Harry, you and I got into an email conversation almost 25 years ago, in the run-up to the ineluctable invasion of Iraq, about an Op-Ed in the NY Times, by a former CIA agent, then Army War College instructor, I think named Stephen Pelletiere, who threw the 1980s CIA fake story about the Iranians, not the Iraqis having gassed the Kurds.

I had originally taken the article at face value, but you set me straight. Pelletiere knew that he was, in 2003, recounting a lie, but he was intentionally using a 1980s Cheney/CIA lie against its 2002-3 counterpart, in order to undercut the Kurd narrative as evidence of Hussein's WMDs and justification for the invasion that was going to happen, regardless of what Hussein did in the intervening days or weeks.

It was a clever bit of rhetorical Jiu-Jitsu, using old lies against new. It didn't work, though.

I firmly believe that the lies of the Reagan-Bush-Bush years laid the groundwork for the distrust of government and acceptance of blatant lies that gave us two Trump Presidencies.

The damage done to this country by Cheney and his lies will last 50 years or more.

Bette Davis once said that one should never say anything bad about the dead. He's dead. Good.