The Vice President cannot seem to accept reality; he is impervious to facts. He says, on a right-wing radio show, that al-Qaeda really did have a close, working relationship with Saddam Hussein, a charge that is rebutted fairly easily.  Maybe he just can’t read:

Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam
Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein’s regime was
not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of
Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released
yesterday.

      If he were noble-minded, in a Mencian sense, he might be able to learn from his mistakes.  But, it seems, things have not changed much since Mencius’s time:

…in ancient times, when the noble-minded made mistakes, they knew how to change.  These days, when the noble-minded make mistakes, they persevere to the bitter end.  In ancient times, mistakes of the noble-minded were like eclipses of the sun and moon: there for all the people to see.  And when a mistake was made right, the people all looked up in awe.  But these days, the noble-minded just persevere to the bitter end, and they they invent all kinds of explanations. (Hinton, ed, 4.9)

     That sounds about right: Dick Cheney, bitter ender (just don’t call him "noble-minded").