CHENEY SPEAKS: The vice president has answered the critics, and it's about time. We've all heard the jokes about Cheney and his undisclosed bunker location, but seriously: Where has Cheney been all these weeks, as American cheerleaders for American defeat in Iraq have been doing their utmost to demoralize the American people? Why did the White House allow so much time to pass, before confronting the Senate liars with:

The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone – but we’re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history. We’re going to continue throwing their own words back at them. And far more important, we’re going to continue sending a consistent message to the men and women who are fighting the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other fronts.

And why did President Bush wait so long before stating these self-evident facts:

Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments related to Iraq’s weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein.

Truly, I'm perplexed that the administration has remained silent as the Kennedys and Schumers and Boxers and Bidens pounded their defeatist drums for so many news cycles. Scurrilous allegations that remain unanswered have a way of being believed; the president's latest poll numbers surely indicate this, in part. The Clinton White House ensured that presidential surrogates got TV face time to make the administration's case; and the Bush White House was pretty good at that, back in the days when they understood the necessity of making their case for tax cuts and prosecuting the war on terror. What accounts for the change in recent weeks? Why has the White House allowed itself to be pummeled these past weeks? The president and vice president must stay on the offensive. It's not the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people I'm worried about losing, it's the hearts and minds of Americans. U.S. advocates of American defeat in Iraq (now including the Clinton dyad) need to be reminded at every turn that they too believed Saddam posed an unacceptable threat. Their Big Lie must be countered without fail. Welcome back to the game, Mr. Vice President. Keep hitting hard.