January 15, 2007

It always gets a little cozy when Dick Cheney goes on Fox News.

There he was on Sunday, with Chris Wallace, who introduced the topic of Scooter Libby by mentioning that both Libby and Wallace himself had been invited to the Cheney Christmas Party.

Hard to be aggressive with a guy who is serving you pigs in a blanket, Swedish meatballs, and reindeer cutouts.

In the best Fox fashion, Chris Wallace asked Cheney whether members of Congress who are trying to block the Administration’s policy in Iraq are, in Wallace’s words, “undercutting the troops.”

Responded Cheney: “Well, I think they are.”

And he softballed Cheney with: “Ultimately, will the U.S. do whatever it takes to win?”

Cheney: “I believe we will.”

To the extent that Chris Wallace played tough, it was only to ask Cheney to attack Iran.

“Can you pledge that, before you and the President leave office, you will take care of the threat of Iran?”

And Cheney responded, “I think we’re working right now, today, as we speak, on key elements of that problem.”

Cheney said, “Iran is fishing in troubled waters,” adding that “The threat that Iran represents is growing, it’s multi-dimensional, and it is, in fact, of concern to everybody in the region.”

And Cheney twice mentioned the previously unmentionable word oil, raising the specter of a “nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy.”

Cheney thus made it clear that by the time Chris Wallace comes back to the Cheney household next Christmas or the year after, the U.S. will be at war with Iran.