http://villagevoice.com/news/0547,ridgeway,70176,2.htmledit - link added
WASHINGTON, D.C.--Cheney’s temper tantrum against the Democrats at a Republican dinner Wednesday night reflects the growing pressure both he and Bush are coming under for the war in Iraq. The latest developments--allegations that Shiites tortured Sunni prisoners in a secret jail as Americans stood by--is sure to raise charges that far from trying to quell hints of civil war and hold Iraq together, Bush-Cheney are now embarked on another devilish twist, this one aimed at breaking the country apart, by sparking a civil war that can only end in a partition.
The BBC captured Cheney’s fit this way: The vice-president called the Democrats "opportunists" who were peddling "cynical and pernicious falsehoods" to gain political advantage while US soldiers died in Iraq.
"The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory or their backbone--but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," he said.
Instead of marshalling support for the Bush administration, Cheney’s remarks resulted in a stinging demand by a conservative-minded Democrat to get the troops out of Iraq.“The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home," said Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a senior Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees military spending, ABC reported this morning.
Meanwhile, Cheney’s world is continuing to crack. Not only is he widely viewed as the administration official who launched the campaign to out Valerie Plame and almost certainly will be the focus of a struggle in court with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald seeking his sworn testimony, but there are suspicions Washington Post star Bob Woodward’s source was Cheney. Woodard has dismissed the Plame affair as a trivial matter. He has acknowledged learning of the outing early on from some unnamed official, but kept it to himself. Meanwhile, his paper’s reporters struggled to find out who was leaking and to whom--little knowing their celebrity byline knew all along.