David Sarasohn on Dick Cheney

Portland Oregonian columnist David Sarasohn really should receive more national attention. Today he takes on Dick Cheney's reality recognition disability in Saudi funeral perked up by Cheney cheer

Last week, Dick Cheney took a break from running the world to take on one of the traditional duties of a vice president: going to funerals. At the burial of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, the vice president could reassure a vital Arab (and OPEC) ally that, however things looked, everything was under control next door in Iraq -- possibly even repeating his June confidence that "I think they're clearly in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

The problem, of course, is that the Arab world also gets CNN, meaning that the Saudis have now tracked three years of Cheney's pronouncements on Iraq. It's a record of resounding wrongness, repeated wrongness, confident wrongness and almost spectacular wrongness.

And now a paragraph that is worthy of Quote of the Day.

Following the trail of the vice president's statements on the Middle East, the Saudis must have been relieved that he made it to the right funeral.

He then continues with a list of the Dark Lords mis-statements on Iraq including this second candidate for Quote of the Day.

When Dick Cheney tells you the insurgents are "clearly in the last throes," duck.

And yet another.

Still, Cheney forecast a war so easy it would hardly matter, declaring just before the invasion, "We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly . . . in weeks rather than months." As the vice president had told veterans in Tennessee the year before, the streets of Baghdad and Basra would "erupt in joy" with the American appearance.

He got the "erupt" part right.

There is more and I suggest you go read the entire commentary. I will continue to syndicate David Sarasohn in my own small way for your reading pleasure.