Simply put, Dick Cheney's a pathalogical liar

EJ Dionne in today's Post:

The most remarkable moment in Tuesday's debate between Vice President Cheney and Sen. John Edwards came when Cheney issued a blanket denial of the obvious.

Edwards, who proved both his value and his loyalty to Democratic nominee John Kerry, declared that "there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th. Period. The 9/11 Commission has said that's true. Colin Powell has said it's true. But the vice president keeps suggesting that there is."

What Cheney said next was, literally, incredible: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11."

This is the same Cheney who, just minutes before, in the very same debate, had defended the attack on Iraq by declaring flatly that Saddam Hussein "had an established relationship with al Qaeda." Hello? If that is not a "suggestion" of a connection, what is?

Well, this: On Sept. 14, 2003, Cheney said Iraq was at the heart of "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

Cheney had to know that this, like his claim of never having met one of the 100 members of the body over which the VP presides, would be immediately fact-checked by the print media, if not the ever-subservient TV idiots.

Clearly, he and the boy king know they have nothing left to lose by lying. Lies are at the heart of Bush's "new and improved" stump speech, which he trots out to adoring supporters.

And they get away with it. Yesterday, I heard a news blurb from NPR's Bush campaign reporter, who obediently repeated Bush's nonsense that Kerry won't act without a "global test" of our actions. NPR may have cut off the reporter, I don't know, but the network made no attempt to assess the truth of Bush's claim. Shameless.

I fear I'm being incomprehensible here, between living and dying with every pitch far too late into the autumn nights, and the shear mendacity and madness of the Bucheney operation, I think I'm losing my ability to think straight.