Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech this week to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee:
Over the past four years, other free nations have risen in the broader Middle East. … Across that region, the political dialogue has been transformed — — and politicians, scholars, students, and men and women from every walk of life are talking about freedom, equal rights, and accountable institutions of government. One leader in Lebanon said: “When I saw the Iraqi people voting, it was the start of a new Arab world…The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.”
The “leader in Lebanon” whose analysis Cheney apparently trusts is Walid Jumblatt, a racist anti-Semite who has celebrated the deaths of U.S. soldiers and referred to Condoleezza Rice as “oil-colored.” A few of Jumblatt’s low lights:
— “We are all happy when U.S. soldiers are killed [in Iraq] week in and week out. The killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory.” [Link]
— “The oil axis is present in most of the U.S. administration, beginning with its president, vice-president and top advisers, including (Condoleezza) Rice, who is oil-colored, while the axis of Jews is present with Paul Wolfowitz, the leading hawk who is inciting (America) to occupy and destroy Iraq.” [Link]
— “In November 2003, the United States revoked Jumblatt’s diplomatic visa for wishing out loud that Wolfowitz had been killed in a Baghdad rocket attack.” [Link]
So why did Cheney quote Jumblatt? Maybe because they’re the only two who believe that reform in Lebanon was inspired by the Iraq war: “’I’ve never heard it from anybody except Walid Jumblatt,’ laughs Jamil Mroue, editor-in-chief of Beirut’s Daily Star newspaper.”