George,

I was impressed by Mr Cheek's reaction to the debate between VP Cheney and Senator Edwards.

Apparently, his concerns were more with Mr. Cheney's memory "lapse" and impressed by his executive "style" than the content of what he said.

OK, I'll be charitable and call Mr. Cheney's forgetting having ever met Senator Edwards "till you walked on stage tonight" as a "senior moment." That said, however, Bush and Cheney have refined the telling of distorted facts, half truths and out and out untruths to an art form.

It is the Nazi equivalent of the BIG LIE theory, tell a lie often enough and it eventually morphs into the truth. That was certainly the case with Mr. Cheney Wednesday night, last. Though spoken in stentorian, competent sounding sentences the shallowness of this man is evident. The Bush/Cheney distortions of Senator Kerry's voting to cut mostly redundant pork laden weapons systems fail to inform that many of these same systems were opposed by Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney. With five Republicans joining Kerry with the nay vote! The Church Lady would say, "HOW CONVENIENT!."

Fortunately, Senator Edwards presented Mr. Cheney's rather nightmarish voting record as a congressman from Wyoming. Opposing the release of Nelson Mandela and Meals On Wheels for example. . . . . Very compassionate! Mr. Cheney has repeatedly and obsessively tried to assert the connection between Iraq and Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the tragedy of 9-11-01. This flies in the face of all credible evidence to the contrary.

Confronted with his statements, Cheney, more often than not, denies he ever said these things, and even after the video tapes of his publicly making these statements are shown, his "it's true because I say it's true" arrogance continues in his obstinate, obnoxious (again I'll be charitable) "stubborness." Bush and Cheney invent new reasons for this grotesque war almost on a daily basis! Chameleon like, they manage to change the raison d' guerre to almost suit the weather. Mindless about the horror of 1050+ young Americans dead, 20,000 maimed and wounded, countless thousands of Iraqi women, children and men dead and thousand more horribly wounded, almost a quarter TRILLION of our scarce tax dollars squandered, Bush and Cheney perpetuate the myth of progress and are still saying, "Stay the Course," "Full Speed Ahead."

Cheney sounds much like the corporate management hierarchy I recall in the days I worked for General Motors and, later, as a GM dealer. GM was failing, hemorrhaging cash, losing market share, product stature at the hands of bean counters and has-beens. The arrogance of these mostly incompetent individuals at GM, strikes a chilling similarity to the Bush Administration ... In the case of GM, the refusal to acknowledge the shoddiness of the product, the inability to even admit there was such a thing as foreign competition--and making excuse after excuse as the corporate ship slowly sank. If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times, that it was the fault of the United Auto Worker's union that was causing the problems at GM. It never occured to them, that these same UAW workers were building Toyotas, Hondas and Nissan products that were equal to, or exceeded the quality of the very same vehicles made in Japan--right in these GM honchos' back yards.

Like Bush/Cheney, it was all excuses, slogans, lies, "tough minded, hard nosed" propaganda coming from guys who talked the "corporate speak" talk but had their heads tucked into their unmentionables! Never walking the walk! Finally, a corporate coup took place and the old Roger Smith gang was summarily sent packing and GM saved from total collapse. I am hoping we get the equivalent "coup," come November 2nd.

Harry Tenney (electronic mail, October 10, 2004)