and begin to rebuild its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs—in months, not years.” As a result of the president’s action, we’ve since gone two years without any weapons inspections.

As is apparent from the tenor of these quotes, Clinton’s attempts at killing Bin Laden and containing Saddam were met with a mixture indifference and derision from the Republican Right. They were more interested in effecting illegitimate regime change at home than fighting terror abroad.

Perhaps because he and his compadres did not seriously consider the threat of terrorism during the 90’s Mr. Cheney believes such was altogether the case. He is as wrong now as he was back then.

Tags: No Comments