Cheney Unleashed

"PRESIDENT BUSH: The Vice President.

"Q Why?

"PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, look, ours is a country where people ought to be able to disagree, and I expect there to be criticism. But when Democrats say that I deliberately misled the Congress and the people, that's irresponsible. They looked at the same intelligence I did, and they voted -- many of them voted to support the decision I made. It's irresponsible to use politics. This is serious business making -- winning this war. But it's irresponsible to do what they've done. So I agree with the Vice President. . . .

"I think people ought to be allowed to ask questions. . . . Listen, I -- patriotic as heck to disagree with the President. It doesn't bother me. What bothers me is when people are irresponsibly using their positions and playing politics. That's exactly what is taking place in America."

The Coverage

Elisabeth Bumiller writes in the New York Times that "Mr. Cheney, who was the administration's toughest, most persistent advocate for the war in Iraq," depicted senators who had suggested that the Bush administration manipulated prewar intelligence "as hypocrites swayed by antiwar sentiment and their own political ambitions."

Or, as CBS Early Show anchor Harry Smith put it: "The White House basically called the Democrats liars."

But Wait

So what is Cheney's response to his critics? He's going to "throw their own words back at them."

That's the strategy in its entirety.

He is not, by contrast, offering to clear up, say, any one of his 51 misleading statements compiled by House Democrats on the Government Reform Committee.

Here, just for example, is what he said about Saddam Hussein in remarks on January 30, 2003: "His regime aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. He could decide secretly to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against us."

The Campaign

I wrote in my Monday column that Bush on Friday had launched his third presidential campaign -- this one to salvage his reputation, and what's left of his second term. That campaign is coming more and more into focus.

Michael A. Fletcher and Peter Baker write in The Washington Post: "Senior Bush adviser Dan Bartlett said Thursday that the White House had made a strategic decision to launch a 'sustained' campaign to vigorously combat the notion that the administration misled the nation rather than let the assertion go uncontested."