Crazy Man

Cheney went on Wolf Blitzer and demonstrated that he has totally lost touch with reality:

BLITZER: Here is what the president said last night. “We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence would spill out across the country and, in time, the entire region would be drawn into the conflict. For America, this is a nightmare scenario.” He was talking about the consequences of failure in Iraq. How much responsibility do you have, though — you and the administration — for this potential scenario?

CHENEY: Well, this is the argument, that there wouldn’t be any problem if we hadn’t gone into Iraq.

BLITZER: Saddam Hussein would still be in power.

CHENEY: Saddam Hussein would still be in power. He would, at this point, be engaged in a nuclear arms race with Ahmadinejad, his blood enemy next door in Iran.

BLITZER: But he was being contained, as you well know, by the no-fly zones —

CHENEY: He was not being contained. He was not being contained, Wolf. Wolf, the entire sanctions regime had been undermined by Saddam Hussein.

BLITZER: But he didn’t have stockpiles —

CHENEY: He had corrupted the entire effort to try to keep him contained. He was bribing senior officials of other governments. The Oil-for-Food Program had been totally undermined. And he had, in fact, produced and used weapons of mass destruction previously, and he retained the capability to produce that kind of stuff in the future.

BLITZER: Which happened in the ’80s.

CHENEY: You can go back and argue the whole thing all over again, Wolf, but what we did in Iraq in taking down Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do. The world is much safer today because of it.

There have been three national elections in Iraq. There’s a democracy established there, a constitution, a new democratically-elected government. Saddam has been brought to justice and executed, his sons are dead, his government is gone. And the world is better off for it.

You can argue about that all you want. That’s history. That’s what we did, and you and I can have this debate. We’ve had it before, but the fact of the matter is, in terms of threats to the United States from al Qaeda, for example, attacks on the United States — they didn’t need an excuse. We weren’t in Iraq when they hit us on 9/11.

BLITZER: But the current situation there is–

CHENEY: The fact of the matter was that al Qaeda was out to kill Americans before we ever went into Iraq.

BLITZER: The current situation there is very unstable. The president himself speaks about a nightmare scenario right now. He was contained, as you repeatedly said throughout the ’90s, after the first Gulf War, in a box, Saddam Hussein.

CHENEY: He was — after the first Gulf War, had managed to kick out all of the inspectors. He was provided payments to families of suicide bombers. He was a safe haven for terrorism, one of the prime state sponsors of terrorism, designated by our State Department for a long time. He’d started two wars. He had violated 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions.

If he were still there today, we’d have a terrible situation.

BLITZER: But there is —

CHENEY: No, there is not. There is not. There’s problems — ongoing problems — but we have in fact accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime, and there is a new regime in place that’s been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off. They have got a democratically-written constitution — first ever in that part of the world. They’ve had three national elections. So there’s been a lot of success.

BLITZER: How worried are you —

CHENEY: We still have more work to do to get a handle on the security situation, and the president’s put a plan in place to do that.

BLITZER: How worried are you of this nightmare scenario, that the U.S. is building up this Shiite-dominated Iraqi government with an enormous amount of military equipment, sophisticated training, and then in the end, they’re going to turn against the United States?

CHENEY: Wolf, that’s not going to happen. The problem is, you’ve got —

BLITZER: They’re — warming up to Iran and Syria right now.

CHENEY: Wolf, you can come up with all kinds of what-ifs; you’ve got to be deal with the reality on the ground. The reality on the ground is, we’ve made major progress. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of provinces in Iraq that are relatively quiet.

There’s more and more authority transferred to the Iraqis all the time.

But the biggest problem we face right now, is the danger than the United States will validate the terrorist’s strategy, that in fact what will happen here, with all of the debate over whether or not we ought to stay in Iraq, where the pressure is from some quarters to get out of Iraq, if we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorist’s strategy, that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task — That we don’t have the stomach for the fight. That’s the biggest threat.

Awesome, isn’t it?

His demeanor was extremely hostile and aggressive. Blitzer tried to inject some truth into the interview but Cheney would have none of it — much like his earlier showdown with harpy wife, Lynn.

What with the sophomoric salvo against Clinton in the WaPo yesterday by daughter Liz, it appears that the Cheney family is having a very public meltdown.

John Amato has a nice piece of the interview up over at C&L. You’ll especially like this:

BLITZER: []your daughter, Mary. She’s pregnant. All of us are happy she’s going to have a baby. You’re going to have another grandchild. Some of the — some critics are suggesting — for example, a statement from someone representing Focus on the Family, “Mary Cheney’s pregnancy raises the question of what’s best for children. Just because it’s possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn’t mean that it’s best for the child.” Do you want to respond to that?

CHENEY: No.

BLITZER: She’s, obviously, a good daughter –

CHENEY: I’m delighted I’m about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf.

And obviously I think the world of both my daughters and all of my grandchildren. And I think, frankly, you’re out of line with that question.

BLITZER: I think all of us appreciate –

CHENEY: I think you’re out of line.

Right. He’s out of line for asking about it. James Dobson, on the other hand, is treated like royalty. These Cheneys are clearly the ones who invented conservative upside-downism, which shouldn’t be surprising since Lynn wrote the book on liberal moral relativism. Black is white — evil is good — conservatives are moral.

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