Cheney-Edwards

The pundits, partisan or not, are coming around to the fact that Bush did lose last week. I'm not disputing this, but I always take issue with the way things are presented in the media and by both parties (see below). I missed most of yesterday's interesting battle because of school and whatnot, but I did see two altercations that really stood out. One of them was this shot by Cheney:

CHENEY: Gwen, I want to go back to the last comment, and then I'll come back to Israel-Palestine.

The reason they keep trying to attack Halliburton is because they want to obscure their own record.

And Senator, frankly, you have a record in the Senate that's not very distinguished. You've missed 33 out of 36 meetings in the Judiciary Committee, almost 70 percent of the meetings of the Intelligence Committee.

You've missed a lot of key votes: on tax policy, on energy, on Medicare reform.

Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you "Senator Gone." You've got one of the worst attendance records in the United States Senate.

Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session.

The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.

Okay, so later on it turned out that Cheney had met Edwards before, and there is picture evidence that they were at least in close proximity at one point, but Edwards didn't really rebut this point, so this one was conceded to Cheney. And the way the media described it really hit home: it was like a professor taking a poor student to task for failing to attend all the classes. I've had a similar moment or two with an econ prof of mine some time ago...long story

Back on topic, though, Edwards did score with this one:

EDWARDS: Well, the vice president talks about there being a member, or someone associated with al Qaeda, in Iraq. There are 60 countries who have members of al Qaeda in them. How many of those countries are we going to invade?

Not only that, he talks about Iran. The reality about Iran is that Iran has moved forward with their nuclear weapons program on their watch. They ceded responsibility to dealing with it to the Europeans.

Now, the vice president, as you pointed out, spoke out loudly for lifting the sanctions on Iraq. John Kerry and I believe we need to strengthen the sanctions on Iraq, including closing the loophole that allows companies to use a subsidiary, offshore subsidiaries to do business with Iran.

I mentioned Halliburton a few minutes ago in connection with the $87 billion, and you raised it in this question. This is relevant, because he was pushing for lifting sanctions when he was CEO of Halliburton. Here's why we didn't think Halliburton should have a no-bid contract.

While he was CEO of Halliburton, they paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false information on their company, just like Enron and Ken Lay.

They did business with Libya and Iran, two sworn enemies of the United States.

They're now under investigation for having bribed foreign officials during that period of time.

Not only that, they've gotten a $7.5 billion no-bid contract in Iraq, and instead of part of their money being withheld, which is the way it's normally done, because they're under investigation, they've continued to get their money.

Halliburton has been a sore issue for this administration, and Cheney did a very poor job responding to these charges, simply stating they were 'false'. There is traction on this issue, I think, and when people find that a contributor to the mess in Iraq is Halliburton, Bush may suffer.