Watched this interview. I think he's dying. Would not surprise me if he is gone by the end of the year.
Regarding shooting down the plane, talk about a gut-wrenching call.
He does act like a man who lost a lot of his venom, perhaps making peace.
Do you know why he's saying the order was necessary, but not saying the planes were shot down?
Because he knows that 40 to 60 years from now, the government will release the frozen and unredacted 911 records. Same way we learned we started vietnam on a "middle mgmt error", etc. And when that happens, we'll learn what kind of plane fired what kind of missile into flight 93, and where the point of impact was (remember the plane's debri was spread over 8 miles).
Cheney is pre-empting history's judgement of him. He knows that in 40 or 60 years, our grandkids will learn the Bush administration (and it was cheney, since Dubya was reading books at the time and only those 2 had shootdown power since norad was stripped of it in june 01).... history will learn that he ordered the shootdown of US citizens.
He's just getting "on the record" with his justification of his actions that day. Can't blame a dude for that. With planes in 3 of 4 buildings, most of us would have given that same tough shootdown order. But since he knows our enemies would use that fact against us (and good luck winning swing state Penn in 2004 knowing your splattered peolpe on their ground with your shootdown order - surely politics weighted into it).
Cheney's painting his legacy now.
