Q&A: Cheney on Taliban and Suicide Bomber

Vice President's Remarks to the Traveling Press
Aboard Air Force Two
En Route Muscat, Oman

via White House News

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, I was -- they provided me quarters there overnight because you all know we got weathered in. It seems to me I think it was about 10:00 a.m. this morning, I heard a loud boom. And shortly after that, the Secret Service came in and told me there had been an attack on the main gate, apparently a suicide bomber.

They moved me for a relatively brief period of time to one of the bomb shelters nearby, near the quarters I was staying in. And as the situation settled down, and they got a better sense in terms of what was going in, then I went back to my room. It was almost time to leave.

Q What do you think the symbolism is there for the -- for whoever carried this out? They said publicly that this was aimed at you. What does that --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Who said that?

Q The Taliban --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I hadn't heard that.

Q It was a Taliban spokesman quoted, saying that the attack was trying to get you.

Q What we're quoting them as saying is that they took responsibility for it, and they said they were aware that you were there.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I hadn't heard that.

Q Did you at any time consider changing your itinerary about Kabul after learning this news? Or was that never--

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Never an option.

Q I guess, the question was, do you suppose in light of the current situation in Afghanistan that if a group does the act that it did and it suggests that they were going after you in some way, it's more a self-serving symbolic statement to their own people, look, we're on the attack against the Vice President, regardless of how ludicrous it is because you were so far from the scene of the actual incident?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think they clearly try to find ways to question the authority of the central government. Striking at Bagram with a suicide bomber, I suppose, is one way to do that. But it shouldn't affect our behavior at all.

There has been much ado about this attack on the Vice President. I for one am thankful that Cheney is alright. Apparently a LOT of people don't hold the same sentiments. It is sad really, that political discourse has come to this.

I think if the shoe were on the other foot, and by that I mean if the attack target had been Al Gore or Bill Clinton, I like to think that the Right would rise to the occasion, expressing outrage at the attacker, not the target of the attack. I like to think the conservative right would take the opportunity to advocate the annihilation of our enemy, not make comments like "darn, they missed." I like to think that I am right about this, and I *might* not be, but I like to think I am.

I guess it will take an attack on some moonbat on the left to test this hypothesis.

After 9/11 there was no left/right distinction. We were all Americans. An attack on one of us was an attack on all of us. Maybe that is the difference between the left and the right. The right refuses to forget 9/11 while the left refuses to acknowledge it.

I think Cheney really is a brilliant individual: "it shouldn't affect our behavior at all."

If only that were completely true. If only the press would pay more attention to the US victories over terror instead of the suicide attackers and cowardly road-bombers. If the press would take the same amount of time to report the terrorist's defeats as they do their "achievements" in carrying out the thoughtless slaughter of innocents, then terrorism would not work at all, and the Islamo-fascists would give up.