All Apologies

Post-9/11, Dick Cheney may not care much for the MSM, as Andrew Ferguson notes this month in Commentary. But he sure knows how to play them for all they’re worth, to get under the epidermis of the thinnest-skinned president in history:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney praised the Obama administration Sunday for using a drone strike to kill American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, but said President Barack Obama should now reverse past criticism of former President George W. Bush’s actions against suspected terrorists.

Al-Awlaki — an American whose fluency in English and technology made him one of the top terrorist recruiters in the world — was killed Friday in Yemen, according to U.S. and Yemeni government officials.

The strike also killed Samir Khan, an American of Pakistani origin, and two others who were in the same vehicle as al-Awlaki, said the U.S. official, who was briefed by the CIA. Khan specialized in computer programming for al Qaeda and authored the terror network’s online magazine, Inspire.

“I think it was a very good strike. I think it was justified,” Cheney told CNN’s Candy Crowley on “State of the Union.” But “I’m waiting for the administration to go back and correct something they said two years ago when they criticized us for ‘overreacting’ to the events of 9/11.”

The Obama administration has “clearly … moved in the direction of taking robust action when they feel it is justified,” Cheney said.

Cheney’s daughter, Liz Cheney, went a step further, saying Obama “in effect said that we had walked away from (America’s) ideals.”

“I think he did tremendous damage,” Liz Cheney said. “I think he slandered the nation and I think he owes an apology to the American people.”

When asked by Crowley if Dick Cheney also wants an apology, the former vice president replied, “Well, I would. I think that would be not for me, but I think for the Bush administration.”

Or to put it another way:

“The president has been on his 60-day tour, and everywhere he goes the numbers just get worse. The American people have essentially voted on this proposal and really what you have is a situation now where I think that the president…[is] going to need to figure out a way to save face and — and step back a little bit. And if — if they let go of their egos — listen, I’ve been on the other side of this where — particularly with my wife. (laughter) Where I’ve gotten in an argument and then at some point in the argument it dawns on me, you know what, I’m wrong on this one and it’s — it’s — it’s irritating, it’s frustrating. You don’t want to admit it, and so to the extent that we can provide the president with a graceful mechanism to — to say ‘we’re sorry, dear’, then I think that would be — that would be helpful.”