Total Contempt

If you want to get a sense of what Dick Cheney thinks about democracy in the United States you need look no further than his comments on the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Here's an exchange he had with Martha Raddatz of ABC News:

Raddatz: "Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives."

Cheney: "So?"

Raddatz: "So -- you don't care what the American people think?"

Cheney: "No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. Think about what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had paid attention to polls, if they had had polls during the Civil War. He never would have succeeded if he hadn't had a clear objective, a vision for where he wanted to go, and he was willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the political wars in order to get there."

There a small little problem with that. The opinion polls really have not fluctuated at all. And to compare this administration with the one of Lincoln's is nothing short of obscene. It also reinforces the point that this administration cannot be out of power soon enough.

USA Today has a great editorial on this subject. It says in part:

Cheney, in particular, has long since squandered his standing to criticize others on this subject. On March 16, 2003, three days before the invasion, he was asked on NBC's Meet the Press whether an invasion might not unleash "a long, costly and bloody battle with significant American casualties."

"Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way," he replied, "because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators." Two years later, he said on CNN's Larry King Live that the Iraqi insurgency was "in the last throes."

I guess he was a little off on those two predictions. So for him to say we are winning in Iraq must be taken with the grain of salt it so richly deserves.