CHENEY
WASHINGTON (AP):
VICE-PRESIDENT DICK Cheney charged yesterday that some Senate Democrats were "dishonest and reprehensible" for suggesting that President George W. Bush lied to the nation about going to war in Iraq and said he strongly disagrees with a battle-tested congressman who advocates a pullout.
Cheney said he has no quarrel with the right of Rep. John Murtha to propose a withdrawal of troops, calling him "a good man, a Marine, a patriot."
"Nor is there any problem with debating whether the United States and its allies should have liberated Iraq in the first place," Cheney said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank. "Nobody is saying we should not be having this discussion."
Murtha, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations defence sub-committee, roiled the nation's capital last week when he proposed that all of the almost 160,000 U.S. forces in Iraq be withdrawn over six months. Murtha has been one of the biggest Pentagon boosters in Washington.
"What is not legitimate, and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible, is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence," Cheney said.
