Big Time Layeth the Smack Down

And the delightfully monikered Nedra Pickle of the ASSociated Press was privileged to be at the veep's rhetorical ground zero:

There's a temptation for people to sit around and say, well, gee, [9/11] was just a one-off affair, they didn't really mean it. Bottom line is, we've been very active and very aggressive defending the nation and using the tools at our disposal to do that. That ranges from everything to going into Afghanistan and closing down the terrorist camps, rounding up al Qaeda wherever we can find them in the world, to an active robust intelligence program, putting out rewards, the capture of bad guys, and the Patriot Act....

Either we're serious about fighting the war on terror or we're not. Either we believe that there are individuals out there doing everything they can to try to launch more attacks, to try to get ever deadlier weapons to use against [us], or we don't. The President and I believe very deeply that there's a hell of a threat, that it's there for anybody who wants to look at it. And that our obligation and responsibility, given our job, is to do everything in our power to defeat the terrorists. And that's exactly what we're doing.

According to the aforelinked Weekly Standard piece, that will soon, and at long last, include captured Saddamite documents that will "provide an unfiltered look inside a criminal regime that brutalized its own citizens, bought off numerous European politicians, and provided significant support to transregional terrorists." And, I'm willing to bet, show Saddam's development, and possession, of WMD.

If the past year's inaction while the Democrats whaled the propaganda tar out of them was intended by the Bushies as another "rope-a-dope" strategy, it certainly appears that that phase of the political war is at an end. And before the next year is past, the other side may wish it had heeded Joe Lieberman's advice, and left the war issue well enough alone.

But they'll never figure it out before November, if then.

[HT: Powerline]