WACKO QUOTES WACKO

Over at Talking Points Memo, Steve Benen says, correctly, that Weekly Standard writer and Cheney biographer Stephen Hayes "has no idea what he's talking about" when he makes the preposterous assertion that, prior to the release of the recent National Intelligence Estimate,

administration critics had begun to make the argument that really this al-Qaeda threat is overblown

Of course this isn't what Iraq War critics have been saying.

But is it just Hayes who's making this assertion? Let's go the transcript of yesterday's Meet the Press, the source of the Hayes quote. The emphasis below is mine:

MR. RUSSERT: Steve Hayes, in your new book, "Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President," you write this. "Some people think if we" walk -- "just walk away from Iraq everything will be fine, that it's the optional war, that you don't have to be here, that it's possible to retreat behind our oceans and be safe and secure; withdrawal from Iraq doesn't damage our interest in this wider conflict. And that may be in part because they don't believe there’s a wider conflict. I know different. It's so clear to me. I have trouble understanding why" it's "unclear to everybody else." That same certitude that David Brook uses to describe the president, you're using to describe the vice president.

MR. STEPHEN HAYES: Yeah, it's very interesting. I think one of the things we saw this week, and this, this speaks directly to what the vice president told me, is with this -- the release of this NIE we saw a shift in thinking. I think for a long time administration critics had begun to make the argument that really this al-Qaeda threat is overblown, that they misled us into the war in Iraq, they're misleading us about the seriousness of the threat from al-Qaeda. And I think what the NIE does, even though in some ways it's, it's very critical of the administration, is it strengthens the basic case that the administration has been making that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat.

So this isn't just what Hayes thinks. This is what Cheney thinks. Cheney thinks we think al-Qaeda isn't a threat. Cheney appears to be the one making this assertion.

Remember the story of these two guys: Hayes wrote article after article in which he insisted there was a profound link between the Saddam Hussein regime and al-Qaeda. Then he made that notion the subject of a thoroughly implausible book -- implausible, that is, except (presumably) to Dick Cheney, who subsequently agreed to cooperate when Hayes began writing a biography of him.

Clearly these two guys have bonded over their shared belief that -- damn the facts -- Saddam and Osama had a significant connection. Hayes and Cheney clearly share a belief that anyone who opposes a war in Iraq must not give a damn about al-Qaeda because, to them, Iraq and al-Qaeda are, and always have been, the same thing.