Cheney's flying circus

Remember how, back in 2000, Dick Cheney was supposed to be the pragmatic, experienced 'adult' in the Bush-Cheney partnership?

That's kind of laughable now, isn't it?

Today in the news we have Cheney reasserting the thoroughly-discredited theory that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in league with Al Qaida:

Vice President Dick Cheney repeated his assertions of al-Qaida links to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq on Thursday as the Defense Department released a report citing more evidence that the prewar government did not cooperate with the terrorist group.

Why does Cheney continue to insist upon this? Well, keep in mind he's trying to defend the indefensible (the tattered case for the Iraq invasion). Logic theory tells us that when we start with a flawed assumption, we can come to any conclusion we like. That's why it's so important to get your facts straight before you begin using them to test your hypotheses. When you think about how many flawed assumptions underpinned the argument for war in Iraq (WMDs, Al Qaida links, being greeted as liberators, and a quick, cheap war with minimal troops) it's pretty easy to understand why the whole adventure has turned into such a disaster.

Cheney contended that al-Qaida was operating in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion led by U.S. forces and that terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading the Iraqi branch of al-Qaida. Others in al-Qaida planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Al Qaida may well have been operating in Iraq, but then they were (are?) operating in the US and lots of other countries besides. That doesn't mean they had the government's blessing to be there. As a secular, socialist, cult-of-personality dictatorship, Saddam's government had no love for the Islamists who wanted to see him deposed. America was Al Qaida's "far enemy". Regimes like those of Mubarak and Saddam were the "near enemy".

“He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the al-Qaida operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June,” Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh during an interview. “As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq.”

Cheney is deliberately fudging the timelines here: Anyone who has read The Looming Tower (a detailed history of Al Qaida before September 11) or indeed, anyone who simply has a good memory, knows that Zarqawi was not a member of the terrorist group before the US invasion of Iraq -- on the contrary, he was a rival.

The vice president is either mendacious to his core, or thoroughly delusional. Maybe it's both. Thankfully, even given the best medical care, we have to suffer at most 21 more months of Cheney's flying circus.