Bravo to Karl Rove!

Hey...in case you missed it, Karl Rove weighed in on the responsibility of the Vice President to tell the truth the other day.

You see, he was referring to comments Vice President Biden had made earlier this week on CNN, where he an exchange he had with W in the Oval Office.

Bush said, "Well, Joe ... I'm a leader."

Biden responded: “Mr. President, turn around and look behind you. No one is following.”

What was Rove's response? He called Biden a "liar," "Blowhard," and "serial exaggerator."

"It didn't happen," Rove said. "It's his imagination. It's a made-up,
fictional world. He ought to get out of it and get back to reality.”

"You should not exaggerate and lie like this when you are the vice
president of the United States.”

You may think here is where I would slam Karl Rove. But, I agree with him. A Vice President should live in "reality" and not "lie and exaggerate." You know, a VP should not do things like:

-Claim that "we don't torture," when in fact we do. Cheney's ridiculous attempts to garner the justification to state this went from ordering attorneys to draft "legal" opinions which said they did not torture. These were neither "legal" (waterboarding is defined in treaties as torture and we've even accused others who do it of torture), nor "opinions" (an opinion in this sense is you asking someone to answer a question for you. You do not tell the person the answer and then tell them to make it fit).

-Claim that the things we are doing that ain't torture (wink, wink) have yielded results and foiled attacks. Cheney on the use of our "enhanced interrogation techniques:"

"Did it produce the desired results? I think it did. I think, for example,
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was the number three man in al-Qaeda, the man who planned the attacks of 9/11, provided us with a wealth of information. There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything
we knew about al-Qaeda came from that one source."

Compare that (hattip: Andy Worthington) to FBI director Robert Mueller:

I ask Mueller: So far as he is aware, have any attacks on America been
disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through what the administration still
calls "enhanced techniques"?

"I'm really reluctant to answer that," Mueller says. He pauses, looks
at an aide, and then says quietly, declining to elaborate: "I don't believe that
has been the case."

Plus Cheney's comments came at the exact time a Vanity Fair article by David Rose listed numerous officials at the FBI and CIA refuting Cheney's claims.

-Claim that detainees at Gitmo have a "fair and honest judgment made about their guilt or innocence" through the Military Commissions there. If that was the case, how come not only every single Defense counsel appointed has risked their career to protest the system? Or how then, do you explain Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor, who complained of political interference? Or Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, who complained that evidence vital to the defense was routinely withheld?

-Claim that Saddam Hussein was close to having nuclear weapons. Google: "Cheney + Niger + Yellowcake + State of the Union."

-Claim through perpetuation that there is any real link between Saddam and 9/11. Read this MTP transcript and look how damn pained Cheney is to dance around the question, because he knows he can't say "Yes," but he certainly does everything he can to insinuate it. I guess this is why he says, "it’s not surprising that people make that connection."

-Claim we will be greeted as "liberators" in invading Iraq. If this is how liberators are treated, perhaps freedom and democracy aren't such a good thing in Iraq, huh?

So, Mr. Rove...I salute you. I takes a true patriot to come around to the theory that Vice Presidents should tell the truth and not intentionally mislead the people. I am certain this is not partisan hackery, but a true watershed moment in your political enlightening.