Slick Dick Strikes Again

A couple of days ago, in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Vice President Cheney said that China, in cooperation with Cuba, is drilling for oil 60 miles off the coast of Florida. He made this assertion in a speech calling for more offshore drilling by American oil companies. Those firms are currently restricted to certain areas of the Gulf of Mexico.

Problem is, the statement is not true. There are no Chinese or Cubans drilling for oil so close to the U.S. coast. That's okay, though, since this is hardly the first occasion on which our fearless Vice Leader has been caught fibbing. Even more importantly, at least this time no Americans died because of a Cheney lie.

Cheney's office has sought to downplay the episode by explaining that the Vice President read about the China-Cuba joint venture in a George Will column.

Huh? George Will? First of all, Will is an idiot. Maybe not quite as large an idiot as, say, Rush Limbaugh, but that's not for the lack of trying. And since when does the U.S. government rely on commentators and opinion writers for its intelligence gathering? Are actual facts outmoded? Have we learned nothing from the Iraq fiasco?

No wonder this administration is so royally screwed up.