re: #316 Militant-Infidel

The big difference is that Clinton and especially Carter, were (how should I say it) fond of the spotlight. Cheney doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who likes to revel in their past glory. This was a message, and not an attempt to be “relevant”. I suspect he would be quite happy to go into the sunset quietly, as opposed to some of our previous chief (and vice chief i.e. Gore) executives. He is deeply concerned, and it isn’t about our perception of him nor his ego.

MI

I think actually there’s a two fold strategy here. If Cheney merely wanted to issue a warning to the administration, he could’ve done that without using the press. It’s not like he couldn’t pick up the phone and call Joe Biden about his concerns. No, I think there’s a public aspect to this for a very good reason: Remember how Dems and leftists and truthers seized on that one, vague, slide in a presentation that said that Al Qaida was planning something and waived it around as evidence that Bush was warned about 9/11 months beforehand? I think that’s partially what this is. This is the answer to the “Bush knew” crowd. This is how you make the history narrative hard to twist.