OMG! Cheney on MTP

W.M.D. in Iran? Q.E.D.
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 28, 2007

Quod erat demonstrandum: a Latin phrase used at the end of a definitive proof

This week, Maureen Dowd’s dental fillings are picking up a Meet The Press episode that hasn’t happened yet.

RUSSERT: How close are we to war with Iran?
CHENEY: Well, I think we are in the final stages of diplomacy, obviously. We have done virtually everything we can with respect to carrots, if you will. It’s time for squash. Not to mention mushrooms, clouds of them.
RUSSERT: Isn’t Secretary Rice still pushing carrots for Iran?
CHENEY: The more carrots Condi feeds ’em, the better they’ll be able to see the bombs coming.

Dowd must be on a truly strange diet because she has become obsessed with vegetables. She has mentioned using carrots as a motivator with Iraq back during In A Dinner Jacket’s speech and earlier this week as well. The vegetable stew recall Condoleezza Rice’s testimony that the smoking gun in Iraq could be a mushroom cloud.

Another Dowd fascination is with the career backgrounds of Middle-Eastern dictators. She dismissed Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an engineer with PhD, as a traffic planner.

CHENEY: Syria is not a country, Tim. It’s a way station run by an eye doctor.

Sure enough, according to Wikipedia, Syrian hereditary president Bashar al-Assad has an ophthalmology degree. Dowd’s preoccupation with mocking the previous jobs of politicians is intriguing. If being an engineer or doctor isn’t good enough to run a country, what is? Actor? Rancher? Housewife? Journalist?

We then get a brief lesson in the 20th century handling of dangerous dictators.

CHENEY: Why don’t we just give the Islamofascists Sudetenland, Tim? Peace in our time.
RUSSERT: The Europeans are upset that you might start another war in their backyard.
CHENEY: (Rolling his eyes and muttering under his breath) Eurappeasers.

Both Sudetenland and Eurappeasers evoke the efforts of pre-World War II European leaders to satiate Hitler’s lust for territory. The Sudetenland was a part of Czechoslovakia that Hitler really, really wanted. ImaginaryCheney here has clearly lost the debate by invoking Godwin’s Law.

CHENEY: You really want Rudy Giuliani playing with the nuclear button, Tim? Now, that’s insane.

According to Dowd, Cheney is going to be the insane Slim Pickens riding the bomb down to Tehran. That must make Rudy President Merkin Muffley.