Bad behavior

In a true meeting of the repellant minds, Dick “Dick” Cheney was interviewed by Rush Limbaugh, who invited him to attack the Democrats about Iraq. Cheney laudably refrained from doing so for several long microseconds: “I’ve got some friends on the other side of the aisle, and I don’t want to question everybody’s motives -- I do believe that a significant portion of the Democrats, including, I think, Nancy Pelosi, are adamantly opposed to the war and prepared to pack it in and come home in defeat, rather than put in place or support a policy that will lead to victory.”

Support a policy. But what else must they support? It’s on the tip of my tongue... “You cannot pursue this fiction that some of them like to pursue, that they ‘support the troops,’ but they’re opposed to everything the troops are doing. That’s just a non-sensical statement.” Again, supporting the troops means everything they’re ordered to do. Anything else is just non-sensical. Also non-sensical: Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to mediate between Israel and Syria: “It was a non-statement, non-sensical statement and didn’t make any sense at all”.

You know, Cheney pretends to despise Nancy Pelosi, but he reveals his true feelings when he describes a visit from her as a reward: “She’s not entitled to make policy. In this particular case, by going to Damascus at this stage, it serves to reinforce, if you will, and reward Bashir Assad for his bad behavior. ... This is a bad actor, and until he changes his behavior, he should not be rewarded with visits by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.” He just seethes with jealousy. Nancy never rewards him with a visit. “I’m obviously disappointed. I think it is, in fact, bad behavior on her part.”

I leave it as an exercise for the reader whether Cheney thinks Assad’s “bad behavior” is worse than Pelosi’s “bad behavior.”

[P.S. Incidentally, when I originally wrote this, I left out, from a perhaps misplaced sense of fairness, every instance where Limbaugh said repugnant things (the D’s are devoted to the concept or American defeat, the Senate Judiciary Committee is Stalinist for objecting to the illegal recess appointment of Sam Fox as ambassador to Belgium, etc), and Cheney merely expressed his complete agreement.]