6.26.2005

Greg Mitchell: Is Cheney Turning into Another Baghdad Bob?

From his column in Editor and Publisher:

Is it just me, or is Vice President Cheney starting to sound like another balding, rose-colored-glasses wearing, war spokesman, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, better known as “Baghdad Bob”?

Yesterday, after a week of serious criticism, for claiming that the insurgency in Iraq was in its “last throes,” Cheney refused to back down, even after Gen. John Abizaid, our top military commander for the Middle East, proclaimed that the insurgency, in fact, was as strong as ever, and “a lot of work” remained to be done to defeat it. Earlier this week, GOP Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska had said he was sick of sunny assertions about the war from the White House, and declared that the U.S. indeed might be losing, not on the edge of victory.

Yet Cheney said on Thursday, “If you look at what the dictionary says about 'throes,' it can still be a violent period.” He compared this time to the end of World War II when tough battles “occurred just a few months before the end. I see this as a similar situation.” Give this man a beret!

Is it time to start calling him "D.C. Dick"? Or "Baghdad Dick"? Or perhaps "Bunker Bob"?

Baghdad Bob, of course, was Saddam Hussein's minister of information, later immortalized on t-shirts, Web sites and even a DVD for his optimistic, if fanciful, statements about Iraq's triumph over the American infidels, right up to the point his boss left the building. Baghdad Bob somehow survived and later worked as an Arab TV commentator, sans trademark beret (although he now seems to have inhabited our vice president's body).
No, Bob was funny. Cheney is just totally creepy.