Why oh why is former Vice President Iraq War Architect Dick Cheney still given a deferential platform by the major broadcast networks? Must be because the tilt of his lips when he talks makes for good TV, or because they hope they can get answers to really probing questions like this one from ABC's Jonathan Karl:
KARL: It almost seems like you're accusing the president of treason here, saying he's intentionally bringing America down a notch.
I mean, come on. Is that really a question that needs to be asked? I guess maybe there's a 1 percent chance that Cheney is going to give an honest answer, but all a question like that really does is give Cheney yet another chance to repeat the same drivel about the president, drivel that invariably brushes up against, but stops short of, direct accusations of treason.
But as dumb as that question was, it was hardly Karl's dumbest. That award goes to this one:
KARL: What is your solution, your plan right now, for Iraq? What would you be doing?
I mean, if Karl had asked Cheney something like this—"Why, sir, should anybody give a flying you-know-what about what you're saying now, given that you are responsible for lying this country into a war that it never should have fought?"—then we might have an interesting interview. But asking Cheney to show us the path forward in Iraq
is insane. It's like asking Bernie Madoff for investment advice, which makes Karl's followup even stupider:
Read below the fold for his response.
KARL: What would you do in Iraq?
And:
KARL: No, no, what would you do now?
Then, the closest Karl got to the one and only question that should be asked of Dick Cheney was to point to Sen. Rand Paul's criticism of Cheney before asking:
KARL: Your response?
No direct followup to that—instead he moved onto the treason question. Then he returned to Paul:
KARL: Could you support a Republican nominee, Rand Paul, for president?
Before asking another probing question:
KARL: Did Hillary Clinton turn out to be just what President Obama needed?
And after Cheney's answer, the interview ended, with Jonathan Karl apparently content that he had just made news, or something, and with Cheney having never been seriously challenged for any of his past failures.
One last thing: You may have noticed that I didn't include any of Cheney's answers in the transcript here. That's because it almost doesn't matter what he said, given how fabulously wrong and dishonest he's been about Iraq in the past. But just in case you're curious, the full transcript is here. And yes, he did warn about terrorists getting "nuclear capability" and attacking us "next time ... with weapons far deadlier than airline tickets and box cutters." In other words, with Dick Cheney, nothing has changed. He's still scaremongering, still lusting for Iraq, and still using a compliant news media as a megaphone for his dark ambitions.