What did Cheney say?
Most of the major media is reporting today that Dick Cheney said, effectively, that if John Kerry is elected President, America will likely suffer another 9/11-like attack:

CNN: A November win by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry would put the United States at risk of another "devastating" terrorist attack, Vice President Dick Cheney told supporters Tuesday.

AP: Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack.

MSNBC Question of the Day: Did V.P. Cheney go too far when he said the U.S. "will get hit again" if voters make the "wrong choice" in November?

Washington Post: Vice President Cheney warned on Tuesday that if John F. Kerry is elected, "the danger is that we'll get hit again" by terrorists, as the Bush campaign escalated a furious assault on the Democratic presidential nominee that has kept Kerry from gaining control of the election debate. In Des Moines, Cheney went beyond previous restraints to suggest that the country would be more vulnerable to attack under Kerry

All of this would make for a great story, if it were true.

Unfortunately it isn't.

In fact, in every AP and CNN news story I read, they didn't even quote Cheney's full sentence! Why, it's almost as if they parsed exactly what they needed to make the quote as incriminating as possible.

Patterico has Cheney's full quote:

We made decisions at the end of World War II, at the beginning of the Cold War, when we set up the Department of Defense, and the CIA, and we created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and undertook a bunch of major policy steps that then were in place for the next 40 years, that were key to our ultimate success in the Cold War, that were supported by Democrat and Republican alike -- Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Gerry Ford and a whole bunch of Presidents, from both parties, supported those policies over a long period of time. We're now at that point where we're making that kind of decision for the next 30 or 40 years, and it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

We have to understand it is a war. It's different than anything we've ever fought before. But they mean to do everything they can to destroy our way of life. They don't agree with our view of the world. They've got an extremist view in terms of their religion. They have no concept or tolerance for religious freedom. They don't believe women ought to have any rights. They've got a fundamentally different view of the world, and they will slaughter -- as they demonstrated on 9/11 -- anybody who stands in their way. So we've got to get it right. We've got to succeed here. We've got to prevail. And that's what is at stake in this election.

Clearly he is saying that if America is attacked again, the danger is that we may have a president who doesn't "get it" -- who views the situation as a law-enforcement matter, not as a military matter, as George W. Bush does.

So my Question of the Day: Did CNN, the AP, MSNBC and Washington Post go too far in misquoting the Vice President of the United States and then claiming that he said something controversial and offensive that he didn't actually say?

So seeing as how this is yet another manufactured controversy, I am sure apologies from these "news" organizations will be forthcoming. I am holding my breath...
- posted by The Dutchman @ 8:09:00 PM