Reality Check

There were plenty of distortions and contrasting views of reality presented by Sen. John Edwards and Vice President Dick Cheney in the debate on Tuesday night, but if you were looking for a blockbuster lie, there was one of those too. Edwards took pains to point out to the audience that Cheney had made repeated statements connecting Iraq with al Qaeda, at times going off the topic of the question to do so. It took Cheney a while to respond to that charge, but he did, finally – with a lie.

"I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11," Cheney said.

Here's what the vice president told NPR's Morning Edition in January: "I think there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government."

Beyond that flat-out lie, there was condescension. Cheney repeatedly adopted the tone of a strict father or disapproving teacher: "You're never going to build a coalition with that kind of attitude;" "You have one of the worst attendance records in the Senate;" and "You probably weren't there to vote for that." Moderator Gwen Ifill supported that frame with questions suggesting that Edwards had the least government experience for a vice-presidential candidate in decades. Her question pushed this envelope with "French and German officials have both said they have no intention, even if John Kerry is elected, of sending any troops into Iraq for any peacekeeping effort. Does that make your effort or your plan to internationalize this effort seem kind of naive?"

Edwards countered with the right emphasis – essentially suggesting that experience was no substitute for good judgment, echoing John Kerry's line from last week's presidential debate that one can "be certain and be wrong." Edwards quoted Paul Bremer, the former U.S. administrator in Iraq, who said that not enough soldiers had been brought in to do the job and that we invaded without a plan. Edwards pointed out that Republican Sens. John McCain, Dick Lugar, and Chuck Hagel had described Iraq as a mess.

Cheney did little to defend these accusations, perhaps because they are indefensible. Instead, he stayed "on message": "We did exactly the right thing. ... What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action."

Edwards hammered away at the lack of international support for the U.S. war on Iraq, the lack of a real coalition and the consequence of unilateralism: "You know, we've taken 90 percent of the coalition causalities. American taxpayers have borne 90 percent of the costs of the effort in Iraq."

Cheney's response was to twist Edwards' statements and suggest that Edwards was somehow "demeaning" the Iraqis. "Gwen, the 90 percent figure is just dead wrong," Cheney began, then proceeding to use some fuzzy math of his own. "When you include the Iraqi security forces that have suffered casualties, as well as the allies, they've taken almost 50 percent of the casualties in operations in Iraq, which leaves the U.S. with 50 percent, not 90 percent. ..." Then, slipping into the self-righteous tone, he tried to lecture Edwards, saying the Iraqis are "increasingly the ones out there putting their necks on the line to take back their country from the terrorists and the old regime elements that are still left. They're doing a superb job. And for you to demean their sacrifices. ..."

Edwards didn't let up, pointing out later that President Bush and Cheney had been peddling another fiction to the American public – that elections in Iraq were on schedule: "Right now, the United Nations, which is responsible for the elections in January, has about 35 people there. Now, that's compared with a much smaller country like East Timor, where they had over 200 people on the ground. You need more than 35 people to hold an election in Cleveland, much less in Iraq. "