I used to think time was on my side with ol’ Dick Cheney; that that ticker of his couldn’t possibly continue to propel his fetid corpus onto Meet the Press and whatnot, to croak dire threats of the danger of everyone not doing exactly whatever he said, for much longer.  That he was always later proven to be lying would never dent his “credibility” in the media, of course, so I figured that the only way to get rid of one of America’s greatest and most financially successful monsters was for the grim reaper to take another whack at him, and finally not miss this time.  But Cheney, like, say, Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il, isn’t planning on letting the throne leave the family even in death, and as luck would have it, deferment #5, also known as Liz, has turned out to be a chip off the old block.  The Cheneys will outlive us all, it turns out.

It matters not to the media that Liz’s sudden ascension to Serious Military Analyst is a product of nothing but nepotism, since that’s how most of the people in the media got their jobs, and for most media stars, being wrong all the time is an asset, too.  Stupidity loves company.  The worst part, though, is the naked corruption on display; a war profiteer’s daughter is repeatedly invited on television to cheerlead for more wars, which is the family business, after all, and the audience is assumed to be too clueless to see what’s going on?   I know what’s going on when the local Volvo dealer puts his daughters on a commercial, and that’s all Cheney is: a commercial for more wars, and yet the usually penny-pinching media monopolies run them her appearances free, letting Halliburton put it on the tab.

As the clip above demonstrates, Cheney’s answer to every situation reads like a laundry list of no-bid contracts she’d like to hand out, proving that that apple didn’t fall too far from the tree….   No Cheney has ever seen a taxpayer dollar they didn’t want to get their grubby paws on, and the fact that she would use an (almost certainly overblown) Yemeni terrorist event to argue for not just more money for “intelligence,” but also for several more decades in Afghanistan is about as surprising as a fish arguing in favor of water, yet at this late date her baldly self-serving words are treated as news, worthy of serious consideration.  Why not have Paris Hilton come on to rail against the estate tax, and threaten to move to the Caymans?   Never mind.  They probably have, maybe in the previous segment.  The casual acceptance, though, of such glaring conflicts of interests in supposedly “expert” spokespeople trotted out to opine on issues involving their own business interests has become so commonplace, and obvious, that few believe anything they see on television, and cynically assume that everyone is just lying to feather their own nest.  And why wouldn’t they?

Of course, the only beneficiaries of this weird agnosticism are the liars themselves, who laugh all the way to their many well-feathered nests.  Look at the success with which the pollution industry has thus cast doubts about global warming, while people actually believe that scientists cooked the whole thing up (no pun intended) for grant money.  Look at the way trailer-dwelling Teabaggers decry taxes on rich people, Gulf Coast residents scream for more oil drilling, or Medicare beneficiaries demand an end to government health care.  This, and the very presence of Liz Cheney in our political discourse lays bare how (to use Glenn Greenwald’s favorite word for it), rotten what passes for politics has become.   The news isn’t just commercial.  It is a commercial.   And the spokesmodel isn’t even cute.

It turns out that the left-wing commentator Glenn Greenwald doesn’t like me (who knew?). In a rather long posting, he accuses me of many different sins, mainly, though not exclusively, having to do with my early support for the Iraq war, and for my reporting from pre-invasion Iraqi Kuridstan. (Greenwald has always been vehemently opposed to the invasion.)

So he starts right off obtusely saying, like a four-year old, that that “left-wing,”  long-winded Greenwald, for no apparent reason, just “doesn’t like me.”  Well, boo f*ucking hoo.  You say obnoxious, false, and asinine things in print; what’s to like?  And he manages, unconvincingly, to imply that Greenwald is some nobody anyway, even though he’s clearly smarter, much more highly regarded, and, well, more in touch with reality than ol’ Goldberg, and also lacks Goldberg’s lengthy and unblemished record of wrongness.

As it happens, I was e-mailing yesterday with the prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, Barham Salih, and I mentioned Greenwald’s critique. I explained that Greenwald believes the invasion was a criminal act, to which Salih responded by asking if Greenwald had ever visited Iraqi Kurdistan. I said I didn’t know, not having too much contact with him, on account of him hating me. So Salih asked me to extend an invitation to Greenwald to visit Iraqi Kurdistan. So, Glenn, you are hereby invited to visit Iraqi Kurdistan. I’m happy to go with you (I’m actually a  pretty good travel companion — even Matt Yglesias says that I can be both “funny” and “charming,” though, to be fair, he also says I can be “dangerous” and “inaccurate”). But if you didn’t want to go with me, I’m sure I can find someone to go with you.

This paragraph smells so strongly of ass that I would only recommend it to the constipated, to be read on the toilet.  First, the bragging:  ”I emailed real Iraqis, nyeah nyeah.”  Then the fake best friend speaks up, then the completely fabricated offer, and then the insulting remark that Greenwald supposedly couldn’t find a traveling companion with the unfortunate but telling accidental admission that it’s Goldberg who has to beg people to ride with him on an elevator.  Glenn has a husband, fatso, and by the way, the Iraq invasion was illegal, and is seen as such by the majority of humanity.

The prime minister said we could invite Kurds from different political parties and media outlets to  a big, public forum, and Glenn could explain to them his position that the invasion was immoral, and the Kurds could explain why they supported the invasion. (Of course, we would try to find some Kurds who opposed the invasion, and there are, indeed, some out there, to meet with Greenwald as well).  We would also be able to visit Halabja, and the other towns and villages affected by Saddam’s genocide, and I’m sure we could arrange meetings with other Kurdish leaders and dissidents.

It’s funny how righties always try to pose as humanitarians, when they will gladly toss humans into the meat grinder, and money down the toilet, for their pet wars, which kind of makes life crappy or over for many more people that it “helps.”  Remember Laura Bush and the plight of Afghan Women?  Me neither.  Goldberg is just a cynical piece of shit who cares less about Kurds that he does about any other brown-skinned human;  Saddam was indeed a monster, but he never managed to kill as many Americans as, say, George W. Bush, who was, back in the day, Goldberg’s hero.

Obviously, I think this is a good idea, because I view the subject of Iraq as a complicated one, and I think that Greenwald has an overly simplistic, black-and-white view of the situation.  If he were to meet with representatives of the Kurds — who make up 20 percent of the population of Iraq and who were the most oppressed group in Iraq during the period of Saddam’s rule (experiencing not only a genocide but widespread chemical gassing) — I think it might be possible for him to understand why some people — even some Iraqis — supported the overthrow of Saddam. Also, as a bonus, I’m reasonably sure we could meet with Kurdish intelligence officials who could explain to him why they believe Saddam was secretly supporting an al Qaeda-affiliated Kurdish extremist group, and, if we have time, I could also arrange a visit to Najaf or the equivalent, where Greenwald could meet with representatives of the Shi’a, who also took it on the chin from Saddam.

This is where just being an ass descends into being a complete idiot with a lampshade on your head and a wet spot on the front of your trousers.  The bouncers are assuredly coming to get you when you, in 2010, claim that Saddam was involved with Al Qaeda.  Better yet, in Goldberg’s world, the rise of the Shi’a, which brought with it the rise of religious extremism in Iraq and directly led to the triumph of Shiite Iran in the region was all good, too.  Can a person be dumber and more self-contradictory than that and still be, pardon the expression, “toilet trained?”  As for the usual straw man arguments the pervade Goldberg’s thin and embarrassing tirade, saying Greenwald somehow fails to see how “complicated” the Iraq situation is is perhaps the most pathetic.  Greenwald, like every other sentient, “simplistic” human on earth, knew that Iraq would be a costly, pointless disaster, and it is, in spades, whether the Kurds are marginally and temporarily happier at the moment or not.

This is a sincere offer from a very important Kurdish official, and I hope Glenn Greenwald takes it seriously.

Why?  It isn’t serious.  The worst thing for the portly and pampered Goldberg would be that Greenwald takes him up on it, which I’m pretty sure he will.  That’s when Goldberg will pull a Sarah Palin (minus the cute) and back out and blame Greenwald.  I’ve seen this movie many, many, times.