And in other false equivalency news, JoeScar compares Gore's "brownshirt" speech to Cheney's BS

[Gidney N Cloyd]

John Heilemann said basically that on top of everything else it used to be SOP for past admin officials not to heckle and undermine the current admin.
So of course Joe pulls out Gore's 2004 speech where he CORRECTLY pointed out how the Bushies not only lied and conflated us into a needless war, how they managed to bully the media into aiding and abetting. Joe dares to justify Cheney doubling down on his treacherous lies to save his own ass to Gore's truth-telling.

Here's a reminder of what Gore had to say:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/24/gore.bush/
Gore rips Bush on al Qaeda-Saddam link
RNC cites 'history of denial' in response

Friday, June 25, 2004 Posted: 10:36 AM EDT (1436 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Vice President Al Gore accused the Bush administration Thursday of misleading the American people by claiming a strong connection between Saddam Hussein and the terror group al Qaeda.

"Beginning very soon after the attacks of 9/11, President Bush made a decision to start mentioning Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in the same breath in a cynical mantra designed to fuse them together as one in the public's mind," Gore said.

Bush and Cheney created a false impression in the minds of American people that the former Iraqi leader and al Qaeda, blamed for the Sept. 11 terror attacks, were working together, Gore said at the Georgetown University Law School.

(snip)

This month, the independent commission investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks said it found "no credible evidence" of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection beyond preliminary meetings that led nowhere. But neither Bush nor Cheney have wavered from their earlier statements.

"They dare not admit the truth lest they look like complete fools for launching our country into a reckless, discretionary war against a nation that posed no immediate threat to us whatsoever," Gore charged.
GOP response

(snip)

Gore said media who challenge Bush and Cheney's claims of a link are intimidated by the administration.

"The administration works closely with a network of rapid-response digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for undermining support for our troops," Gore said. The term "Brown Shirts" refers to Nazi supporters in the 1930s and '40s.

"The Bush administration's objective of establishing U.S. domination over any potential adversary led to the hubristic, tragic miscalculation of the Iraq war, a painful adventure marked by one disaster after another based on one mistaken assumption after another.

"But the people who paid the price have been the U.S. soldiers trapped over there and the Iraqis in prison," Gore said, referring to the prisoner-abuse scandal.