Fight or Die

By: Bill O'Reilly for BillOReilly.com
Thursday, Oct 14, 2004

Sometimes in life you have to stand and fight even if it means extreme discomfort. That's what's going on inside Iraq right now and, personally, each one of us will have to face a vital confrontation sometime in our lives.

Iraq may not be the right place to engage Islama-fascism, but it is the reality America faces. Incredible circumstances like 9/11, faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and a unique world war against terrorism, have conspired to bring America a challenge that is simply brutal. But to surrender to that challenge would open a door of unintended consequences that would threaten all of us.

An Iraq run by terrorists would be another Afghanistan under the Taliban. Jihadists would be trained and dispatched to spread fear and death throughout the world. Eventually, the nuclear scientists in Iran could very well provide that kind of weaponry to the terrorists in neighboring Iraq. That's a doomsday scenario if there ever was one.

You would think the rest of the world would understand the threat, but many countries simply look the other way, calculating that America or Israel will take the brunt of any high tech terrorism. We know now that Saddam bribed high-ranking officials in France and Russia, and perhaps even China, through the UN's oil-for-food program. So it's not hard to understand why those countries refused to move against a gravy train dictator spending billions to keep himself in power. But Saddam is gone, so why not help stabilize Iraq now? Surely, that would enhance world security.

The leaders of France, Germany, Russia and China have no answers to that question. And so the chaos in Iraq which is largely being driven by homicidal terrorists is being confronted by the U.S. and a few allies when every civilized nation should be clamoring to help defeat the terrorists inside Iraq.

This fight is a defining moment in American history. All the screwups in the past mean little when the future of that country is considered. Both President Bush and John Kerry have failed to define the seriousness of the situation to Americans, many of whom are still in a fog of anti-war state induced by Howard Dean and other cut-and-run types.

The difficulty and frustration of the war in Iraq is almost painful to contemplate as Americans are dying nearly every day. But no president can allow terrorists to create a nuclear jihad zone. And there is no question that is what the terrorists want; a place where they can operate with impunity, a place of hatred and unlimited violence.

Sometimes you must stand and fight even when others do not have the will or the courage. This is one of those times.

How the Sanctions Worked

How the Sanctions Worked
Debra Saunders
October 14, 2004

It turns out that the anti-war crowd was right that national leaders' decisions on what to do about Iraq were based on oil and greed -- they were just wrong about which countries' leaders. According to the new Iraq Survey Group study by intelligence analyst Charles A. Duelfer, Saddam Hussein systematically bribed or greased the palms of officials and businessmen from countries that are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- France, Russia and China -- with the goal of undermining the U.N. sanctions. Not only did that strategy work, but Hussein's corruption of the Oil for Food program also bankrolled his lethal projects.

Oil for Food was supposed to feed the hungry in Iraq, but it turned into a bonanza that delivered $350 million to Hussein's Military Industrial Commission in 2001. As Hussein said in 2000, "We have said with certainty that the (U.N.) embargo will not be lifted by a Security Council resolution but will corrode by itself." Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "sanctions had steadily weakened to the point where Iraq, in 2000-2001, was confidently designing missiles around components that could only be obtained outside sanctions."

The bottom line: Those who argued that President Bush and the world should "let the sanctions work" had no idea that the sanctions were funding the planned return of weapons of mass destruction with missiles that could propel them beyond Iraq.

Worse, while Duelfer expects to find no militarily significant caches of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that doesn't mean they all were destroyed.

As his report noted, "We cannot definitively say whether or not WMD materials were transferred out of Iraq before the war. Neither can we definitively answer some questions about possibly retained stocks."

The lesson Hussein learned from the Persian Gulf War was that he should have had more WMD, and more powerful WMD, not that he should give them up. Hussein believed that Baghdad's biological and chemical weapons "deterred Coalition Forces from pressing their attack beyond the goal of freeing Kuwait."

Duelfer believed that Iraq would have developed more lethal weapons: nukes. As he testified, many senior Iraqis believed "they had blundered in invading Kuwait before completing their nuclear weapons program."

And: "Those around Saddam seemed quite convinced that once sanctions were ended -- and all other things being equal -- Saddam would renew his efforts in this field." ("This field" means nukes.) Coverage of the Duelfer report has concentrated on the politics of the report -- like all front-page stories, it is bad for Bush -- and Hussein's December 2002 announcement to top lieutenants that he didn't have WMD, so they would have to rely on a very different defense strategy.

(As an aside, let me note that if Hussein's top military men didn't know the regime lacked significant WMD until December 2002, maybe it's not a sign of gross incompetence that the CIA did not know either.)

Other bad news from the report:

"By 2003, Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agent in a period of months and nerve agent in less than a year or two."

Hussein was so unafraid of the United States and the United Nations after losing the Persian Gulf War that he used WMD on southern Shiite rebels in his own country in 1991.

Former U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks used to deride the Oil for Food program as "Oil for Palaces." The Duelfer report, however, paints the program as more like "Oil for Propaganda." And: Oil for WMD. Countries corrupted by Hussein's henchmen called for an end to the U.N. sanctions as the sanctions led to more suffering among the Iraqi people. With pockets bulging, leaders in these countries did the bidding of the one man who caused the suffering as he prepared to amass an arsenal that could spread death across the globe.

War critics in America, who will never look at the Duelfer report, will cite it as proof that the war in Iraq was ill considered. Apparently, they don't care that Hussein misled the world.

Or that he was gearing up to manufacture more lethal weapons.

Or that he killed Shiite Iraqis with WMD under the watch of the United Nations.

They only care about bashing Bush.

Condemnation Through Praise, Part II

A political tactic? I am convinced. Out of nowhere, Vice President Cheney's daughter is used as a political pawn in their game of condemnation through false praise.

Commentators after the debate, when called on the shameful faux pax, unanimously stated, "Vice President Cheney's daughter is a major component of the election and an integral part of the campaign."

Oh, really? Since when?

Slimeballs.

From the Vice Presidential Debate, 03 October 2004

Edwards:

EDWARDS: Yes. Let me say first, on an issue that the vice president said in his last answer before we got to this question, talking about tax policy, the country needs to know that under what they have put in place and want to put in place, a millionaire sitting by their swimming pool, collecting their statements to see how much money they're making, make their money from dividends, pays a lower tax rate than the men and women who are receiving paychecks for serving on the ground in Iraq.

EDWARDS: Now, they may think that's right. John Kerry and I do not.

We don't just value wealth, which they do. We value work in this country. And it is a fundamental value difference between them and us.

Now, as to this question, let me say first that I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy.

And I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, and so does John Kerry.

I also believe that there should be partnership benefits for gay and lesbian couples in long-term, committed relationships.

But we should not use the Constitution to divide this country.

EDWARDS: No state for the last 200 years has ever had to recognize another state's marriage.

This is using the Constitution as a political tool, and it's wrong.

From the third Presidential Debate, 13 October 2004

Kerry:

KERRY: We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.

I think if you talk to anybody, it's not choice. I've met people who struggled with this for years, people who were in a marriage because they were living a sort of convention, and they struggled with it.

And I've met wives who are supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally sort of broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them.

I think we have to respect that.

The president and I share the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. I believe that. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.

But I also believe that because we are the United States of America, we're a country with a great, unbelievable Constitution, with rights that we afford people, that you can't discriminate in the workplace. You can't discriminate in the rights that you afford people.

You can't disallow someone the right to visit their partner in a hospital. You have to allow people to transfer property, which is why I'm for partnership rights and so forth.

Now, with respect to DOMA and the marriage laws, the states have always been able to manage those laws. And they're proving today, every state, that they can manage them adequately.

CONTINUING...

From TownHall.com

Mary Cheney and More
Mona Charen
October 15, 2004

There was one moment in the final presidential debate in which John Kerry was downright likable. When offering up the standard gallant remark that he, Bush and Bob Schieffer had all "married up," Kerry had the presence of mind to realize instantly how that sounded coming from not just the only man on the stage, but one of the only men in America, who had been fortunate enough to marry a billionaire.

Grinning broadly, he added: "I more than others, perhaps. It's OK, I can take it." It was obviously spontaneous and funny.

Yet Kerry was also guilty of a smarmy mention of Dick Cheney's daughter being a lesbian. This was no offhand remark. Sen. John Edwards had raised it during the vice presidential debates as well, under the guise of "praising" the vice president for "embracing" his gay daughter. Sorry, but it just doesn't seem likely that Edwards was looking for ways to applaud his opponent. It was clearly some sort of strategy on the part of the ticket.

Following the debate, Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry's campaign manager, asserted defensively that since Mary Cheney was open about her sexuality, her situation was "fair game." Fair game for what? For exploitation? This doesn't add up.

Democrats will doubtless argue that Kerry raised the matter of Cheney's sexuality to dramatize the point that homosexuality is not a chosen lifestyle. How can it be so when even Republican vice presidents have lesbian daughters? But that's unpersuasive. Bush had just finished saying that he didn't know whether gays choose to be gay or are born that way. It was gratuitous and unnecessary.

Was Kerry trying to damage the Bush-Cheney ticket by calling attention to something many conservative Republicans probably did not know about the vice president's daughter?

Here's how that makes sense. Liberals tend to believe that conservatives are bigots. On the subject of homosexuality, they think conservatives oppose gay marriage not because they genuinely believe in the sanctity of heterosexual marriage but because they hate gays. To cite Mary Cheney therefore seems to them a "gotcha" moment.

It was tawdry. One cannot even imagine what stratospheric level of outrage the national press would have reached if a Republican had commented on the sexuality of a Democrat's child.

Another revealing moment: the discussion of religion. President Bush was nearly eloquent on the subject. Kerry seemed to picking his carefully focus-grouped way through a potential minefield. He wanted credit for being Catholic with its Kennedy associations, but also made it clear that he would never impose his religious views on anyone else.

In fact, he rhetorically backed up and drove over this territory a number of times. His religious views are terribly important to him, he protested. But he would never, never impose those view on anyone. It reminds me of the line that was once current about Sen. Teddy Kennedy, that his religious views were so personal he declined to impose them on anyone -- including himself.

We Bush supporters have had to become accustomed to his peculiar dips and rises. Had he been as focused, energetic, articulate and persuasive in Debate I as he was in Debate III, the election would probably be a foregone conclusion. But Bush has a habit of getting lazy, or distracted, or I don't know what and slipping down to within view of the precipice. The palms sweat. He then reaches down into himself and finds the wherewithal to scratch his way back up to safe ground.

Structurally, this should not have been a close election. The country has not elected a self-proclaimed liberal since Lyndon Johnson and hasn't elected a non-Southern Democrat since John F. Kennedy. Both Mondale and Dukakis, who believe all of the same things Kerry does, lost by crushing margins. Further, the savage attack on the United States revived Americans' desire for a muscular foreign policy -- an unequivocal advantage for the president. It should have been short work for the Bush campaign to quickly sketch Kerry's extremely liberal voting record for voters.

Yet they didn't. They painted him as a flip-flopper. If the Swift Boat Veterans had not charged into the breach, Bush might be behind today. (And ironically enough, if the Federal Election Commission had bowed to the Bush campaign's wishes to include all 527s under the campaign finance restrictions, the Swift Boat Vets would have been silenced.)

President Bush very much deserves to be re-elected. But he has made difficult what ought to have been easy.

AND...

From The Boston Globe

PARENTAL RESPONSE
Kerry's Comment Draws Fire From Cheney, Wife
Senator Spoke of VP's Gay Daughter
By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff | October 15, 2004

MILWAUKEE -- It was a brief mention, a few seconds in Wednesday night's 90-minute presidential debate. But Senator John F. Kerry's reference to Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary, who is a lesbian, touched off a campaign-trail tempest yesterday.

In response to a question on whether he thinks homosexuality is a choice, Kerry responded: ''We're all God's children . . . And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it's not a choice."

Almost immediately, Republicans expressed outrage at Kerry's mention of Mary Cheney. Some accused Kerry of raising her name in an effort to sway voters who might be put off by homosexuality, and criticized a statement by Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill on FOX News that the vice president's daughter is ''fair game."

''I did have a chance to assess John Kerry once more," said Lynne Cheney, the vice president's wife, at a post-debate rally in Coraopolis, Pa. ''This is not a good man. And of course, I am speaking as a mom and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man -- what a cheap and tawdry political trick."

At a rally in Fort Myers, Fla., yesterday, the vice president told the crowd that Kerry ''will say and do anything in order to get elected . . . And I am not speaking just as a father here -- though I am a pretty angry father -- but as a citizen."

The Democrats pushed back. Yesterday morning, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, told ABC News Radio that Lynne Cheney's response had made her ''really sad."

''It indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences that I'm certain makes her daughter uncomfortable," Elizabeth Edwards said. ''That makes me very sad on a personal level."

Kerry campaign advisers said Republicans were using the issue to distract voters from the economic issues raised in the debate.

In a written statement issued yesterday, Kerry said: ''I love my daughters. They love their daughter. I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue."

Mary Cheney, who is working in her father's reelection campaign, is openly gay, and the vice president has brought her up in answer to questions on his position on gay marriage. He believes the matter should be left to the states to decide, even though the president has strongly supported a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

During the vice presidential debate, moderator Gwen Ifill questioned Cheney about Bush's push for a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. When it was time for Edwards to comment, he said, ''You can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing." Cheney thanked Edwards for his ''kind words." Afterward, Mary Cheney and her partner came on the stage to appear with the vice president.

The controversy has angered some gay activists. The Log Cabin Republicans, a gay group that withheld its endorsement of Bush this year because of his support for the federal constitutional amendment, criticized both parties.

''Kerry could have made his points without mentioning the vice president's daughter," said Chris Barron, the group's political director. ''But the reality is, it was the president and his campaign that have politicized gay and lesbian families during this election. It's outrageous that gays and lesbians have been used in this way during the campaign."

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, found the query that led to Kerry's answer -- whether homosexuality is a choice -- offensive in itself, saying it was appropriate for Kerry to mention Cheney.

''Gay and lesbian people have been watching our lives and our issues being tossed round like a political football, as opposed to being talked about as real people, with real lives and real families, and real human issues," he said. ''Mary Cheney was the gay liaison for Coors, she is a key leader in [the vice president's] campaign. It's not as if Kerry talked about a person who wasn't out of the closet . . . It put a human face on the issue."

''What's tawdry, and what they should be angry about, is the Republican party's overt and ugly smears of all gay people including, therefore, [their own] daughter," Foreman said. ''They ought to call off their buddies on the radical right who cannot talk about gay people without also talking about pedophilia, bestiality, and molestation, [instead of choosing] the party and this partisan game-playing over their own child."

Patrick Healy of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Moronic Leftists.

AND...

From The Michigan News

SENATOR JOHN KERRY SHOWS HIS MEANNESS
By Michael J. Gaynor
Oct 14, 2004, 14:30

There was one big mistake during the final presidential debate.

Senator Kerry made it.

He let viewers and listeners know that he really is mean.

As a returned Vietnam Veteran, the attention-hungry Senator Kerry obtained public attention by condemning the Americans bravely fighting in Vietnam as war criminals akin to the hordes of Ghengis Kahn.

A mean lie on which to build a political career in Massachusetts.

The Swift Boat Veterans of Truth are making Americans aware of that truth about Senator Kerry, since it happened more than 30 years ago.

During the final presidential debate, Senator Kerry movingly told the world that his dying mother's last three words to him were the same word: INTEGRITY.

SO DON'T BLAME SENATOR KERRY'S MOTHER FOR HIS LACK OF INTEGRITY AND DOWNRIGHT MEANNESS!

She apparently tried her best to her dying day.

Some people refuse to behave decently.

Some people will say and do anything to win.

Asked whether homosexuality is a choice, President Bush said he did not know and called for all people to be treated with respect.

In sharp contrast, Senator Kerry chose to do what his running mate, Senator Edwards, did during the vice presidential debate: gratuitously mention that Mary Cheney, one of Vice President Dick Cheney's daughters, is a lesbian.

Senator Kerry added that Mary Cheney would probably affirm that she was born that way.

The question was addressed to President Bush and Senator Kerry, not Mary Cheney.

Team Kerry considers Mary Cheney "fair game," in the words of Mary Beth Cahill, Senator Kerry's campaign manager and Senator Kennedy's former chief of staff.

Mary Cheney should be honored to join America's patriotic Vietnam Veterans as a target of opportunity of Senator Kerry.

Senator Kerry naturally earned a loving mother's wrath for taking the slimy path.

Lynn Cheney, Mary Cheney's mother, accused Senator Kerry of pulling a "cheap and tawdry political trick" by gratuitously invoking her daughter's sexuality in the debate.

Mrs. Cheney made clear that she thought that Senator Kerry had crossed a line into family privacy after the debate:

"Now, you know, I did have a chance to assess John Kerry once more and now the only thing I could conclude: This is not a good man," she said.

"Of course, I am speaking as a mom, and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick."

Senator Kerry's mother probably would be disappointed too.

So please don't blame Senator Kerry's mother!

FROM...

TurkishPress

Republicans attack Kerry for invoking Cheney's lesbian daughter
RENO, Nevada, Oct 14 (AFP) - President George W. Bush's campaign accused his Democratic rival John Kerry of "attacking" the vice president's openly gay daughter by referring to her sexual orientation during their last presidential debate.

Kerry mentioned Mary Cheney during the Wednesday evening debate when asked whether homosexuality was a choice, part of the broader divisive debate about gay marriage.

"We're all God's children, and I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as," Kerry replied.

The vice president, his wife Lynne Cheney, and Bush campaign aides assailed Kerry for the reference -- just one week after Dick Cheney thanked his Democratic rival John Edwards for his "kind words" about his daughter during their debate.

"John Kerry, John Edwards and (Kerry spokeswoman) Mary Beth Cahill have made perfectly clear that they have made attacking Mary Cheney their policy," Bush campaign spokeswoman Nicolle Devenish told reporters at a campaign rally here.

Kerry's comments were "crass, below the belt," she said. "His comments last night were out of bounds. What John Kerry said was not even an answer to the question."

Lynne Cheney said Kerry was "not a good man," while the vice president described himself as "a pretty angry father" and charged that Kerry had shown he would "say and do anything in order to get elected."

At a campaign rally after the debate, Lynne Cheney blasted Kerry, saying "the only thing I could conclude is this is not a good man."

"I am speaking as a mom -- and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man -- what a cheap and tawdry political trick," she said.

John Edwards' wife, Elizabeth told ABC radio that Lynne Cheney had "overreacted to this and treated it as if it's shameful to have this discussion."

"I think that it indicates a certain amount of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences," she said.

After the debate Kerry issued a statement saying: "I love my daughters. They love their daughter. I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue," he said, referring to gay marriage.

On Thursday, the vice president followed up, telling supporters who watched the debate: "You saw a man who will say and do anything in order to get elected.

"And I am not speaking just as a father here -- though I am a pretty angry father -- but as a citizen," said Cheney.

Candidates' families are generally considered off-limits.

But Kerry aides noted that the vice president himself had mentioned his adult daughter's homosexuality while on the campaign trail, and said the Republicans were using manufactured outrage to avoid discussing Bush's record.

"The reason they're doing this is to distract from the fact that Bush has done so much to hurt middle America," Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer told AFP.

Asked why Kerry had mentioned Cheney's daughter, Singer insisted: "It was not any kind of calculated line. He was giving a genuine answer to the question, nothing more, nothing less."

The goal was "just to say this is a real-life issue, and it's something that is a fact of American life," the spokesman said.

Maybe Kerry "didn't appreciate the sensitivity of it, but I don't think there's any doubt in my mind that it was inappropriate," said Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, who is campaigning for Bush but is a Kerry friend.

"You don't know why someone would bring up something like that in a debate. And so I don't think it helped Kerry, in my view, because I don't think people like that."

"I don't know if he did it intentionally or not," McCain added.

It was not the first time that the Kerry camp had mentioned Mary Cheney, in response to a question about gay marriage: Democratic vice presidential hopeful John Edwards did so in his October 5 debate with Cheney.

"I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her," Edwards said. "It's a wonderful thing."

Offered a chance to challenge the Democrat, Cheney replied: "Let me simply thank the senator for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter. I appreciate that, very much."

FROM...

The New York Post

DIGINITY OF THE WHITE HOUSE

October 15, 2004 -- It hardly seems possible, but the Demo crats stooped even lower yesterday in their contemptible abuse of Vice Pres ident Dick Cheney's daughter.

Both the veep and his wife, Lynne, reacted angrily to John Kerry's having pointedly noted in Wednesday's debate that their daughter Mary — who works for the campaign but keeps a low profile — is gay.

The suspicion is that Kerry meant to damage the Republican ticket in the eyes of any voters who have a problem with Mary Cheney's sexuality — that is, in the eyes of people that Kerry considers to be bigots.

Recall that Kerry's running-mate, John Edwards, also gratuitously brought up the subject during the vice-presidential debate.

Yesterday, Mrs. Cheney reacted furiously to Kerry's tactic, calling it "a cheap and tawdry political trick."

Which brought an outrageously over-the-top response from Edwards' wife, Elizabeth — who charged that the Cheneys are ashamed of their daughter.

"She's overreacted to this," said Mrs. Edwards on ABC Radio, referring to the veep's wife. "I think it indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences . . . It makes me really sad that that's Lynne's response."

That's truly loathsome.

Was Mrs. Edwards not listening to her husband when he said, "You can't have anything but respect for the fact that [the Cheneys] are willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter"?

Or was that just a load of slick lawyer Edwards' smooth talk?

Of course it was.

Yesterday, Edwards actually defended his running-mate's exploitative tactics by claiming, "Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, had themselves brought it up."

As if that gives Kerry-Edwards the right to drag an innocent bystander's name into the muck.

There's a clear line developing here.

Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, arrogantly dismissed any suggestion that her candidates were out of line, calling it "fair game" because the Cheneys' daughter is "a major figure in the campaign."

Actually, she's nothing of the kind: Though she's appeared with her parents, she doesn't give speeches and prefers to avoid the limelight.

Now imagine this scenario, laid out by Internet blogger Edward Morrissey: What if Bush used "Julia Thorne, Kerry's ex-wife, to refute Kerry's insistence that he is a practicing Catholic [who] respects families?" A rhetorical firestorm would follow, of course.

Will the John-John ticket get a pass for invading Mary Cheney's privacy twice by injecting her into debates before a national audience — and then insulting her parents by accusing them of being ashamed of their daughter?

That's to be determined.

But let's be clear on one thing.

However despicable the Democrats' conduct is on a personal level, it becomes even more reprehensible when one considers that John Kerry is running for the presidency of the United States.

Clearly, he has no respect for Mary Cheney; has he none as well for the dignity of the office he seeks?

The two candidates — and Elizabeth Edwards — owe Dick and Lynne Cheney a public apology.

Mary Cheney, too.