This really is a must-see if you missed last night's Countdown.
Almost as if she wanted to help us celebrate Halloween by conjuring up the ugly human demons of Lies and Hypocrisy, as well as reminding us of the horrible visual image of her father speaking the coldest of human deceipts with his usual sociopathic authoritative demeanor, Liz Cheney on Friday tried to make right-wing political hay out of President Obama's early morning dignified transfer duty at Dover Air Force Base, in which he honored the eighteen U.S. citizens killed in Afghanistan on Obama's watch (originally reported by BarbinMD.)
As typical of her attempts to establish and justify something other than the true legacy of her father, she did it devoid of facts and logic.
Lawrence O'Donnell, filling in as anchor for the MSNBC show, channeled the Special Comment version of Keith Olbermann and called her on her hypocrisies. I have produced a full transcript below.
Trying a similar tactic to Liz Cheney while filling in for Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham attempted to paint Obama as being a hypocrite for the Dover ritual. It backfired on her, when her guests, one an Afghanistan veteran, would have none of it. That video is embedded below the transcript.
I particularly appreciate the part where O'Donnell 'corrects' himself in his description of Cheney's comments, changing implication to lie.
MSNBC Countdown w/ Lawrence O'Donnell - 30 Oct. 2009:
O'DONNELL: "When President Obama honored our Afghanistan war dead by taking part in a military ritual at Dover Air Force Base yesterday, it was easily predictable that a Republican would criticize him for it. And in our fourth story on the Countdown, the former Vice President's pet attack dog, his daughter Liz Cheney, has now done just that. And once again, she wasn't going to let the facts get in her way.
On the John Gibson radio show yesterday, Ms. Cheney was rehashing her father's fact-free critique of President Obama's war in Afghanistan. Then Mr. Gibson asked her about the President's appearance at Dover Air Force Base."
LIZ CHENEY (RADIO AUDIO): "I don't know why he went to Dover. I mean, I think that clearly it is very important for a commander-in-chief, whenever he can in whatever way possible, to pay tribute to our fallen soldiers, our fallen military folks. But, I think, you know, what President Bush used to do was to it without the cameras, and I don't understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures. I just... that's really hard for me to get my head around. I think it's an honorable and important thing for us to pay tribute. There's no greater sacrifice people make to the nation. But, I, that's, uh, it was a surprising way for the President to choose to do it."
O'DONNELL: "As we mentioned yesterday, President Bush NEVER went to Dover Air Force Base to honor dead American soldiers on their final journey. And Vice President Cheney... never did either.
Hey, Liz. Have you ever lost a relative in battle? I have. My cousin Johnny, West Point graduate just like his father before him. I wish the President or the Vice President had met his casket on the way home.
You know what 'never' means, Liz? It means ZERO. It means that in over seven years of two wars, your dad never left the comfort of his White House office or the Vice President's mansion and got himself up to Dover to bear witness to how his warmongering fell on families of dead American soldiers. Never, not once.
Liz, don't let your dad do this to you. Don't let him parade you onto the stage to defend the indefensible. Let him suffer the full weight of the shame that we know he must feel when he watches Barack Obama do what he never had the decency to do.
President Bush DID meet with grieving military families in private, and he went to military hospitals to visit the wounded. As for Ms. Cheney's reference to cameras, the policy of banning media coverage of coffins continued unaltered throughout the Bush administration. Thus, even families that WANTED media coverage of their loved one's ceremony were not given any choice in the matter.
Futhermore, President Obama did NOT make any special requests to any of yesterday's eighteen families as Ms. Cheney implies, I mean LIES. The vast majority of those families had already made their individual decisions about media coverage under the current policy BEFORE the notification that President Obama would be part of the ceremony.
As for Dick Cheney, when he was Vice President, he sometimes met with the war wounded, but like President Bush, he never went to Dover, either. Never.
And a reminder, Mr. Cheney successfully sought out FIVE deferments from the draft to avoid having to serve his country in the Vietnam War. Mr. Cheney's fifth and final deferment a result of his wife's becoming pregnant - with Liz. Mr. Cheney was granted a 3A status, the hardship exemption, by his draft board, which was available to men with children at that time."
The complete segment, which includes an interview with guest Richard Wolffe concerning Obama's Afghanistan policy review and the CREW-released FBI Cheney interview transcripts, can be viewed here.
O'DONNELL: "The Cheney family criticism currency is totally devalued, I think, in our political discussion these days, but doesn't something like this from Liz Cheney force an even further devaluation of it? Doesn't it now seem like there isn't anything the President of the United States can do, including saluting the coffins of the dead, that will not bring virulent, unthinking criticism from Cheney family members?"
President Obama stands outside an Air Force C-17 transport plane as he takes part in the "dignified transfer ceremony" of U.S. Army Sgt. Dale R. Griffin at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, October 29, 2009. Griffin is one of 18 U.S. personnel who died Monday in Afghanistan. Talking Points Memo Newscom/AFP
UPDATE: Added Rachel Maddow segment on suggestion of commenter Scarce.
MADDOW: "It is the sort of moment that probably deserves to pass without too much extraneous political comment - President Obama saluting the coffin of Army Sergeant Dale Griffin during the dignified transfer ceremony for Sgt. Griffin at Dover air base early yesterday morning. The presence of the President of the United States at this stirring ceremony was to Liz Cheney just too good an opportunity to pass up to take a political whack at President Obama."
UPDATE 2: Dale Griffin
Army Sgt. Dale Griffin, center, poses with his parents, Dona and Gene Griffin, in this undated family photo. Griffin, 29, was killed Oct. 27 by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. He was, said one friend, a "free spirit." (Griffin Family/AP)
TERRE HAUTE — It was earlier this month when U.S. Army Sgt. Dale Griffin, 29, last spoke with his mother on the telephone. He was calling from Afghanistan where he was serving as part of operation Enduring Freedom. It was not an ordinary call.
“He wanted to be sure that we knew how much he loved us,” said Dale’s mother, Dona, speaking in her southern Vigo County home Friday afternoon. In that conversation, Dale asked his mother why people always seem to have to lose something or someone before they realized what they had lost.
- snip -
Prior to leaving for Dover, the Army gave the Griffin’s a document asking how much media coverage of their son’s arrival in the United States they would allow. They checked the third option, which was for essentially full media access.
“We wanted more people to know” how much each soldier had sacrificed, Dona Griffin said Friday. They had no idea how much that decision would affect their lives for the next 48 hours.
After arriving on the east coast, the Griffin’s received a telephone call to verify their decision regarding media coverage. They confirmed the decision and were then informed the President of the United States would be at the base for the transfer. Within a few hours, the Griffins met President Barack Obama and were able to speak with him briefly. Later, the president stood at attention as the caskets of all of the servicemen were carried from a military transport plane.
“I was glad to see that he made that choice,” Dona Griffin said of President Obama’s decision to meet with grieving families and stand at attention on a very cold and windy night at the air base.
