I can't believe no one has diaried this yet, but FINALLY, someone in the MSM calls out Politico for their allowing Dick Cheney to spew his talking points through them without any follow up what so ever. Join me below the fold as Chris Matthews leaves Jonathan Martin of Politico speechless.
Let's set this up with a little background. Politico has had a habit recently of printing "interviews" with former VP Dick Cheney on matters of Foreign Policy and Homeland Security. Fist there's this. Mike Allenasked about the Bush Administration's responsibility for Afghanistan And this was Cheney's response:
Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. "I basically don’t," he replied without elaborating.
No followup was asked despite the fact that Cheney said they didn't review the Afghanistan strategy until 2008
Not true, Mr. Cheney told an audience while accepting the Center for Security Policy’s "Keeper of the Flame" award. The Bush administration did its own review last year, he said, and offered the finding to the Obama transition team.
"In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that repeatedly went into the country, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team," Mr. Cheney said. "They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt."
Then there's this "Statement released to Politico by Cheney who says Obama is trying to "Pretend we're not at war"
"[W]e are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe," Cheney said in a statement to POLITICO. "Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society."
Despite the fact that President Obama has stated that we are at war
Second, the former Vice President makes the clearly untrue claim that the President – who is this nation’s Commander-in-Chief – needs to realize we are at War. I don’t think anyone realizes this very hard reality more than President Obama. In his inaugural, the President said "our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred." In a recent speech, Assistant to the President for Terrorism and Homeland Security John Brennan said "Instead, as the president has made clear, we are at war with al-Qaida, which attacked us on 9/11 and killed 3,000 people. We are at war with its violent extremist allies who seek to carry on al-Qaida’s murderous agenda. These are the terrorists we will destroy; these are the extremists we will defeat." At West Point, the President told the nation why it was "in our vital national interest" to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to fight the war in Afghanistan, adding that as Commander in Chief, "I see firsthand the terrible wages of war." And at Oslo, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, the President said, "We are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land."
Again, no followup from Politico. But it looks like they are finally starting to feel some heat from this stenography. And not just from bloggers. Today, Chris Matthews catches Jonathan Martin of Politico off guard when he says to him (Via Think Progress)
Does Cheney "have a thing with Politico?" MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked Politico’s Jonathan Martin today on Hardball. "He uses you like he’d use Drudge or somebody," Matthews charged. A stunned Martin had no response for why Cheney has been so willing to give Politico "exclusives." "You’d have to ask the Vice President, Chris," Martin responded, "I’m not sure." Matthews kept pressing the issue
Here's the video:
Any of this stuff is easily debunked by using a simple Google search, but Politico seems incapable of doing even the simplest of research where Cheney is concerned. What gives? I hope the rest of the media wakes up too.