And some fairly unoriginal reporting, but whatever.

There's a short piece in today's Times essentially providing a paraphrased transcription of Cheney's interview yesterday on CNN.  Besides the fact that the piece provides no new information, there's also no context provided for some of the more breathtaking statements Cheney made.

"I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11," Mr. Cheney said of Bush administration policies, echoing statements he made in an interview last month with the Web site Politico.com.

"I think that's a great success story," he said. "It was done legally. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles."

 

Did the reporter then include information about the fact that there is in fact, a heated debate about whether the actions taken by the Bush Administration were, in fact, in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles?

Take a guess.

Then there's this:

"Up until 9/11, it was treated as a law enforcement problem," he said. "You go find the bad guy, put him on trial, put him in jail.

"Once you go into a wartime situation and it's a strategic threat, then you use all of your assets to go after the enemy. You go after the state sponsors of terror, places where they've got sanctuary. You use your intelligence resources, your military resources, your financial resources -- everything you can -- in order to shut down that terrorist threat against you

So after 9/11, our actions were taken to "go after the enemy".  OK.  So then WTF is this, at the end?

"We've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do," he said about Iraq. "Now, I don't hear much talk about that, but the fact is, the violence level is down 90 percent. The number of casualties and Iraqis and Americans is significantly diminished. There's been elections, a constitution. They're about to have another presidential election here in the near future."

"We have succeeded in creating in the heart of the Middle East a democratically governed Iraq, and that is a big deal," Mr. Cheney said. "And it is, in fact, what we set out to do."

Get it?  Our actions in Iraq were to install a democracy.  But actually, he says earliers that our actions were taken to defend ourselves against the terrorist threat against us.  Which is it?  At this point, the Times could have practiced journalism by pointing out that in the lead up to the war, the argument for the war, in the first place, was to prevent Iraq from using those mythical WMDs.  Instead, the article ends there, with no context.

Stenography.

And just imagine if Cheney were a Democrat and Obama a Republican.  Oh, the keening and wailing and outrage over a former VP criticizing a sitting President.

Instead?

Stenography.  And crickets.