Today on Meet the Press, Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) had an unfortunate run-in with the facts of the Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab case, courtesy of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. After listening to Schock regurgitate the current GOP talking points about how the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab shows the Obama administration’s national security policies were making Americans unsafe, Maddow challenged Schock to explain the “basis of the assertion that reading someone their Miranda rights in unsafe.”

MADDOW: What’s the basis of the assertion that reading someone their Miranda rights in unsafe? We did that with every single person who’s been arrested on terrorism charges since 9/11. No one’s ever made an issue of it until the Obama administration and this case with Abdulmuttalab. Really, what’s the problem with being read your rights that wasn’t the problem before?

SCHOCK: Well, first of all, you suggested earlier that reading someone his Miranda rights does not — has never indicated that they talk less to our intelligence folks –

MADDOW: We’ve never heard that from the FBI.

SCHOCK: The fact of the matter is we do know that after the Christmas Day bomber was read his Miranda he did in fact stop cooperating with our intelligence –

MADDOW: That’s not true, actually, it’s not what we know from the people who’ve been involved in this. The “factual” basis of this is so thin!

Watch it:

It’s unsurprising that Rep. Schock is confused as to what the “facts of the matter” are, given the intense ongoing effort by conservative operatives to misstate the facts of the case, and to misrepresent the Obama administration’s counter-terrorism approach.

As Maddow noted, according to FBI director Robert Mueller, Abdulmuttalab was not Mirandized until after he had already made clear that he was not going to talk. The idea that informing someone of his rights — which is a requirement under U.S. law — is some sort of license not to cooperate is a ridiculous conservative invention. And, as Maddow noted, it’s not something they ever had a problem with until they saw an opportunity to use it to attack Democrats.

Vice President Biden, appearing on Larry King earlier this week, stated, “I am very optimistic about Iraq. I think it’s going to be one of the great achievements of this administration.” This statement has been widely distorted, with claims from conservatives that the Obama administration is trying to take credit for the surge.

Biden’s comments do no such thing; instead they note that the withdrawal of American troops — something that conservatives for years have said would be a disaster — has gone very well. In February, President Obama announced a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq — an issue that he campaigned on and was vigorously opposed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who advocated keeping U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely. Biden was pointing out that conservatives were wrong that withdrawal would, as Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol argued, “likely lead to carnage on a scale that would dwarf what is now occurring in Iraq.”

On ABC’s This Week today, former Vice President Cheney further distorted Biden’s comments and took credit for a withdrawal plan he opposed, saying that Biden should be “thanking George Bush.” Biden, however, pushed back against Cheney’s distortions on Meet the Press and Face the Nation, maintaining that the Iraq war “wasn’t worth it.” Biden argued that the Obama administration has managed the drawdown “very very well,” noting that the administration has acted as a “catalyst” for political reconciliation, which was the source of violence and the primary obstacle to a successful withdrawal. He also pointed out that in January 2009, the Bush administration had no political plan for Iraq. Watch Cheney and Biden:

Cheney’s attempt to take credit for the withdrawal represents a total turnaround. Just last summer, Cheney worried that Iraq withdrawal will “waste all the tremendous sacrifice” of US troops. Cheney has long fear-mongered on the implication of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. During the 2008 campaign, he even called the demands from Democrats in Congress for a timetable for withdrawal an act of “betrayal.”