Stewart finds ‘the moment that epitomizes everything wrong with Dick Cheney’
Published: June 4, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
As he attempts to rescue his own legacy, former Vice President Dick Cheney has taken to blaming everyone but himself for the Bush administration’s bad decisions. This may have reached a point of ultimate absurdity on Monday, when Cheney was asked about his reaction to 9/11 during an appearance before the National Press Club.
In a moment acutely noted by The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, the NPC interviewer suggested to Cheney, “On Sunday, in the Washington Post, [former White House counterterrorism chief] Richard Clarke had a column — and he was, of course, there at that time as well — in which he characterized the Bush administration as basically being in a state of shock. And I’m wondering what your characterization of what those post-9/11 days were like…”
In that column, Clarke blasted what he called the “9/11 trauma defense” for torture. He wrote that “when Bush’s inner circle first really came to grips with the threat of terrorism, they did so in a state of shock, a bad state in which to develop a coherent response. Fearful of new attacks, they authorized the most extreme measures available, without assessing whether they were really a good idea.”
Cheney naturally was unable to acknowledge this criticism. In his patented f-you manner, he replied, “Dick Clarke? Dick Clarke who was the head of the counter-terrorism program in the run-up to 9/11. He obviously missed it.”
“Holy crap!” commented an awestruck Stewart. “Did he just blame 9/11 on Dick Clarke?”
“The same Dick Clarke,” Stewart continued. “who had written a letter to Condoleezza Rice on January 25, 2001 — five days after Bush and Cheney took office — warning them about al Qaeda and asking for a high level meeting? Or the same Dick Clarke that on September 4, 2001 — a week before the attack — sent them a memo warning them of an attack that would leave hundreds dead?”
“Or are you maybe talking about the Dick Clark who hosts New Year’s Rockin’ Eve?” Stewart added sarcastically. “Because that one I can understand — not the other one.”
Stewart was as appalled, however, by the audience’s response to Cheney as by Cheney himself. “Let’s now look at the moment,” he suggested, “that epitomizes everything that is wrong with Dick Cheney — his arrogance — the media — their acquiescence — and the delightfully witty relationship between the two.”
“You said that Richard Clarke must have missed 9/11,” the NPC interviewer asked. “Wasn’t he warning the White House for months of chatter about an attack?”
“That’s not my recollection,” Cheney sneered. He added to laughs from the audience, “But I haven’t read his book.”
“That’s a good one, Mr. Cheney!” Stewart chortled, mocking the Nation Press Club audience’s response. “I guess you never read the memos either … and then we went to war in Iraq because of bad intelligence distributed in your behest … and then we started torturing people. Good times!”
This video is from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, broadcast June 3, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
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it’s a shame we’re appeased by comedy when we should be bulldozing miserable old white men into mass graves.
Will someone please prosecute them?
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Screw you cheney. Just go home, curl up into a ball in a corner somewhere and hide from your boogeyman. President Obama has everything under control. Just stay away from our government. you have done more than enough to screw things up — we do not need you or want you at all!
The only way that Cheney’s lying tongue will stop wagging is when he’s indicted by a Grand Jury. But as we can all tell, Cheney knows that he’ll never be brought to justice, so he’s brazenly running on the rubber chicken circuit re-inventing himself. Hell, there’s a book to sell and lectures to give, all for the money and the power and the legacy. The most evil of them all, Hitler, even said that if you repeat a lie long enough, it become truth. That’s where Cheney is.
And for as long as Eric Holder sits on his ass and does nothing, Cheney will keep telling lies until they become truth.
I believe Cheney will be indicted for his crimes against America and humanity but I bet just before he goes to trial he will have a massive coronary and cheat us all out of a conviction. What a prick.
Does anybody here watch the cable TV program “Dexter”? If only Dexter could perform his version of justice for cheney……
Murdering people isn’t justice at all, giving a serial murderer something to jerk off about isn’t justice any more than letting some piece of shit formers soldier torture for the U.S. is. Glorifying serial murders with lies about their nature like they do on Dexter is for retards, sounds like you need a close relative to be beaten half to death, raped with a paper bag over her face and shot in the head and left by some railroad tracks to wake you up. I’m quite sure Cheney feels the same way about his torture suspects as you do him, go jerk of to so Jeffrey Dahmer pictures while you’re at it.
He’s remaking his image to run for PRESIDENT in 2012. He’s a fraud who changes his position and denies what he previously when the time and purpose changes. FRAUD FRAUD FRAUD with the groveling voice and sincerity. Forecast: Republican Cheney love-fest soon.
Next Cheney will reveal that he used to be susceptible to Kryptonite, but has found a faxxine and inculcated himself with it and is now “immunte”.
I am enough of a leftie that to say that I hate anyone really bothers me, but this piece of shit is where I make an exception. This jerkwad would throw his own mother under the bus to save his own ass. What a total and complete coward he is!
EVERYONE ELSE missed it but Cheney, then? How is it that people were talking about Richard Clark running around “with his hair on fire” trying like hell to warn people in the administration about the upcoming attacks, and then this piece of shit can say that Clark “missed it”? No, you dirtbag, YOU IGNORED IT. You KNEW it was coming, how the hell could you NOT? You WANTED IT to happen, so you could pull your rewriting of everything for your own benefit, just like you SAID you wanted to in 1998 with the PNAC letter. You did it ON PURPOSE. And now you want to blame everyone else for what YOU did? EAT SHIT.
The truth is that you are a treasonous coward who hid like a scared baby during the entire time you SHOULD have been out there being an example of strength and bravery. But you brought this about, and I’m sure even assisted it, and then hid like the coward you are. You are a disgusting human being and should be locked up for extreme cowardice. You are a national embarrassment, and not even your own party wants to have a GD thing to do with you. Go away, and wait for the war crimes trials to start. May it happen soon, and you live long enough to be convicted and locked up.
Nice to see the media and the comedians that helped America chuckle it’s way though the war helping Cheney to play his beloved role as protector of the president, while ignoring Bush and the war that continues on. Laugh it up, the jokes on you.
If you ever wanted to know what the face of Pure Evil is, there you have it.
Darth Cheney, Apprentice to Darth Rove