Ask those who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks if "We kept America safe after 9/11" means anything to them

No, I don't think we should let up on Dick Cheney's claim that he "kept us safe after 9/11." Closing the barn door after the horse leaves, when you knew that door wasn't secure doesn't qualify you for a medal. An administration that came into power claiming that "the adults are now in charge" and then ignored (perhaps deliberately) warning after warning that something very big and very bad was about to happen has absolutely ZERO claim on "keeping us safe."

Now, former 9/11 Commission member Richard Ben Veniste, best known for asking Condoleeza Rice for reciting the title of the now infamous August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing, has heard quite enough about how Dick Cheney's lunatic view of the universe "kept us safe" AFTER the Bush Adminitration's spectactular level of negligence:

In the interview with Bush, Ben-Veniste asked the president why he hadn't met with the FBI director after getting the PDB.

Bush replied that there were concerns predating his administration about politicizing the FBI and interfering in pending cases.

But "this was no pending case subject to claims of political interference," Ben-Veniste writes in his book.

The president said he couldn't recall whether he asked National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to get in touch with the FBI regarding the PDB, according to the book.

There was no immediate response from a spokesman for the former president to requests for comment.

Finally declassified by the Bush administration amid public and political pressure in April 2004, the PDB from Aug. 6, 2001 said, "The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden related." The PDB also said that the CIA and the FBI at the time were investigating a call to the U.S. embassy in the United Arab Emirates three months earlier saying that "a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives."

It's clear that Dick Cheney is now operating in accordance with his "One Percent Doctrine" -- that if there is a one percent chance that something is true, you proceed as if it were a foregone conclusion. In this case, given his daughter Liz' inadvertent revelation that her dad is crapping his pants at the thought that he might be prosecuted for his crimes, he probably feels that there is MORE than a one percent chance, even though so far the Obama Administration has been loath to even entertain the possibility. But as Cheney makes his Legacy Tour, and keeps repeating his safety claim, at what point do we actually start to look not at the post-9/11 record, when ANY administration would have stepped up to the plate, but at the time period between January 20 and September 10 2001, when warning after warning of an impending attack came in -- and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did nothing.

Nothing.

They. Did. Nothing.

The choice we have in our view of these criminals is simple: Were they simply stupid, utterly incompetent, or did they decide to let things play out so they could invade Iraq? Take your pick. Whichever you choose, it is completely inconsistent with Dick Cheney's public posture as Savior of America™.