What if Cheney Were Being Waterboarded?

One of the significant issues of the post-Bush era is whether bitter dead enders like Dick Cheney actually want to see another big terrorist attack on the U. S.

After Cheney's inflammatory speech at the American Enterprise Institute, I was quick to write that Cheney "might as well be hanging out a sign saying "We're weak. Please attack us" and "one wonders if Cheney's well of bitterness doesn't run so deep that he wouldn't welcome a major terrorist attack as sweet vindication."

Apparently, CIA director Leon Panetta was thinking along the same lines and told Jane Mayer in a straight-forward way that:

"I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue. It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."

Cheney denies it all and acts surprised.

"I hope my old friend Leon was misquoted," said Cheney in a terse statement (put out by his office. "The important thing is whether or not the Obama administration will continue the policies that have kept us safe for the last eight years."

Of course, I bet Cheney would change that story if he were being waterboarded.