Ohiocore

It is nothing to report that Vice President Cheney lies. This is well known and unremarkable. But the characteristic style of this administration's public address is somehow novel. It goes like this:

1. Start by repeating the lie that you have practiced, in your head. Not out loud!
   
2. Quick! Introduce some minute detail of partial truth, relying on the utterly compliant media not to contextualize the otherwise self-incriminating statement.
   
3. If they swallow that, then you're ok: finish the lie.
   
4. Not enough? Follow with a literal-truth non-sequitur to support the lie. How can they call you a liar when what you say is true? Truth supporting lies is still truth, right?
   
5. If they swallow that, go for the kill: overstate the lie in the most grandiose over-arching wildly counterfactual terms possible. Make it so far gone that, if held, it would ential this and future lies, and render (this) discussion immaterial.
   
6. Invoke nationalism/patriotism/jingoism for rhetorical flourish. Smile, shit-eater.
   

From the excerpted interview transcript at Washington Post, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Dick Cheney:

"The treatment they're getting ¹-- they got a brand new facility down at Guantanamo. We spent a lot of money to build it.² They're very well treated down there.³ They're living in the tropics.⁴ They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want.⁵ There isn't any other nation in the world that would treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we're treating these people.⁶"

Translation:

¹. The lie: Guantanamo prisoners -- oops, not prisoners -- detainees are "well treated". Shit, was that out loud?

². Truthy fragment: Brand new facility. Don't suggest "we were paid a lot of money" in Cheney's Halliburton/KBR contracting tens of millions of dollars to build exactly the facility he describes... and an upcoming $30 Million additional facility. It is new, isn't that nice?

³. Now the lie, with vigor: They're very well treated.

⁴. Non-sequitur: ah, the tropics. Like it's a friggin' catered pleasure spa vacation for them. Like they live better than you do, chump... You should hate and envy them... but mostly hate.

⁵. The BIG lie: "Everything they could possibly want": Except their families, basic freedoms, a trial by law, a newspaper, years of their life back, a home cooked meal, a professional occupation, standing amongst their peers, a future, a lawyer to represent them. Maybe some want a healthy sex life, to understand quantum mechanics, to drive a late model Mercedes, or to see the face of God. Or just dignity, self-determination and independence. All trivial hypothethical things.

Because in reality, they have everything they want. They want what we tell them to. But that's not all! They already have everything they could ever possibly want. Because we control their desire today, tomorrow, and each of their days thereafter. They will live and die before wanting a single saltine cracker more than they already have. Death before cracker.

They are the culture of death, remember? This is the way they want it.

No, of course you cannot ask to speak to them about it you arrogant upstart.

⁶. America good. America-killers bad. Godblessamerica. And we're done.

And we are done.