Cheney on Meet the Press

Updated below

Just watched Cheney on Meet the Press. At one particularly heated moment, Russert referred to Cheney as "Mr. Bush."

A few of the things that stick in my craw. Cheney said no relation between Iraq and 9/11 but much relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. Not true. The Senate report yesterday proves as much. Cheney also said Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism. Of course, that's in reference to Iraq's support for Palestinian groups, but he made it sound as though the Palestinian "terrorists" and al Qaeda "terrorists" are all the same things. Conflation is the name of the game in the Bush administration.

In the end, Cheney said "it won't happen" when Russert asked him what if the Democrats take over control of one or both Houses. He seemed pretty certain. It suggest to me that they have a contingency plan to keep it from happening if it looks like they're running behind as the election nears. I don't know what it might be, but I don't put anything past this guy. As he said in connection with questions of torture, warrantless spying, etc., "we will do everything in our power to protect this countries from its enemies." (paraphrased) Do those enemies include the Democrats?
I will give Russert a B on challenging Cheney today. He did a reasonably good job.

Once the transcript is up, I may have more to say.

Update

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that Cheney virtually admitted that he had declassified Valerie Plame's identity so that Scooter Libby (and perhaps others) could leak it. Russert asked him whether he had ordered Libby to leak Plame's identity. Cheney said he couldn't comment on anything related to the case, but, he then went on to say with a bit of a smirk, "I can tell you though that the Vice President is authorized to de-classify classified materials."