Do You Think The Veep And The Prez Talk Much?

Based on today's interview of the Big Dick Cheney by ABC news, you would think that the Veep doesn't talk much to the President's crack team of Presidential Propaganda Catapult fodder makers.

Q Paul Harvey this week said that Iraq had gone sour. And he made the observation of what he calls a "mishandled war in Iraq" has gone on almost as long as World War II right now. Do you think if it hadn't been mishandled, if there hadn't been mistakes, more American troops would be home right now?

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Well, George, I think the analogy to World War II is just not a valid analogy.

Let's have a nice slice of the President making just such an analogy, for fun. There are many, many examples of this. This is just one example where we see the rhetorical slap of hypocrisy across the face of the W, Rove and Co. Trouble is the American public may not put two and two together, and the Veep is, of course, banking on that:

You know, people ask me all the time -- people ask me all the time, you know -- they say, what do you mean, when democracy takes hold? Do you think -- really think people in the Middle East want to be free? And the answer is, absolutely. We believe in the United States and the universality of freedom. I personally believe there's an Almighty, and I think a great gift from that Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul to be free. (Applause.) I'm not talking about just American Methodists. I believe in everybody's soul is the desire to be free. And I know that when you look at history, liberty has got the capacity to defeat resentment and ideologies of hate.

You know, one of the stories I like to share with people is my experience with the Prime Minister of Japan, Prime Minister Koizumi. You might remember, I had an interesting -- interesting trip. (Laughter.) He and I went down to Elvis' place. (Laughter.) Went down there for a couple of reasons: One, I had never been to Elvis' place, and I'd like to go, you know. I thought it would be kind of fun. (Laughter.) More importantly, he wanted to go. (Laughter.) He loves Elvis. (Laughter.) He can sing all the songs, you know. (Laughter.) Collects the memorabilia.

But I also wanted to send a signal to the American people about what's possible when liberty takes hold. A fellow came through the line recently here, and he said, "My grandfather served on the USS San Jacinto with your dad." They were in the Pacific Ocean, young guys who had been called into action because the Japanese had attacked us, and we were in a brutal war with Japan -- a really tough war.

The hatred for -- of America for Japan was intense, and so intense you can imagine how people would react if somebody had stood up and said, I predict some day an American President and the Japanese Prime Minister would be going to, you know, a singer's house. (Laughter.) They would have run him out of town, probably, you know. (Laughter.)

But that's, in fact, what happened. And when we were on the airplane going down from Washington to Memphis, we were talking about keeping the peace. The Prime Minister of a country with which we were at war, a brutal war -- young kids went off and never came home; unbelievable devastation and destruction in that war, a war ended by massive bombing -- the Prime Minister of that country and the President of the United States were talking about peace. We were talking about North Korea, what we could do together to keep the peace. We were talking about the need to help this young democracy in the heart of the Middle East succeed so it could defeat an ideology of hatred. We were talking about how democracy has got the capacity to defeat the conditions that create resentment and hopelessness that cause young men to decide to become suicide bombers.

It's an amazing lesson of history, isn't it? It strikes me as so ironic, in a way, that my dad fought the Japanese, and his son sits down with the Prime Minister of the same country to keep the peace. What happened was Japan adopted a Japanese-style democracy. Liberty has got the unbelievable capacity to convert enemies into allies, to change nations from hopelessness to hope. Some day an American President will be sitting down talking to duly-elected leaders of the Middle East about how to keep the peace, and a generation of American children will be better off for it. (Applause.)