When has Dick Cheney been right?

Let me finish tonight with this.

Dick Cheney leads a certain type of Republican. They are people who trust his word, ignoring what he’s done.

He made a point to avoid military service yet relies on the military instinctively. He likes military action. He offers himself as an oracle, a person who can see well into the future; yet he’s the one who, more than anyone, was intent on taking us into Iraq, claiming all the time we’d be greeted as liberators, that there were nuclear weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein, weapons that could be used against us in America.

The question is, “When has Dick Cheney been right?”

This weekend he accused the president of making “second-rate” selections for our national security team. Hmm, John Kerry is “second-rate?” John Kerry, who volunteered for combat in Vietnam and faced the enemy under fire? John Kerry, who was nearly elected president, a contest in which Cheney didn’t dare try for first base? Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? That John Kerry?

Dick Cheney reminds me of what my hero Winston Churchill once said of these people who stick around—these people like Dick Cheney—offering their wisdom so freely: “We need fewer peerages and more dis-appearages.”