As someone who has criticized the Bush Administration for not fighting back enough against relentless Democrat attacks and disinformation, I was delighted by Vice President Cheney's overdue dress-down of the Peter-principled and unprincipled Senate majority leader, Harry Reid.

If the mainstream media (MSM) gave as much credence to stories of real deception by Democrats as they do to phony allegations of Republican deception, the political landscape would look dramatically different. But no, I'm not holding my breath.

The MSM dutifully reports as fact the Democrats' false allegation that Bush lied about Iraqi WMD, when at worst it was a mistake, since Bush was properly relying on the virtually unanimous opinion of all major intelligence agencies in the United States and the world. To lie is to say something you know at the time to be false.

In fairness, though, it was not President Bush's mistake, but the intelligence agencies. If you insist on saying Bush made a mistake, so did the Democrats who voted along with him -- with access to the same intelligence, though they've lied in denying that as well.

Though Bush clearly hadn’t lied, we wondered why Democrats were all of a sudden bothered by lying, since they habitually defended a habitual liar of their party who previously occupied the Oval Office.

That's simple, they said. Clinton was lying only about sex. If you lie about sex, even under oath, you should come nearer receiving a Nobel Peace Prize than being punished for it. Of course, Clinton lied about much more than sex, but I digress.

President Bush, they say, lied us into war -- about decisions that would affect lives and our national security. I certainly agree that for a public official actually to lie about such grave matters is inexcusable, which brings us to Dick Cheney's verbal laceration of Harry Reid.

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, the rest of the Democratic leadership and their MSM echo-puppets are portraying Cheney's remarks as petty partisan politics. In the words of Reid, Cheney is the administration's “attack dog.” It's more accurate to say that he has been one of the Democrats' favorite scapegoats.

But here we go again. When Democrats assassinate Cheney's character with absurd lies, like “war for oil,” the MSM reports it matter of factly as “VP under fire.” When Cheney hits Democratic leader Reid squarely in the eye with truthful charges of his lies and inconsistencies, Cheney is portrayed as a vicious partisan hit man. All the while, the sober and self-evident truth of those allegations is downplayed or ignored. But we must not miss the substance of Cheney's pointed remarks.

The occasion for Cheney's statement on Reid was the Senate majority leader's regrettable declaration that we have lost the war in Iraq. Cheney decided to set the record straight on Reid's opportunistic oscillation on Iraq. Continued...