Vintage Cheney: Sour and Poisonous

Torture, the former Vice President tell us today, is "absolutely essential" to preventing future 9/11s and that "President Obama campaigned against it all across the country, and now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack."

If Dick Cheney's goal is to make George W. Bush look like a statesman, his CNN interview today is a good start. "Cheap shot" is too mild a description for a former Vice President casually calling a sitting president too naïve to head off terrorist attacks with no chance of ever being held to account for saying it.

But being unaccountable is Cheney's hallmark. As the most secretive Vice President in history, he shrugged off all demands for transparency and now, instead of remaining in his accustomed silence, emerges to defend the alternate reality he helped create for eight years.

In Iraq, Cheney says, "We've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do."

The economy? "Stuff happens, and an administration has to be able to respond to that and we did," he tells John King.

It's unclear whether or not George W. Bush has the least sense of shame over what he did to the country, but it's clear that Dick Cheney doesn't and that he doesn't intend to stop doing it.