Cheney's Political Lies

We're all used to lies from politicians, so used to them that most of us barely react at all when we come across a new one. But one thing that fascinates me is someone lying boldly, that is, lying when it's so easy to find the truth and when they know that lots of people will in fact find it. One perfect recent example of this is Jerry Falwell's lie that his ministry had never lost their tax exempt status at any time. He said that on national television knowing full well that it was a lie and that, in fact, it was a matter of public record and that the resulting IRS fine had been announced in a letter written by Falwell himself. And to top it off, even after being caught in this lie, he proceeded to repeat the lie on another national TV show. That takes some serious chutzpah, doesn't it? Well I would submit that Vice President Dick Cheney showed similar chutzpah during the VP debate the other night. I'll give just two examples out of many.

At one point, Edwards took Cheney to task for numerous things that Haliburton had done while he was the CEO of that company. Specifically, he pointed out that Haliburton had been fined several times for giving false information to the government, that they did business through a subsidiary with Libya and Iran while those nations were on the terrorist support list and it was illegal to do so, and that they were currently under investigation for bribing government officials in another country during the time that he was CEO. Cheney's response:

They know the charges are false.

They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com [sic], an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton.

He of course meant factcheck.org, not factcheck.com, but either way, this is a baldfaced lie. Not only did factcheck.org not dispute the Edwards accusations, they posted this message the following day:

"In fact, we did post an article pointing out that Cheney hasn't profited personally while in office from Halliburton's Iraq contracts, as falsely implied by a Kerry TV ad. But Edwards was talking about Cheney's responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles. And in fact, Edwards was mostly right."

All three of the accusations made by Edwards on Tuesday evening were absolutely accurate. On August 3rd of this year, the SEC hit Haliburton with a $7.5 million fine for false accounting practices in 1998 and 1999 that resulted in their earnings being overstated by nearly $50 million in its public filings. This is in addition to the multiple fines it has received from the Pentagon for overcharging on contracts it held during the Kosovo campaign, and the current withholding of some $186 million in payments to Haliburton because of overcharging in the current situation.

The second claim, that Haliburton did business with Iran and Libya in contravention of American law, is also absolutely true. In 1995, the company was fined nearly $4 million for violating the sanctions that forbid doing business with Libya and they still have a subsidiary office doing business in Tehran. In fact, that office was opened shortly after Cheney took over as CEO of the company, while he gave speeches around the world against American bans on trading with terrorist nations. And indeed, there is an investigation and possible indictments coming in regard to Haliburton bribing Nigerian officials to the tune of some $180 million between 1995 and 2000.

So everything that Edwards said about Cheney and Haliburton was in fact absolutely true, and not only did factcheck.org not dispute that, it has agreed that they were true. Now why on earth would Cheney send people to a specific fact checking website claiming it said the opposite of what it said? This is begging to get caught in a lie. He had to know that factcheck.org was going to issue a statement denying it and pointing out that he was lying. Just incredible chutzpah. But so is the second example.

When Edwards accused Cheney of misleading the American people by repeatedly making the connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks, in contradiction with every single report from the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation to the 9/11 Commission to the CIA's reports before and after the war, Cheney had this response:

"The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11..."

Notice the wording here. He's not saying that he never outright said that there was a connection, he's claiming that he never even suggested that there was a connection. But here again, his own words are a matter of public record. The debate is watched by thousands of journalists and bloggers with access to Google if not to Nexis/Lexis, and he is absolutely certain to get caught in this lie. Let's look at statements he has made. On MSNBC only a month ago, he said:

If we're successful in Iraq...we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.

And he has repeatedly made the claim that Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi officials in Prague in 2001 before the bombings, but that claim has been thoroughly discredited by numerous investigations (and the discrediting was done prior to him making the claim on numerous occasions). Is this not suggesting a connection between Iraq and 9/11? Over 60% of the nation in some polls believed there was a connection between the two when there wasn't. That idea did not appear out of nowhere, folks, it was nurtured carefully by the administration with carefully worded statements made by dozens of administration officials over the last 3 years. If he had said, "I never actually came out and said directly that Iraq was behind the WTC bombings", that might be a passable statement. But to claim that he never even suggested a connection? That's a flat out lie.