So much for Dick Cheney’s short-term memory

Here’s Vice President Dick Cheney interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. He says that AQ Khan, the recently released Pakistani nuclear scientist who seeded the world with his country’s atomic secrets for fun and profit, is “the worst proliferator” in recent history:

But my concern is that the damage that will be done by the President of the United States going back on his word, his promise about investigations of CIA personnel who have carried those policies, is seriously going to undermine the moral, if you will, of our folks out at the agency. Just today, for example, the courts in Pakistan have ruled that A. Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistan nuclear weapon man who provided assistance to the Iranians, the North Koreans, the Libyans, has now been released from custody.

It is very, very important we find out and know long term what he is up to. He is, so far, the worst proliferator of nuclear technology in recent history. Now we have got agents and people out at the agency who ought to be on that case and worried about it, but they are going to have to spend time hiring lawyers at their own expense in order to defend themselves against the possibility of charges.

via RAW DATA: Transcript of Cheney on ‘FOX News Sunday’ – Political News – FOXNews.com.

And then talking about North Korea a few moments later:

Well, obviously, you are concerned for the reporters and their circumstances, but I think if we look at it from a policy standpoint, it is a big reward for bad behavior on the part of the North Korean leadership. They are testing nuclear weapons. They have been major proliferators of nuclear weapons technology. They built a reactor in the Syrian Desert very much like their own reactor for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons.They probably are the worst proliferators of nuclear technology any place in the world today.

So within 5 minutes, Dick Cheney calls two different things “the worst proliferator” of nuclear weapons.

If he can’t remember which of these things is “the worst,” maybe we shouldn’t trust his recollections in his forthcoming memoir, either…