Holy Bleep

I didn’t watch Cheney (yuck) on Meet the Press this morning, but Judd at ThinkProgress did.

On Friday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that concluded there was no relationship between Saddam Hussein and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. According to the report, “a CIA assessment in October 2005 concluded that Hussein’s government ‘did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates.’” In fact, Hussein tried to capture Zarqawi.

This morning on Meet the Press, Cheney repeatedly cited Zarqawi as the link between pre-war Iraq and al-Qaeda. When Tim Russert mentioned the Senate Intelligence Committee report, Cheney said he “hadn’t seen it.”

Judd has the transcript and videotape.

I maintain, as I’ve said before, that Cheney is no mere liar. I think he suffers from some kind of psychological disorder and is pathologically delusional. He repeats long-debunked claims because he really believes them, and no amount of mere empirical evidence is gonna change his mind. According to stuff I’ve read online (which of course is always reliable [wink]), people with delusional disorder are not psychotic and usually appear to be completely normal. In fact, the line between someone with delusional disorder and someone without can be a bit fuzzy. The delusional, however, tend to invest a disproportionate amount of mental energy into maintaining their delusions, often interpreting unrelated matters or simple coincidences as “proof” that their belief is true. And they are hypervigilent about finding more and more “proof.”

16 thoughts on “Holy Bleep

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  3. Cheney is a sick pup. He even manages to put in a plug for the benefit of torture among his delusional rambling. I’m really hoping that Bush’s attempt to push an immunity bill for crimes against humanity through the Congress fails miserably. I know he’s going to use the Rev. Jim Jones method to advance his plot..” they’re coming with flamethrowers, QUICK, drink your kool-aid, drink your kool-aid!” Yeah, high doses of fear and urgency.. that’s the ticket.

  4. Are you sure he’s not psychotic, Maha? Schizophrenia is a type of psychosis characterized by loss of contact with the environment. Kind of fits. Other than that, he is a devotee of Machiavelli with a dose of Goebbels thrown in for practical purposes..

    I read that a long-time friend of us was quoted as saying that Cheney is the only person he has ever known who was totally without empathy toward other human beings. That must describe some kind of mental disorder, Which one? I have no idea.

  5. And a new Al Qaida tape surfaces to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Al Qaida acted alone in the attacks of 9/11.This is a bit fishy, I mean is Al Qaida afraid someone is stealing their thunder?

    My in -box has been cluttered lately with friends and relatives sending me stuff about how evil ALL Muslims are, how they want to take over the U.S.A. by breeding like rats and having “Sleeper cells”. Sleeper cells were mentioned on the T.V. news today also.
    Are they Catapulting the propaganda? Someone is getting desperate, and painting an entire religion as evil is not a very smart thing to do.We don’t need a war with a billion Muslims, and we certainly don’t need to persecute American Muslims for no good reason.
    This administration screwed the pooch by attacking and occupying Iraq, it’s time to throw them in jail.

    This morning, a man in Texas ( go figure) shoots his wife in the face (killing her)….in the church parking lot.
    Devil inside, devil inside, every single one of us, the devil inside….

  6. A week or so ago, you posted a piece about “Death of a President”, a British movie centered on the fictional assasination of George W Bush in 2007. You gave a list of reasons why killing Bush would be bad, and Dick Cheney topped the list, with no explanation given or needed.

    I’ve had some time to think about it. On the one hand I still wouldn’t want Bush to die this way, but on the other, I believe it would be good if Dick the Deluded were to ascend the throne, so he could at long last get the scrutiny he so well deserves.

    The public would finally see that Junior was really just a front guy, a cheerleader, and quite disposable, and that Uncle Dick was the man calling the shots. The press would hopefully begin to discover and focus on the contradictions between reality and dear Dick’s delusions. Handling the public was never Dick’s forte, and his already abysmal ratings would plummet even further. Autodestruct mode engaged.

  7. Should delusional people even vote? It’s a serious question, and I’m not asking if they should be allowed. Just whether they should. Like, if you begin to think you might be deluded, you should not go to the poll. Wouldn’t that be helpful. Let the reality-based people figure it out, if you don’t know.

    It’s a meme, anyhow. I think it’s a decent one. The fact is we’ve all been lied to at one time or another, and most of us have believed lies, but some take longer to figure it out than others. The first thing is realizing you don’t have factual information on which to make a decision. The second thing is not making that decision until you have the factual information. Both are pretty essential. Don’t you think?

    So I’m basically trying to tell Republicans who aren’t figuring out how the Democratic Party can be anything other than bad for them (because they’ve been brainwashed for so long they can’t even consider it yet), but they are just waking up to the fact that the Republicans are worse than shit, that if they are thinking they have to vote for a Republican anyhow to protect themselves from the Democrats, they’d better stay home and not vote.

    In other words, don’t vote for any Republicans.

  8. Yep Cheney didn’t want to talk about the intelligence report or Valerie Plame- evidently there are subjects he just cannot be approached on.

  9. Like, if you begin to think you might be deluded, you should not go to the poll.

    If you wonder whether you might be deluded, you probably aren’t. The truly delusional don’t wonder.

    I don’t think there’s any provision for disenfranchisement based on mental defect, and I don’t think there should be. From what I’ve read, the diagnosis for delusional disorder sometimes can be difficult, because the false belief is not always absurd or impossible. There’s not always a clear, bright line between someone who’s truly disordered and someone who is just mistaken.

    People with uncontrolled psychoses, on the other hand, can be diagnosed pretty clearly, but not that many of ’em are going to get to the polling place.

  10. I caught Cheney’s interview this afternoon. As a casual student of “body Language”, judging the way Cheney moves and gestures he would not be a credible witness.

  11. I have not seen the video of Cheney on MTP, but I did read the transcript.

    Cheney smoothly got in all the obviously memorized Republican talking points, but whenever he was up against any inconvenient truths as put out by Russert’s questions, Cheney hid behind the same phrase…….and sort of stuttered each time as in saying, “I, I, I haven’t read that……

    No less than five times, Cheney used some variant of the phrase: “I haven’t looked at that.” This in response to 1] the trail being stone cold on finding Bin Laden; 2] the Senate Intel Committee report saying there was no link between Iraq and 9/11; 3] ElBaradie’s report on Iraq’s WMD [which turned out to be true, while Cheney’s hyped intel was wrong]; 4] the NYT article on Cheney’s power no longer going unquestioned; and 5] the Republican Campaign Committee decision to spend 50 million dollars on mostly negative political ads which intend to smear individual Democrat candidates.

    So, though I haven’t seen the body language that erinyes saw, I would agree that he would not be a credible witness. Any good attorney would know where to pierce his patterns. Gosh, I hope he does have to testify at Scooter’s trial!

  12. I saw body language, big time, in the interview. To me it shows clear knowledge that Cheney knows he’s lying. He just doesn’t care.

    I don’t have a transcript of what was said, but in a longer shot of Cheney, I saw his clasped hands jerk upward when Russert asked about the connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. Later, in the midst of a denial about the contents of the Report, his blink rate increased, and his “tells” (fleeting changes of expression) became obvious.

    I’ve got no doubt Cheney is some degree of psychopath. But I’ve seen better ones; they could be sitting on the coffin and denying there’s a body in the room, and they wouldn’t give off a clue.

    Cheney’s pretty obvious to me.

  13. Shortly after the 2004 elections, I offered on a right-wing blog that tests of political awareness should be instituted to separate the awakened from the sleeping, e.g., if you think Saddam had weapons of mass destruction before the invasion, you don’t have the requisite awareness of current events–of reality–to be entrusted with a vote in a self-governing democracy. You can imagine the response from those Bush-lovers: “Gee, the liberal wants to take away people’s voting rights”, etc.

    Actually, I think I might also have used something more like, “If you think Bush is telling the truth, you should not be allowed to vote.” Now there’s something that will rile you if you’re of that ilk.

    I wonder if any of those people are feeling bamboozled these days. Probably not too many, I’m afraid.

  14. cheney has no psych problems. He is just one sick old m.f. cheney’s heart is so weak he falls asleep in public and shoots his friends in the face. cheney hids his use of O2 like Rosevelt hid his use of crutches. cheney is no more than a sick old m.f.

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