NP: Robbie Williams, Intensive Care

So, Dick Cheney launched his part of the administration charm offensive against the prevailing opinion that they fucked with us over intelligence. On the off chance that you might buy into this "dishonest, reprehensible" crap, Talking Points Memo does a good job of describing one of the more clear-cut cases of the White House's dissembling, from Dick himself.

As I've said before, Cheney tends to parse his language in such a way that he can defend -- in a very Clinton-esque, "depends on what the meaning of 'is' is fashion -- the statements Josh Marshall quotes, saying things like "we can't be 100% certain Mohammed Atta wasn't in Prague meeting with al-Queda, so it follows that maybe he was." Not technically false, but also not really fooling anyone, except maybe the 75% of people who used to think that Iraq was behind 9/11.

This episode, along with the aluminum tubes that Condi Rice swore up and down were definitely for centrifuges and not for rockets, are the two best examples, in my mind, of how deceitfully the war was sold. Kevin Drum posted some timelines on these and other instances showing how the doubts about these claims did not, in fact, get to Congress or the public before we commenced shocking and aweing.

Backing away from the politics for a moment, though, the last week of response to criticisms is bewildering from a PR perspective. If two-thirds of the country no longer believes you, stamping your feet a lot and insisting you were right doesn't seem like a tactic that would change that perception substantively, does it? You're basically telling people that they're wrong, and that they're downright un-American, which isn't exactly a sound strategy to win them back over.