TPM Reader TY responds to Dick Cheney's latest goofball lies ...

I think the main thing Cheney is doing here is making the point that the Iraq war is about al-Qaeda, when in fact al-Qaeda is only a very small part of the war, as the NIE indicates. The only was to validate the war is to constantly tie it to al-Qaeda (as they have done since 9/11). Pelosi and the Democrats should respond by knocking down the al-Qaeda canard. Perhaps they are tired of fighting this uphill battle but Cheney and the administration should be held accountable for continuously spreading misinformation. Even the media (yeah, sure) should question this assertion. But every time he says it, people believe it. The old trick of repeating a lie tirelessly and and it "becomes" true.

True. But the thing is, the bigger we screw-up in Iraq, the more unpopular we get in the region, the wider the pool of potential recruits for jihadist groups like al-Qaida. So, yes, it's a canard. But the scope and magnitude of Cheney's screw-ups and incompetence are so vast that they actually can increase the danger we face from al-Qaida, even though at the outset they had little to do with each other.