Dissident Voice

September 16, 2003

The host of each of the Sunday morning news shows held his nose and tried to deal with the stench of this administration's bullshit!

If you watched the Sunday morning news shows, you could not only see and hear the news, you could actually smell it. The stench came right out of the tv and smacked you in the face. Each show began with an almost audible, "What's that terrible odor?" sort of comment. They, the news people, finally acknowledged that something has gone bad and it's starting to rot and it stinks.

Cheney was on Meet the Press. When he was asked about the god awful smell, he denied the existence of a bad smell and proceeded to try to describe the odor as more like the aroma of roses and perfume, but it didn't work. Most of us know that if something smells bad you really shouldn't disturb it for fear of making the smell even worse. I guess Cheney never learned that lesson because he seemed to keep stirring up even more stinky stuff and making it worse and worse. Once he began to speak you realized that you could predict every answer he would give, because it would be the one that would aggravate the smell to an even more unbearable level. Cheney not only denied the smell he piled on more of the same rank stuff.

For example here is one exchange:

MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.

MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know.

So there, how do you like that? How does that smell to you? A smothering stench rising and it just kept coming. Cheney said, "We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of ’93. And we’ve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven."

But a bit farther into the interview:

MR. RUSSERT: We could establish a direct link between the hijackers of September 11 and Saudi Arabia.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: We know that many of the attackers were Saudi. There was also an Egyptian in the bunch. It doesn’t mean those governments had anything to do with that attack.

The air was so polluted with the smell that by now you could barely tolerate its presence. Then the largest of the stinking statements came from Cheney when Tim Russert asked, " Let me turn to the situation in Iraq. We all remember this picture from May 1. The president on the USS Lincoln on May 1; mission accomplished. Since that time, these are the rather haunting figures coming out of Iraq. We had lost 138 soldiers before May 1, and 685 wounded, injured. Since that time, since the president came on the carrier and said major combat was over, we’ve lost 158, and 856 wounded and injured. Those numbers are pretty troubling."

And now Cheney put on his repulsive, "I'm going to be sad now" face, held his own nose, lowered his voice to try his damnedest to show respect and stated, "Well, it’s significant, Tim. Any loss of life or injuries suffered by American military personnel is significant. Everyone wishes that that weren’t necessary. But from the standpoint of the activity we’re engaged in over there and what we’ve been able to accomplish over the last two years, I think it’s important to keep all of this in perspective. I looked at some numbers yesterday. I had them run the numbers, for example, in terms of our casualties since we launched into Afghanistan, began the war on terror a little over two years ago now. And the number killed in combat, both in Afghanistan and Iraq, as of yesterday, was about 213. When you add in those from non-hostile causes—the plane crashes, helicopter goes down without hostile fire—we’ve got a total of 372 fatalities since we started the war. Remember, we lost 3,000 people here on 9/11.

As most of the viewing audience was now gagging with disgust they realized that basically, what Cheney had just said was that, because the terrorists killed 3000 of our people it's okay for us to allow the deaths of 372 our soldiers. Was he implying any number of dead troops below 3000 was a-okay with him? Also note, he had just the day before, decided to find out how many of our military had been killed. Now that truly does stink doesn't it?

Cheney's spin didn't make the air more pleasant, it just stirred up more stinky stuff. Cheney sneered and he snorted and he tried to brush and fan it all away, but try as he might, it just got worse.

Russert kept asking about the source of the smell and Cheney just kept saying bullshit. And those of us watching the show kept screaming and pleading, "No more shit, we can't take anymore!"

The final scene should have been Tim wearing a mask and spraying down the whole set with a giant can of industrial strength air freshener.

Finally, at last, it's about time, the press has been forced to acknowledge that something has gone terribly wrong and it smells terribly bad. The two-ton elephant in the room, the one that no one wanted to talk about, has apparently done elephant poopies on the rug and the smell is so bad that it can no longer be ignored. Clean up in aisle two thousand four! Bring the great big damned shovel!

Even the most hardy of the conservatives like Peggy Noonan, former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, actually, sort of, kinda admitted that Bush has screwed up a few things. Yeah, you and I know he has screwed up everything, but when Noonan just, ever so slightly, suggested that he had messed up, it brought to me the sweet scent of success. To a starving dog, even a tiny crumb of stale bread, is a reason to hope that there will be more to come.

No, no one called for Bush to resign or to be impeached or any of the other things that would actually stop the madness and begin to clean up the mess, but at least they admitted we should watch where we step, because there is definitely something foul and nasty in Washington and the smell has finally wafted all the way to the Sunday morning news shows.

* For a complete transcript of the interview between Russert and Cheney go to: http://www.msnbc.com/news/966470.asp?cp1=1

Patricia Ernest lives in Florida and is the author of Pissed Off Patricia's Blog. She describes herself as a very sentimental and sensitive person who is forever willing to share my point of view whether or not it has been requested of me. This article is copyright by Patricia Ernest, originally published by opednews.com (www.opednews.com). Permission is granted to forward this or to place it on a website as long as the article is included intact, including this statement.