For almost eight years, Cheney took the high road and maintained an honorable silence on the subject. This man couldn’t maintain a dignified, honorable silence for even six months on the policies of the Obama administration. Imagine what it must have taken for him to sustain a dignified, honorable silence for almost eight long years.

But, ultimately, the strain was simply too much. After all these years during which all the key members of the Bush administration — Georgie himself, Condi Rice, Dick Cheney — stoically took the blame for allowing 9/11 to happen even though they were not responsible in any way, shape or form, Cheney abruptly broke the code of silence today, and revealed to the world who was really responsible for missing all the warning signs about imminent al-Qaeda attacks during the first seven and a half months of the Bush administration:

You know, Dick Clarke. Dick Clarke, who was the head of the counterrorism program in the run-up to 9/11. He obviously missed it. The fact is that we did what we felt we had to do, and if I had to do it all over again, I would do exactly the same thing.

Funny, isn’t it, how neither Cheney nor anyone else in the Bush administration ever said any such thing back in March 2004 when Richard Clarke became a household name overnight, “when he appeared on the 60 Minutes television news magazine, released his memoir about his service in government, Against All Enemies, and testified before the 9/11 Commission. In all three instances, Clarke was sharply critical of the Bush Administration’s attitude toward counter-terrorism before the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the decision to go to war with Iraq.”

Back then, everyone in America was too sharply aware of Richard Clarke’s strenuous efforts to catch the new administration’s attention and get them to focus on the al-Qaeda threat. Even the supine mainstream media of 2004 would not have allowed Cheney (or anyone else in the Bush administration) to get away with such a obvious, blatant, bald-faced falsehood.

But Cheney probably figures that by now many Americans will have forgotten the truth of the matter. Besides, the asinine mainstream media of 2009 will immediately put Liz Cheney on every conceivable TV channel to confirm and defend Dick Cheney’s rantings. After which a sizable percentage of Americans have to take Prick Cheney’s claim seriously, because, hey:
— the Vice President said it,
— conservatives who have no other claim to fame apart from having received half their DNA from him are in full agreement with him,
— and sure, sane people disagree, but sane people always seem to disagree with everything Cheney says, so you really can’t take them very seriously, can you?

Which is why it’s helpful for ThinkProgress to remind everyone of this list of “some of Clarke’s emphatic e-mails warning the Bush administration of the al Qaeda threat throughout 2001″:

“Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack” (May 3)

“Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot” (May 23)

“Bin Ladin’s Networks’ Plans Advancing” (May 26)

“Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent” (June 23)

“Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” (June 25)

“Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks” (June 30)

“Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays” (July 2)

And unless Condi Rice was in the habit of periodically disappearing from public view to do who-knows-what with who-knows-who, leaving Richarde Clarke to put on blackface and high heels to sub for her and make all the decisions that history has mistakenly recorded as being made by Condi Rice, it wasn’t Richard Clarke who decided to:
— blow off the briefing of July 10, 2001 when George Tenet personally came to the White House, to push the panic button, and try and get the Bush administration to understand the urgency of the al-Qaeda threat
– ignore the well-known PDB of August 6, 2001, titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”

And unless George Bush was also in the habit of periodically disappearing from public view to do who-knows-what with who-knows-who, leaving Richarde Clarke to put on his best smirk and his best my-IQ-is-half-my-age act, and make all the decisions that history has mistakenly recorded as being made by George Bush, it wasn’t Richard Clarke who delivered the famous “All right … You’ve covered your ass, now” line to the CIA officials who “flew to Crawford [Texas] to personally brief the President — to intrude on his vacation with face-to-face alerts.”