“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” so says former Vice President Dick Cheney in a campaign ad released Thursday for his daughter’s floundering re-election campaign.
Cheney bases this assessment on his claim that Trump is a liar. According to Cheney, Trump is “a coward” and not a “real man” because “a real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters.”
Would a “real man” lie to the world? That’s what Dick Cheney did.
As Donald Trump famously stated in 2016 during the Republican debate right before the South Carolina primary (which Trump won): “Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none, and they knew there were none.” (emphasis added)
Cheney—widely regarded as the brains behind President George W. Bush’s disastrous administration—was one of the architects of the Iraq War.
President George W. Bush, right, with Vice President Dick Cheney on July 21, 2004, in Washington, DC. (Stephen Jaffe/Getty Images)
Cheney’s shortsighted hubristic foreign adventure cost America and our allies dearly in blood and treasure, not to mention the horrors his war inflicted on the Iraqi people.
A full reckoning of Dick Cheney’s misdeeds is beyond the scope of one article. (Did I mention the savage torture of Iraqi prisoners that the Bush-Cheney administration’s defense secretary approved, according to the U.S. brigadier general who ran the prison? That alone would take multiple volumes.) But let’s just consider the big lies.
First, the Bush-Cheney administration told us that Saddam Hussein had WMD. We were told that Iraq had sought to buy uranium oxide, aka yellowcake. That turned out to be totally bogus. So did all the attempts to tie Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. Yes, Saddam Hussein was an evil man, but he was no threat to the United States. And we now know that the administration also knew at the time that their WMD “intelligence” was “imprecise.” But that didn’t stop them from launching an invasion of a country that posed no threat to us.
Second, we were told by the Bush-Cheney administration that U.S. forces would be “greeted as liberators.” The invasion would be, as one giddy neocon put it, a “cakewalk.” In fact, U.S. fatalities in Iraq totaled 4,598, with another 32,000 injured.
Third, we were told by the Bush-Cheney administration, backed up by their neocon cheerleaders (most of whom happen to be the most ardent Never Trumpers), that Operation Iraqi Freedom would touch off a wave of democratization across the Middle East. Instead, it touched off a wave of sectarian fighting, suicide bombings, regional instability, civil wars, migrant crises, and a genocidal ethnic cleansing of ancient Christian communities, such that there are barely any Christians left in the region that gave birth to Christianity.
As many as 306,000 civilians and troops died in the Iraq War, and roughly three million Iraqis were displaced as refugees. The true scope of the devastation can never be known.
The presidential palace compound burns in Baghdad on March 21, 2003, during the massive U.S. air strike on the Iraqi capital. (RAMZI HAIDAR/Getty Images)
U.S. Marines pass a sign pointing the way to Baghdad as they continue their march to the Iraqi capital on March 25, 2003, in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Majed Najaf (R) carries wounded Hafez Abu Haidar, an employee at the al-Salhiya telecomunications center, after it was hit by a U.S. missile during an air raid on Baghdad on March 30, 2003. (PATRICK BAZ/Getty Images)
Iraqi families continue to leave Basra in southern Iraq, fleeing the U.S. invasion on March 30, 2003. (DAN CHUNG/Getty Images)
Smoke billowing from burning oil trenches covers Baghdad on April 2, 2003. (PATRICK BAZ/Getty Images)
Iraqis flee Baghdad on April 11, 2003, as the capital city descended into chaos with widespread looting and lawlessness, two days after U.S. troops captured the city. (ERIC FEFERBERG/Getty Images)
Members of the Fort Drum Honor Guard carry a casket of U.S. Army Spc. Mathew Boule, 22, killed in Iraq, during his funeral on April 15, 2003, in Dracut, Massachusetts. (Jacob Silberberg/Getty Images)
Members of the Old Guard stand next to the casket of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq during a burial ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. (OLIVIER DOULIERY/Getty Images)
A little girl sits in the grass amongst the headstones of those killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on Memorial Day 2021 in Arlington, Virginia. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Think of all the service members who died because of Cheney’s lies.
Think of all the veterans who came home forever scarred because of Cheney’s lies.
Think of all the American children who grew up without fathers or mothers because their parents were serving in a war launched because of Cheney’s lies.
Think of all the innocent Iraqis who watched their homes destroyed, their country plundered, and their world turned upside down all because of the lies of Dick Cheney and his mini-me George W. Bush. The fallout from their lies will be felt for generations.
But Dick Cheney wants us to believe that Donald Trump is “a greater threat to our republic” than anyone else in all our 246-year history.
Sorry, Dick Cheney. If anyone has earned that distinction, it’s you.
Rebecca Mansour is Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News. Follow her on Twitter at @RAMansour.