The following essay was sent to The Political Garbage Chute from a mid-level employee at the Cheney Foundation for Peace Through Mendacity and Bloodshed. According to our source, Former Vice-President Dick Cheney will be sending it — or at least a draft of it — to various media outlets for publication this weekend. TPGC has decided to run it early.
“Why Brian Williams Should Go to Jail”
by Dick Cheney
If there is one thing all Americans simply must believe in, it’s accountability. If people are never held accountable for their actions, then there can never be any sense of justice. Not every crime is the same, nor should all crimes be punished in the same way, but if there is one crime that is most detrimental society it’s lying.
Lying erodes faith. It destroys confidence. Lying is dangerous on many levels, but most especially when it’s perpetrated by people we thought we could trust. Brian Williams is a known liar. He lied about experiences he had while covering that blessed, made-for-TV war. He lied in particular about events that happened that impacted soldiers putting themselves in harm’s way. If there is one thing I cannot stand, it’s someone lying when troops are involved.
Williams should go to jail for his crimes against humanity. How dare he tell lies about my war built on lies? That’s double-lying and as we all know, you can’t have a double-negative. Williams’ callous disregard for the facts is quite disturbing, is it not? How could he dare to go on the public airwaves and tell the Americans about things going on in Iraq that aren’t true?
No one elected Brian Williams. Americans are only comfortable with being lied to by their politicians, not their news outlets of choice. Of course, if you’re a liberal who is used to watching the mainstream media, maybe you aren’t shocked by this story, but I promise you that every good, red-blooded, patriotic Fox News watcher is flabbergasted — rightfully so in my estimation — by the complete breach of trust put on display by Williams. You’d never catch any of the fine, upstanding folks at Fox News lying, embellishing, or leaving out elements of a story to concoct a narrative that, say, Roger Ailes wants out on the air.
Brian Williams should be brought up on war crimes charges. After all, he lied about things that happened while he was in a war zone. If that doesn’t constitute a crime worthy of being tried on the international stage, I don’t know what does. And frankly, we all know I’m probably the world’s leading expert on war crimes, so if I say he committed one, then by God Williams created one.
Americans need to ask themselves a few questions. Were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Yes, but they belonged to my former boss Ronald Reagan first. Was there an active and deep connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein? No, there wasn’t. Was there yellow cake uranium smuggled into Iraq for a clandestine nuclear weapons program? No, no there wasn’t. Were we greeted as liberators? No. Did we accomplish anything in the region remotely resembling stability? Of course not.
How much of all that is Brian Williams’ fault? Sadly, we may never, ever know who is to blame for all those lies being told. We just might never, ever, ever know. It’s not enough for Williams to be merely suspended without pay; he needs to face real consequences for his lies. All liars must be punished.
Well, not all liars, but that’s different.
The bottom line is that someone has to pay the piper for Williams’ lies. Lies cannot go unpunished. Especially when they don’t get anyone killed. If you’re going to lie about war, make sure you do it on such a grand scale so as to never be held accountable by any future generation for fear of starting a political “gotcha” war because that is more important to avoid than is holding people accountable for their actions.
I mean, other than news reporters of course. If news reporters lie, they should by all rights be burned at the stake, but since the CIA torture report came out, I highly doubt we’re going to get to do that anymore. Which really bums me out. Nothing was more exhilarating or fun than watching someone be extra-judiciously tortured in the name of “national security.”
The United States of America cannot be a bastion of lies. We cannot allow people we are supposed to trust to lie to us. Lies must always be punished swiftly. No one is above the law, ever.
Of course, not all lying is the same. Some lying is good. Some lying is forthright. Some lying, when done to drag a country into a war it doesn’t think it wants, spending trillions of dollars it doesn’t have, based on moral authority it most certainly cannot call upon with any seriousness, is totally legitimate and actually deserving of having the liars’ faces carved into Mt. Rushmore.
