The Most Despicable Man in America

AP:

Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday harshly criticized Democrats' attempts to thwart President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq, saying their approach would "validate the al-Qaida strategy." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fired back that Cheney was questioning critics' patriotism.

"I hope the president will repudiate and distance himself from the vice president's remarks," Pelosi said. She said she tried to complain about Cheney to President Bush but could not reach him.

"You cannot say as the president of the United States, 'I welcome disagreement in a time of war,' and then have the vice president of the United States go out of the country and mischaracterize a position of the speaker of the House and in a manner that says that person in that position of authority is acting against the national security of our country," the speaker said.

On face value, Dick Cheney's neo-McCarthyite tactics are despicable; but having received seven deferments from serving in a war he supported, having taken the lead in lying us into a war that didn't need to be fought, and having been instrumental in outing the identity of an undercover CIA agent who had been working to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Dick Cheney is literally the last person in the United States who has a right to question anyone's patriotism.