David Corn: How Liz Cheney and Her Dad Paved the Way for the Big Lie

[babylonsister]

4 hours ago
How Liz Cheney and Her Dad Paved the Way for the Big Lie
She says Donald Trump crossed a line. But the Bush-Cheney administration didn’t?
David Corn
Washington, DC, Bureau ChiefBio | Follow

snip//

In the 21st century, American presidents have at least twice tried to shape the world with a lie of enormous impact. Trump attempted to demolish the nation’s constitutional order and retain power with his false claim that the 2020 election was rigged and Joe Biden did not truly receive more votes. As Cheney points out, this lie delegitimizes the essence of the American political system. And two decades ago, another Big Lie was concocted and pushed by a Republican president that resulted in profound (and lethal) consequences. Her dad was its main architect.

That was the untrue allegation that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass of destruction and was prepared to use them against the United States. The Bush-Cheney administration used these charges to garner public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Dick Cheney was the chief pitchman for this flimflam. In an August 2002 speech, he proclaimed, “There is no doubt [Saddam] is amassing [WMDs] to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” Soon after that, he publicly asserted that Saddam was trying to obtain aluminum tubes that could only be used for enriching uranium for weapons. And he also publicly cited a report that one of the 9/11 ringleaders had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague.

None of this was true. And Dick Cheney’s lies were not the result of intelligence failures. US intelligence over the previous year had assessed that Saddam did not have a worrisome WMD program. Government scientists had concluded that the aluminum tubes in question were not usable for weapon-grade enrichment. And the CIA had discredited that Prague report. Yet none of this inhibited Cheney and President George W. Bush. They spent months dishing out an assortment of false statements—including the untrue claim that Saddam was in league with al-Qaeda—to grease the way to war. They succeeded. Bush won the support of Congress and the American public for his massive blunder in Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam’s dictatorship but it yielded a geo-strategic and deadly mess in the region. About 200,000 Iraqi civilians died in the ensuing years due to the war. More than 4,000 American soldiers lost their lives in the war.

One lesson of the Iraq war is that a big lie can work. Liz Cheney, who was deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs during this stretch, supported the war—and has defended it ever since. (She co-wrote a 2015 book with her dad on US foreign policy.) She even insisted that one of the main lies of the Bush-Cheney fraudulent case for war—that there had been a significant connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq—was true. (She also hawkishly defended a sordid chapter of that sordid war: torture, saying it was “libelous” to call waterboarding “torture.”)

There was another odious lie that Liz Cheney also defended—or played footsie with: the racist conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Asked about birtherism in 2009, she replied, “I think the Democrats have got more crazies than the Republicans do. But setting that aside, one of the reasons you see people so concerned about this, I think this issue is, people are uncomfortable with having for the first time ever, I think, a president who seems so reluctant to defend the nation overseas.” Without endorsing the conspiratorial and disproven details of this nutty notion, Cheney was providing moral support to its adherents. (Trump’s championship of this lie helped turn him into a right-wing hero and set up the foundation for his 2016 presidential bid.)

more...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/how-liz-cheney-and-her-dad-paved-the-way-for-the-big-lie/

[gratuitous]

1. It's good to remember this

I'm all in favor of Liz Cheney reclaiming her political virginity, but first we need a full reckoning of her activities before she finally decided the cult had gotten too far out there.

[progressoid]

2. Just last November she said Kamala Harris sounded like Karl Marx

Just because the Trump cult hates her, doesn't mean she's any sort of ally.

[They_Live]

5. yes.

thank you.

[niyad]

3. This is a good reminder. Some people have very short memories, or, little knowledge of recent

history.

[Caliman73]

11. I agree with you but think there is also more too it.

I think most people on our side that are paying attention, know that Liz Cheney is not a good person/politician. I think that some people can become so desperate for a voice against who they perceive as a bigger enemy/threat, that they tend to deify the one who is speaking out. Sort of how people were saying how brave and brilliant Steve Schmidt and the Lincoln Project people were. It was good to have them hitting out at Trump, but these guys were supporters of Bush/Cheney and Schmidt gave us Sarah Palin, one of the prototypes for the Bohberts and Greenes of the world today.

It is good that Cheney is engaged in this fight, but we need to just stand back, let them fight, encourage it so that they do vast amounts of damage to each other, and then if for some miraculous reason, Cheney and Romney win this fight, we go back to hitting them hard about their own disgraceful ideas and behaviors in the past. They are not on OUR side. They just want things to go back to when the racism was more subtle.

[niyad]

13. I do agree with your assessment. I was just thinking in terms of immediate reactions.

[czarjak]

4. He duped W.

[wnylib]

8. Not hard to do, was it?

I don't believe that W was ever meant to run the country. He was the front man, the image, but Cheney was the doer, designer, and power broker.

[kairos12]

6. Precisely.

[Solly Mack]

7. K&R

[Carlitos Brigante]

9. That entire family is super gross.... nt

[KG]

10. liz cheney isn't against lying in general. just this trump lie.

[gulliver]

12. I wonder if Cheney isn't angling for a presidential run

Somebody will surely try to carry the torch of "traditional" conservatives in the primary for 2024. It might be Romney or it might be Cheney. In fact, that could be a ticket. Whether they start a new "Conservative Party," or try to get the Republican nomination, the anti-Trump forces are bound to try something.

If Romney or Cheney got the nomination, they'd be pretty strong in the general. Republicans always fall in line behind whoever has the buffalo headdress. Some Republican suburbanites might even return to the party if it weren't headed by a dummy-gulling liar and traitor. It could be headed by the old style of liar represented by Romney and Cheney (who may have learned their lessons about lying and what it does to people).

[wnylib]

14. And then there is the 2000 election itself,

that put Cheney into the VP seat to run the country behind W's image. The big lie then: Following Florida law to do a recount when the margin is so close suddenly became an election "steal" that needed interference from hired thugs to disrupt the vote counters. Not to mention interference from SCOTUS to hand the election to Cheney and his front man.

Why are Republicsns named Dick so determined to live up to their names?

Liz Cheney is not showing great integrity. She is not taking a moral high road. She's a hard right Republican, so she has neither quality. She is positioning herself for a leading place among anti Trump conservatives. My prediction is that a new conservative party will develop in opposition to Dems and Trumpists. Cheney expects to be one of its leaders. Romney wants a leading place in that party, too. Neither one of them would govern well or give a damn about anyone but corporations and the 1 %.

[Faux pas]

15. Kickin' for the Truth!