Cheney the cause for all things awful

Dick Cheney's latest attack on John Kerry is to claim that had Kerry been President in the 1980's, that the Soviet Union would still exist:

Cheney told supporters that Kerry had run for the U.S. Senate in the 1980s on a promise to do away with many of the weapons that U.S. President Ronald Reagan used to end the Cold War.

"So if John Kerry had been in charge, maybe the Soviet Union would still be in business," President Bush's running mate said on a campaign trip to the swing state of New Mexico.

The logic disconnect was so swift, I must have blacked out for a few hours.

When I came to, I thought that irony is a cruel mistress, and Lynne Cheney must be jealous her husband is having an affair with her. You see, had Dick Cheney been President instead of Secretary of Defense in the late 1980's, the Soviet Union might still be in existence today:

And Richard Cheney himself, who is now Vice President but who then was Secretary of Defense, also proposed canceling the Apache helicopter program five years after Kerry did. As Cheney told the House Armed Services Committee on Aug. 13, 1989:

Cheney: The Army, as I indicated in my earlier testimony, recommended to me that we keep a robust Apache helicopter program going forward, AH-64; . . . I forced the Army to make choices. I said, "You can't have all three. We don't have the money for all three." So I recommended that we cancel the AH-64 program two years out. That would save $1.6 billion in procurement and $200 million in spares over the next five years.

Two years later Cheney's Pentagon budget also proposed elimination of further production of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle as well. It was among 81 Pentagon programs targeted for termination, including the F-14 and F-16 aircraft.

AMERICAblog points out that by his own logic, Cheney is the cause for AIDS:

After all, Cheney voted against AIDS funding in the 80s when the epidemic began to spin out of control.