Worst Predictions
Cheney boarding Air Force Two
‘We will…be greeted as liberators.’
— Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003
The most telling response to Dick Cheney’s assertion on NBC’s Meet the Press that we’d be greeted in Iraq as liberators came from the man himself, in 2006 on CBS’s Face the Nation. When Bob Schieffer asked the vice president if his statement had increased skepticism of the war, Cheney responded, “No, I think it has less to do with the statements we’ve made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does the fact that there is a constant sort of perception, if you will, that’s created because what is newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad, it’s not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces in terms of making progress in rebuilding Iraq.” To recap: first Cheney says he was right (he wasn’t) and then he blames media distortion for the fact that people won’t believe him. It’s hard to fake being greeted as a liberator; to this day, though, Cheney continues to pretend as if it had been so.
Kelley is a staff writer for NEWSWEEK. Follow her on Twitter.
Discussion